REBIRTH.

I watched her when she was with him, she was still a just a worm then and she was happy crawling around the branches on his tree. She had no idea who she would change into after him because she only lived in the moment. She lived in the moment with him…then, something tragic happened and she began to change.

The most heartbreaking thing about what they shared was the fact that when they met for the first time, I only imagined that if I ever wrote about them; I’d be writing a love story with passion-infused words deep enough to burn through the hearts of those who read it…but they surprised me and everyone else who saw the story of their relationship unfold because he ended up humiliating her in a way that stripped her of whatever dignity and integrity she had.

She was stupid in love and she didn’t even know it.

She trusted him way too early, gave in too soon and opened up her heart too quickly and her walls melted in the false pool of security he had let her dive into blindly.

What got her emotional turmoil brewing was that she had not actually let go of him inasmuch as she had convinced herself that she had. So she started feeling his absence much later than she should have and that made the loneliness and the struggle to feel comfortable with whom she was without him more intense.

You see, she was never a social creature to begin with so he was her escape, the person she let loose with and the person she experimented being outside her comfort zone with. When he left, she tried to staunch the flow of her soul that fought to continue spilling out into him but, like a stab wound to the heart, her soul soaked through the thin walls she had put up and oozed into places it never should have.

With so much confusion distorting her good judgement, she let herself get carried away in the unchartered waters the tumultuous tide of her relationship had thrown her into.

Once she realised what was going on with them, she mustered enough courage to turn away from it all and flee but the spell he’d cast on her soul bound her to him hopelessly every time she attempted to free herself. Stuck in this torturous pit of quicksand, she soon discovered that there was nothing more disappointing than trying so hard to quit a habit that you know is completely toxic but finding yourself revelling in your failure to quit because it means you get just a couple of more hours to lay there in a complacent state of surrender…even though you’re sinking further away from yourself with every passing second.

You tell yourself over and over again that the behaviour to which you are succumbing isn’t really destroying you and that if you truly wanted to stop, it would be as simple as getting up from the pathetic curled up foetal position you are in on the ground and saying “No”.

The lie she told herself that she was in control is what ruined her and found her there, in a dark room where the only audible sound was that of her shallow breath, trying to purge  herself completely of every trace of him.

The state her life was in was something she had realised for a long time but refused to accept. She hadn’t wanted to embrace the cold truth that was staring at her squarely in the eye. So for as long as she could, she ignored her obvious lack of control and her waning sanity, muting its violent screams for attention.

Then one day she was forced to confront it all, so she stood there, waiting with her full armour on ready for battle… she looked in its eyes; her Conscience looked like a mirror reflection of herself except it was clothed with the things about herself that she tried to conceal, things that made her who she really was… the naked truth stood before her, and she found her hand extending itself to meet with that of the reflection in front of  her and in that moment, she knew what she had to do.

At this point I was happy for her, she had begun to spin a shroud of silk around herself, completely covering the segments of her worm body and burying all the things she had felt when she had been with him.

She thought about herself; with that person and without them.

At first the thought of being without this person seemed too painful to consider, let alone process. It haunted her for a while and she began to envision a skinny, miserable, depressed and bitter version of herself in a world in which this person did not exist.

Thinking about all these things was overwhelmingly enlightening and it opened her mind up to the reality of what she had put herself through.

She felt miserable, depressed and somewhat bitter and maybe she was a little skinny because this person had been starving her of all the things she should have been feeling and feeding on in a healthy relationship. She should be happy, trusting and content, but was she?

No.

Instead, she saw a distorted version of herself, a version of herself that had crippled their personality, mutilated their self-worth, butchered their dignity and strangled their voice of reason in pursuit of fleeting momentary highs with the boy she thought she loved.

But at what cost? At the cost of her life.

It might have seemed dramatic but in truth it really was not. What did she have left of herself that could not be controlled or stained by the actions of the person she loved?

Not much.

Because she had immersed herself into him and every fibre of her being had become entwined with his so much so that if he was afflicted she felt it more than he did and it consumed her right to the centre of her core.

She was the puppet and he was the puppet master. She danced to whatever tune he decided to play without question. She was aware of his control over her – it disturbed her even, and yet she still danced.

Why?

Because she gave him that power. He did not start out that way. At first he would never do anything to hurt her and this may have lasted a while because he was still figuring out who she was. Then, he slipped, made a mistake and broke her a little.

She turned a blind eye and stood by him while everyone knew the truth. That day he saw through her blind commitment and decided to use it to his own advantage because ‘she was too much of a sweet girl to let go of and so deeply in love with him to ever leave ’.

She knew the truth now, she had reflected and faced the sad reality that she had lived through and she wanted nothing more to do with the life she had been living all along…she let the pain of being reborn consume her and she shed endless tears that cleansed her and purified her from the inside out…she had been healed.

I watched her struggle for the last time that year; she was struggling out of the silk cocoon she had shrouded herself in. I saw her wings tear through and finally free from the cocoon, she flew out with wings of beautiful bold colours that carried her new body as she sailed away into the bright spring skies…

My fragile worm had grown into a beautiful butterfly now.

She was Reborn.