The butterflies she had long forgotten about had returned.

But these weren’t the sweet, gentle butterflies that came when she went on her first date or started school in a new town.

These butterflies had a much darker plot: to destroy her. Their sharp wings cut through her soul at a monumental speed, leaving it in a pile of shards at the bottom of her feet. They chased her thoughts as they tried to escape into any corner of light it could find. As the light faded, however, her thoughts gave up and allowed the butterflies to nest on them, using their tongues to gulp down any remaining light that her thoughts had fed off of.

Meanwhile, the girl took refuge in her bed, wondering how she was able to get here again. She was happy, or at least she thought she was. It didn’t seem right for springtime to bring feelings of melancholy with it when she had spent the gloomy winter months feeling joyful. The butterflies began to outweigh her wondering with their unkind thoughts, however, and soon she sunk into her mattress longing for sleep. She was a lump, wanting to find purpose, but not actively searching for it.

As time went on, the butterflies multiplied. They laid eggs in her brain, and while the larvae grew bigger, her happiness grew smaller. She watched helplessly as she ruined the relationships around her, while her loved ones asked themselves why the girl they knew had gone away.

She saw some of her loved ones sink into their own problems. Steel butterflies of their own took over their minds and drank away at any joy that they had like it was the sweet nectar they needed to stay alive. She soon found her own problems to be insignificant, and instead tried to help out the people closest to her. Whatever thoughts plagued her mind meant nothing to her anymore, even though they remained in existence.

But she found she could not help out the people around her while her own problems still smacked her with wings made of metal.

The ones she cared about sunk further into a dark abyss, and she followed them. Their problems soon became her own, and only amplified the amount of grief she felt. She knew that those problems had nothing to do with her, yet she only blamed herself for them. Maybe if she had done something different, or had done nothing at all, then others wouldn’t suffer.

Once others started to blame her too, she knew she had to back away.

Her own mind, scratched and bloodied from the slashing of sharp wings, went into a shutdown of sorts. She distanced herself from many loved ones as she pondered the steps needed to find herself again. By this point, it was spring again, and the larvae that had been nesting all winter had grown into small butterflies. They too began scratching at her mind.

Her head, heavy and numb from all of the injuries it had sustained in the past year, yearned to find an answer. Any answer. She knew she could not carry on this way.

She knew she had to release the butterflies in her mind.