A Teenage Girl's Never Ending Need (The Butterflies Will Eat You From the Inside)

Desperation is an unflattering shade of sin on a pretty young woman but it is one I have worn for longer than I know. I am 17 and for the last three years I have become a shell of my former self: I am a hollow body with boys on the brain and butterflies in my stomach. 

As a kid, I was always anxious. The nerves settled through my body, cocooning themselves around my heart and in my throat. When I met my first drug boy of choice (BoC), with every glance we shared I could feel small wings emerge from each childhood cocoon. It started out small, a fluttering nervous feeling that left my body long after we parted ways. After a brief talking stage, he left me with nothing to show and nothing to subdue the rapidly multiplying insects. Nothing to make this ugly need of mine worthwhile. With each boy that followed, these butterflies returned in full force and very quickly started escaping through my mouth. Each escapee screamed to the BoC, “throw me on the bed, kiss me like I’m yours, let me be yours”. 

They talked to me too, telling me what move to make next -- promising me I would find a boy and be loved. But I see now the way of love they spoke of was instead a fervent denial of my own personhood. I realize now these butterflies were never on the side of love, but of fear.

The first time I hung out alone with my first (and only) ex-boyfriend, I threw up three times. I needed so badly for him to want me, yet my body was rebelling every time he inched nearer. We began dating a week later, after much apprehension on his end. I knew my role as his girlfriend was in a fragile state, I had learned by that point that I was ‘too much’ for most of my BoC. That was another lesson the butterflies taught me --  how to accept blame for something you had no control over. With boys like him, that’s the only way you can be. Still, I knew that I liked being his girlfriend, I liked belonging to someone. Though the aching need remained, I felt calmer in his presence, like I had a purpose.  

So when his hand slipped underneath my shirt and undid my bra on our first date, I chose to swallow my discomfort. I drew up boundaries for where my butterflies could go, trying very hard not to let him notice them. I spent our short lived relationship hoping that if I didn’t oppose his touch, he wouldn’t leave me. One afternoon, after a swarm of butterflies flew down the toilet, I smoothed down my hair and wiped away my tears as I returned to his bedroom. As though he had heard their screams through the wall, I was shoved between his bed and his body, his mouth on mine before I could ever start to catch my breath.

When I would go to recount this story soon after, I found the words catching in my throat, blocking off my airflow. I realized that, as long as he was my boyfriend (or even just my friend as he soon became), I could laugh it off or I could leave him. I chose to laugh it off. This choice haunts me to this day. I wonder now, if I had been more assertive then, if things would’ve gone differently, if I would’ve learned my lesson sooner. At the end of the day, the choice I made is the choice I made, and I will live with that until I die. 

After my first boyfriend broke up with me, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the strength of this need. It felt worse than before; now that I knew how good it could get, my need became unbearable. I wallowed in it for months, sickened by myself and my need and how I made another person leave me. This loss rocked my world, plummeting me into the rat race that is male validation -- always seeking a new BoC, but never feeling chosen.

I began grasping for straws, begging for attention from anyone who would give me a second glance. Having learned how easy it was to get them to like you when you’re just a body, I threw myself into the idea of my physicality. Intermittently, I skip meals and the butterfly escapes begin to occur regularly, without a BoC to trigger it. It’s not because I think my body will become ‘better’ by doing these things, but I feel that my body is in the hands of the man and no longer mine. To feel the ache in my stomach and the acid in my throat gives me a fleeting sense of control; those are some of the only experiences I felt I could lay claim to, where I could truly say “this is MY doing, because this is MY body”. 

Still, I seek the comfort of strange boys online. Equipped with self destructive tendencies and good boobs, I find a new BoC every night. Soon, it turns to two a night, then three, then four or more. It’s not every night, but it’s most. I delete my chat app over and over again, crawling back and remaking my account every time. It’s embarrassing to admit, this desperate struggle for validation, attention, and affection. I hope that the regular expulsion of these butterflies will help to distract me -- maybe that will fill my need.

It doesn’t. I do not believe that I can fill this aching, ugly, suffocating need on my own, but I know that I must. I do not believe I can keep my butterflies from escaping, but I know that I must. I do not believe in myself, but I know that I must.

I have spent my entire life internalizing that I am a body. From a little girl’s aspiration to be a trophy wife to a young woman’s desperation to be seen, I have rarely considered my body as the vessel of my self rather than my entire self. Too late did I learn that love may come in different forms, but it never comes in cruelty. To be treated like a body is to be treated cruelly; that is not love. To realize that you have slowly redefined ‘love’ to include your ‘lover’s’ cruelty is devastating.

 At first, I believed this to be an isolating and shameful realization; convinced nobody could understand what it feels like to want to be loved so badly that you are willing to redefine the meaning of it. But the truth is, I am not alone. You are not alone. We are not alone.