Years ago horrible people did unspeakable things. We sent our beautiful baby butterfly into their care because that’s what we were supposed to do. But when they saw that our beautiful butterfly had wings that were decorated differently than the others, the horrible people began to pull at his wings. Little by little, each day, his wings were tattered and torn a sliver more. But the horrible people would lie to us and tell us he had torn his wings, himself. We tried very hard to find ways to encourage him not to hurt his wings. We tried to work with the horrible people to fix problems that might make our baby butterfly display this self-punishing behavior while he was in their care. Nothing seemed to help. And so over time, we watched our baby butterfly begin to lose his ability to fly. Finally, one day our baby butterfly came home wingless. Broken. He could barely walk. It was then we learned the truth. Our beautiful baby butterfly told us the horrible people had been the ones tearing off his wings all along. But it was too late. The tattered remnants of wings were all that were left of a faded memory of flying.
Wingless and flightless, our butterfly was welcomed no longer in other butterfly circles. So we took our beautiful butterfly to many specialists who had helped others make use of broken wings. But it seemed none had ever worked with a butterfly that was so different and had also lost its wings. The specialists would try many different techniques to restore flight. Some particularly bad specialists didn’t believe that the horrible people pulled them off and instead blamed our beautiful butterfly. They would conclude that he pulled his own wings off because his wings were different. They would lecture us that we needed to get our butterfly into more social butterfly activities and that would help him learn to fly again. But he had no wings. They wouldn’t listen to us. And without wings and without flight, our beautiful butterfly was still shunned by the other butterflies. Our beautiful butterfly began to lose the will to stand.
Finally years later a butterfly doctor recognized our beautiful butterfly’s problem – he could not fly because he had been abused by the horrible people. They had ripped off his wings because they feared his differences. And they had traumatized him and disabled flight. It was not our beautiful butterfly’s fault. He began to see new specialists who helped traumatized wingless butterflies cope with not having flight in hopes that someday they could learn to fly in new ways. But the specialists weren’t trained in helping differently decorated butterflies and so their techniques didn’t work.
One day, our butterfly could no longer stand without assistance. Our beautiful butterfly had developed new complications from his wing loss that were serious. We took him to several butterfly hospitals but no one knew what to do and so just sent him home without help. Our butterfly had developed a stinger like a wasp and at times would sting us like an angry hornet believing we were someone else. Other times, he would believe he was still that baby butterfly and the horrible people were in the room ripping at his wings. There were many other insect manifestations that would appear. Each time our beautiful butterfly would come out of these states scared, confused, and distressed. A new specialist was able to figure out that the trauma had caused him to develop Disassociative Insect Disorder which is known to affect butterflies who have been through serious abuse at a young age.
Today our butterfly is all grown up but he still cannot fly. He has tried to go out into the butterfly social world but has not been successful. Even when the other butterflies know of his flight difficulties, he is shunned when he cannot fly just like them. Today, he no longer trusts other butterflies and has vowed to become a solitary insect.
Years ago horrible people did this to him. Today, others continue to do their bidding.
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