Recently my family received a long awaited package in the mail; finally our necklaces were here and we quickly did away with the brown paper packaging and plastic. After a long, anxious month of waiting, the Madagascan Sunset moth I'd sent my money away for was within my grasp.
My beautiful Sunset moth has been hanging from a chain around my neck for a little over two days now, and people have been noticing (either that, or everyone around me has suddenly turned vampiric). It's not exactly something you'd see around here. I was instantly drawn to this particular necklace because of its size, and bold, iridescent colours. In some lights, the Sunset moth looks like it doesn't have any colours at all, like it's just a plain butterfly, nothing different, nothing interesting, nothing special.
I've always been a shy girl, I'm getting better, but there are still times where I feel lost. I know I have my talents, my special qualities and little quirks that make me...me. Do people see me like that butterfly? Do they see me in ways that my talents show, just like those bright colours? Or do they see just another, every day ordinary girl, who gets lost in the crowd, lost in the shadows? I always wonder...I wonder if people really see me, or do they only see what they want to see?
Like pretty much all teenage girls, I'm overly emotional. I've cried over burnt chocolate...and while that sounds like one of the silliest things to be upset about, at the time, the burnt chocolate was not the real thing that upset me. It's hard to talk about what hurts -As I'm pretty sure every other human being on this earth would agree- So, I bottled everything up until something little and stupid pushed me over the edge.
One of the things that has always made me go crying to my mom, has been that my friends love to talk about these little parties, and get together's that they've had...parties that I haven't been invited to. Every year, I'd invite my friends to my birthday parties, and we'd have a blast, so I don't regret who I invited...but every year, there were another handful of parties I was not invited to. It made me start to think that my friends didn't really like me, because if they really liked me, wouldn't they have asked me to come? Was I just no fun? Was it the way I dressed, the way I acted? I still don't know what it was, but I do know that this year, one of the girls I invited to my birthday party, invited me back.
The caterpillars spin silk from their mouth with an ‘∞’ motion of the head as they walk, this keeps them from falling from the smooth surface of the leaves. The silk also permits them to climb back to the plant should they fall.
I've always, like that caterpillar, had my safety net; my family and friends. I hid behind them all the time. At youth I hid behind my loud friends, or my sisters, I went where they wanted to go, I did what they wanted to do. I was like a shadow. Now things are changing, my friends all say hi and Powerball is one of my favourite games...but I still feel trapped by the shyness, I still get lonely, and I still get sad when my friends have parties and don't invite me. But I think it's just about time to burst out of my cocoon, I've hidden behind my security blankets, and the shyness long enough. I am not a shadow, I am not an ordinary girl, I am me, and it's time to show my colours to the world.
