Crowns

I’m tired of being in pain all the time. I’m tired of wearing a crown of thorns. They pierce my skin and they never stop hurting.

I want to switch my crown of thorns into a crown of butterflies.

Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope?

Did you know that when caterpillars are transforming into butterflies they turn into liquid?

I can relate. I feel completely liquefied, mushy, unformed, and there’s not a darn thing I can do to force myself to rise faster.

If you open a chrysalis, if you try to make the butterfly open its wings before its ready, it will break, it will die. You can’t rush it.

Sounds a lot like grief.

There’s no short cut. It will take as long as it takes. And when enough time has passed, it seems you should be healing, and life goes on all around you, that is when you are in the middle of a swamp so deep you can’t see your way out, you don’t know how you will get to the other side, and you have no choice but to trust that eventually you will see light, and you will know which direction to go to enter the light.

But right now, it’s dark.

And it feels like I’m wearing a crown of thorns, a crown because it is my thoughts that torture me, reliving dark moments over and over again on an endless loop of pain. Death, Divorce, Death…

I want to my crown to stop hurting.

I want my crown to flutter with light and colorful wings.

But what about this?

Sometimes I feel like I might have a crown of crows.

After my ex left, Kim took me on a hike through the woods. We went up a hill and sat down a large rock overlooking the ocean. She told me to scream, primal screams. I shook my head. “No thank you,” I’d rather not scream right now, I’m still cartwheeling through space. She said she’d do them with me. She opened her mouth and screamed. I tried to join her, even though I didn’t want to, and within seconds, I was collapsed and sobbing in her lap while she rubbed my back. She said, “That’s the whole point, you know. To break through that wall holding in your grief and release it.”

I couldn’t answer, so I just lay there pooled in heart-wracking soul-shaking sobs feeling her hand on my back, her legs supporting me, the air filled with the scent of the salty sea and salty tears and evergreen trees.

It seems appropriate that a group of crows is called a “murder”, right?

Chop-chop.

The old me is gone forever, crushed in a brutal way.

This is a new me, a heartbroken me, a soul staring straight into the dark side of life, the sad side, the realization that the world I thought was beautiful and safe, may not be so nice after all.

But then again, here I am.

Let me say that again.

Here I am.

Honest, loyal, true, loving.

Maybe it wasn’t me that was murdered.

Maybe it was my old life full of lies, liars, and false promises.

Now I hold my head high in the light of truth and integrity, and that feels a lot like wearing a crown of butterflies. Light and free.

So maybe the screaming “murder” of crows isn’t me releasing my grief, maybe it’s the releasing of darkness, toxic people, and liars.

And maybe the world actually is nice.

Maybe I can wear my crown of butterflies like a monarch…

Like a kaleidoscope, the patterns and colors keep changing depending on my perception.

Did you know that butterflies do not move their wings up and down, but in figure eights, or infinity symbols, just like I move my body when I dance.

They are so fragile and fleeting, changing and moving, and fluttering their wings in the pattern of eternity.

Native Americans believed butterflies were loved ones who had passed, making  a connection, reminding us that beautiful souls are both temporal and eternal at the same time. (Dad, Kim, is that you?)

Soul growth, transcendence and transformation can be messy business.

 Just ask a butterfly.

Or me.