Metamorphosis.

noun \ˌme-tə-ˈmȯr-fə-səs\ : a major change in the appearance or character of someone or something

“It’s like you’re living in a @$#!ing cage.”

Staring in the mirror at the red and blue lights flashing for miles in slow procession behind us, it was an uncomfortable truth to hear the words that encapsulate my days and my nights. For miles he listened patiently and quietly as the anger and sadness and loneliness and the pressure began to seep from the cracks that have been building.

A cage.

A year has passed since that moment when I let everything inside seep through the tiny cracks spreading like ghostly fingers through the walls I’ve built. Six years since the frustration and loneliness began to ebb and flow. Thirty minutes since I wiped her tears and listened to him whisper his quiet loneliness into the dark.

I am at odds within myself. A communicator by trade, I am fiercely protective of the privacy of our grief and the man at the center of it all. If a man’s worth is defined by how he lived and not how he died, why do we place so much importance on the end note of a lifetime? Why do people remember us for what happened and not what didn’t? Heavy with the weight of living, I tread gently to protect a memory fading into the shadows.

In the corners of my memory I see the little girl that I once was. The monarch lay gently wounded on the ground, a smudge of burnt orange dust underneath the fluttering wings. The antennae lift gently and I watch my father gently pick it up, laying it in the palm of his hand to show me its biology and its beauty.  I remember the gentle pain I felt when I learned that it would never fly again, its wings forever and mortally clipped.

I understand now its helplessness.

While the world has swirled around me, I’ve been wrapped in layers of pain and responsibility and loneliness. The emotional strain leaves physical pains, and my shortcomings leave me angry and resentful. I regret my decision to put the needs of all others first and I find myself looking back, wishing I had been a stronger advocate for myself. The woman that I was knew no other path. Yet I wonder … if the path had been different would I have already transformed and emerged in vivid color to fly free?

Or stay wrapped in this grey cocoon.