(Nonfiction from a third person perspective.)
"Chrysalis"
When she left the apartment that Monday evening to go to her meeting, she had expected it to be as dark as it was. Winter in Chicago was privy to such early, black evenings. What she did not expect was the wet, slick, impossible-to-see ice that sheeted the concrete sidewalk as well as the road.
Slippery, she thought, hobbling towards the opposing street corner.
She slid violently, righted herself, and hesitated. A few more tentative steps and then it was as though gravity had tilted like a pinball machine, or someone had given her a hard bump in the wrong direction.
She went down hard, her legs swinging, and she threw her weight to the left, rolling and landing on her left arm and knee on the cold, wet ground. Dampness seeped through the sleeve of her coat and the stretchy fabric of her jeans, and she carefully began to get up again.
There was nobody around to see her fall. If she hadn’t fallen so well… She might still be lying in the street, clear in the path of the next car.
Focusing more on moving slowly now, she shuffled penguin-like to the sidewalk. A car honked; the ice was causing it to fishtail as it drew nearer to the crosswalk. When it stopped just before hitting her, she hesitated and looked through the headlights’ glare. The driver, a youngish, panicking woman, waved emphatically and apologetically, mouthing, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry!”
She hobbled onto the sidewalk at last, out of harm’s way, and slowly went on from there to the train.
When she was on the train, and the city of Chicago spread beyond the windows in the dark of winter and her body began to recover, she realized what the fall had actually been: it was an announcement. It was an omen, to inform her that everything she had spent the last two months adjusting to had changed.
Several hours later, her boyfriend of two months reluctantly informed her that he had been lying to himself, and was still in love with his ex.
It was, as far as she was concerned, an awful Monday.
The rest of the week was a dull ache that inched by the way an icicle forms. When her emotions became fragile again on Friday, a coworker generously swapped shifts with her, so that she could take the entire weekend off to gather her wits about her.
On Saturday, she tried retail therapy with some friends in Wicker Park. Coffee houses, antiques, and vintage boutiques eased the bruised ego, reminding her of herself. She spent way too much money; it was exciting. They went to an enormous, sprawling used bookstore, and she thought about how badly she wanted to be published, to find a physical copy of the books she had yet to write, of her own work. It began to make her sad, so she moved on.
That night, after a great deal of ice cream and pizza, she bawled alone in her room until she could no longer keep her eyes open and was forced to go to sleep far too early for a Saturday night.
On Sunday, she thought about editing her novel. She thought about reading it, taking notes, and giving it some thought and attention. While checking emails, she became distracted by audition notices (or lack thereof) and somewhere along the way she found herself on the phone with her mother, who was really only trying to help encourage her and find new opportunities, but it proved to be a far more difficult conversation to have at that moment than either of them realized. Her frustrations and confusion surfaced with distress and tears of self-doubt were shed.
She wanted to find a corner somewhere, a small space with tight walls where she could be safe against the enormousness of her own feelings, her own fears of the unknown. The world was too large for her to understand, and her tears blinded her from seeing it clearly. She had thought, all through college, that she wanted to fly, to achieve extraordinary things on her own and soar. Now, faced with real life, she wanted to be cooped up and quiet and safe somewhere, and not have to fight anymore.
When she finally hung up an hour and a half later, she was exhausted and wanted to go back to bed, although it was about noon. The novel would have to wait. She made an appointment to get a haircut at a place that was far enough away that it would take up most of her afternoon to get there and back. She rallied herself, and left.
She sat in the salon chair in Logan Square and stared at herself in the mirror, blankly at first, then with more and more scrutiny. The hairstylist, tattooed and bleached and painted with pin up girl lipstick, politely asked her about her profession, and so she told her the usual spiel about acting and writing. The stylist seemed only marginally impressed, but definitely interested, so she kept talking. She listened to herself talking, how she presented herself to a stranger cutting her hair. She studied the stylist’s colorful tattoos, quietly jealous of the confident identity spread across the chest and both arms. The intensity of the ink work actually comforted her rather than unnerved her; it was as if the stylist’s sense of self was reassuring and made her want to trust her even more. She relaxed.
Afterwards, her hair felt infinitely lighter and her mind was eased. She felt marginally sane, in fact.
“Thank you,” she told the stylist, whose name was Sky. “I feel like a person again.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel like a person before,” said Sky, genuinely, “but I’m glad I could help.”
She left a twenty dollar tip for the tattooed stylist.
The rest of Sunday was quiet, an adjustment to new feelings and old ones alike. She thought about her uncertainties, her future, and about how painful metamorphoses are. She wondered how much pain a new butterfly experiences when emerging from the chrysalis. She did not think of herself as a butterfly, but she wondered at the profound pain of the week behind her. Does the caterpillar know it will overcome its lowly beginnings, or does it go mad with anxiety and pain before it transforms? Are they really one being, or two separate lives in one biological timeline? Does the caterpillar long for the tight, silent safety of the chrysalis or does it see the cocoon as death?
It seemed impossible for a human to understand the possibility of a butterfly’s pain. She decided to try not to think about it anymore, and went to bed, hoping for a better dream to carry her out of confusion.
After all, she thought,
I’m only twenty-two. I can’t stay frightened forever. I have to move on.
