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Metaphorphosis

Butterflies begin life as a caterpillar. A caterpillar is a worm-like creature whose biggest concern is remaining inconspicuous long enough to move on to something different.

I am, in this way, a butterfly.

When a caterpillar, a larval butterfly, has gotten its fill (literally) and is done being something that crawls and hides and looks unappetizing on purpose, it decides enough is enough. It winds itself up tight in a chrysalis, a private place to transform. Becoming something akin to slime, its body completely reshapes itself into something beautiful and perfect that can fly.

I am, in this way, a butterfly.

I would like to interview the slime of a butterfly to be. Does it know? Does it feel? Is it aware of what it will become? Does it yearn in the core of its very being, as I did, to fly?

To be known is to be. To be perceived is to define your existence. To be seen is to be judged. In high school, this was anathema to me. A weapon I employed against myself. I was a worm who hated what I was and wished to subject as few people to it as possible. I thought of myself as a rigid and unchangeable sort of thing, a container I could only grow to inhabit. One I hated the shape of.

And then I discovered that I was beautifully mutable. A freeing thing to be. Is the caterpillar surprised when he begins to make himself into a chrysalis? Or does he know that is what he will do from the moment he emerges from his egg? I was surprised. I was making my chrysalis long before I realized it. Yearning for ambiguity, for privacy, for others to see me differently. By the time I was cognizant of what I was, I was already melting down into that slime.

Before they begin their rebirth, caterpillars must eat and eat and eat. Energy, for the long hibernation. Body mass, to be sculpted like clay. Estradiol 2mg tablets are a beautiful and magical thing, but they too require fuel and mass to work their magic. Redistributing body fat requires you to have body fat. I’ve put on ten pounds since the start of my transition and I will not allow anyone to shame me for it. I like the way I am shaped. Would you shame a caterpillar for following its nature? This is my nature. I simply had to resort to unnatural means to get there.

I’m past the butterfly slime phase, by now. I’ve emerged, proud in pink and blue pastels, to a world that will come to know me as I am. Forget the caterpillar, the crawling worm. The thing I was has ended and I don’t want it back. It is the destiny of all things to strive closer to an ideal. Mine simply involved a physical transformation.

Butterflies sometimes end up pinned to a board in death, an object of scrutiny. Study this tract of writing, study me, perhaps, like you would such a specimen. I submit myself to it willingly. I don’t mind being looked at and known anymore. People should know what this state of being is like.

People should understand what it is to be a butterfly.

Perhaps then they will understand why us trans folk do it, why we become the beautiful beings we are.