Oh Why Butterfly

Originally I started this page as a way to find a place for my feelings. But with all the chaos whirling around our world right now, we more than ever, need to find refuge in safe communities. This all started when I won the genetic lottery… yes mental health diagnosis are often times passed down through families. I have the pleasure of being selected to receive the gift of OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

For a long time I battled with myself, I let my mental health become a chain holding me in a place of embarrassment and despair. I was unable to see anything but the pain and suffering that was brought on by this thing called OCD. I refused to seek help, I refused to admit to myself that there was something “different” about me and it wasn’t just going to magically disappear one day. Did anyone else let their mind get taken there? I thought one day that the universe would stop choosing me to torture and all of a sudden I would become “normal.”

What a toxic misconception we have about ourselves and others. I want to be normal, I want to be like everyone else. This is such a false idolization we have towards others - wanting for what they have when we have no true understanding of their stories or their struggles. We spend so much time longing for someone else’s life, which is reality comes with its own bag of challenges; then we do trying to find meaning and purpose in our own.

With mental health, it is very easy to get swept up in other peoples positive affirmations of yourself. It is easy to feel like you have accepted yourself because someone else has accepted you. For me, this was a long journey to overcome. You see, my OCD doesn’t appear on the surface, at least to people who don’t completely know me. I don’t have the outward rituals that most of us have become accustomed to through school or media. There is a whole other side to this disorder called, pure obsessional OCD, where rituals and intrinsic thoughts happen completely internally. Because of this, the only real outward sign to my loved ones were the boughts of depression that came with my constant internal struggle. In this sense, that meant that I had to realize the severity of my own situation and come to accept the fact that I needed help.

So where does chasing butterflies come in: it comes in this very step, the moment that we are willing to enter our chrysalis, enter the unknown of mental health support, in the hopes that it allows us to come out the other-side, a butterfly. This is not to say that we are better or worse as caterpillar or butterfly but in fact as a butterfly we have taken the steps towards accepting ourselves. We have taken the journey into letting our caterpillar become a beautiful, visible butterfly. One that floats gracefully, one that travels and explores, one that rests upon the shoulder of a loved on in a time of need because they can empathize with their pain. The butterfly is the recognition of beauty in mental health. It is the understanding that with each diagnosis is a unique set of traits and attributes that make you completely, you. And with these traits, you can become the butterfly, you can lead the way for other caterpillars to take the leap, enter the darkness and to find their wings.