Week 21: Learning to Let Life Happen- Jes Lilly

Full Prompt: “Learning to let life happen”

Story:

Valentina stormed straight to the parapet. She grasped the concrete with all the strength her hands and fingers could muster. She hung her head. As her fingernails dragged across the rough surface, noises of the chaos behind her drowned out. They were pushed to the back of her mind, no longer detectable by any of her senses. She kept her head low in silence for a considerable time. It had been a rough few days; weeks now that she thought of it. Hell, it had been a rough few years. Her mind spiraled at all that she had weathered in that time. She had always prided herself in being a fighter, never letting anything get her too morose. Resilience was the name of the game. 

“Game”, she thought, as her hands clenched even tighter.  “If it were a game, some of this would be fair. But what does fair even mean? Someone loses their job for no reason, another gets a bad diagnosis in the face of a healthy lifestyle, still another, no matter how hard they try can’t catch a break in their career. People are born into poverty with little chance of ever rising above it. People are born… all kinds of ways.” A thought that hung in the air like a single single sheet flapping, drying, pinned to a clothes line. One tear escaped her golden eyes but she quickly wiped it away with a scoff. As she did, something else golden caught her piercing gaze- a butterfly. 

Flitting along in the wind, seemingly without a care, very far above and away from any bit of nature, a single monarch butterfly. Her eyes followed it as it flew up and up until it disappeared from sight. Valentina turned around to confront the car collision which still lay behind her.

Getting a ride back to the city from the tow-truck driver, who was more than a little bit intimidating, she let her mind drift from her circumstance. It landed on her younger years. More specifically her friends from her younger years. She hadn’t taken time to realize how she missed them. How long had it been since she’d seen everyone- how long had it been since she’d seen ANYone? 

“It’s just a car.” The driver blurted out unexpectedly. “No one wants to hear it in these types of situations but it's important to keep in mind. You’re lucky. No one got hurt, just some hunks of metal twisted up.” 

He was right, Valentina did not want to hear it right now. But he was still right. “I mean… yeah… it just…” Val replied in defeat.

“Look, I towed countless wrecks away from accidents. I seen some not great things. This is just metal and some money. You need to get a ride to work? That is if you’re lucky enough to have a job- call a friend, that’s what they’re for. You lucky enough to have friends? Count it. You not that lucky? At least you live in a city- we got ride shares. You don’t got enough money for that, we got a pretty great public transportation going on. All’s I’m saying is I know it sucks, but money, that comes and goes- if it wasn’t on this it’d be on something else. That’s life. That’s part of this game.”

“Game, he said game,” Val thought to herself, recalling thoughts she had very recently on the bridge. Now more engaged in the conversation she continued: “You’re right. It is just a car and I am okay, and the other driver is okay… and even with it taking place on a bridge- it could have been… awful.” 

“There ya go, kid.” The driver encouraged her. 

Now alone in her apartment, the freedom of her car removed for who knows how long, Valentina felt too alone. She went for a walk. Her apartment complex was very near a dense part of the city but fortunately it had a grove of trees still standing in a field out back. Something curious for the value of the land, she had learned the original owner stipulated its preservation and maintenance upon the complex’s sale. An obvious labor of love, a small figure eight path had been cut through the trees for tenants of the apartments to enjoy. The figure eight was a beautiful unbroken infinity loop, save for one foot path that had been carved at its western edge leading away from the trees. 

Where once stood a large industrial building now lay only dirt and rubble. But the reason for the break in the path was what lay beyond that rubble- a pristine lake with no land to be seen beyond it. Valentina sat down in the grass and peered out over the water. She thought about sending a message to one of the friends she had reminisced over earlier, but decided she could contact them later. This moment was for her. She let her shoulders relax and spread her fingers wide on the ground feeling the texture of the evening grass bend between them. She looked down toward her right hand and saw a dandelion puffball which she instinctively plucked. 

Childhood memories swiftly flashed through her mind, iridescent and whimsical as a carousel. She closed her eyes for a brief moment. Upon opening them she gently blew against the dandelion scattering its seeds into the soft, night wind, whisking them away to new horizons. She watched some fall within sight and some take flight until they disappeared. Just as the butterfly had earlier. She contemplated their different flights. The butterfly beginning as a slow, unassuming creature. The dandelion beginning as a beautiful bright spot of yellow. She cried. 

These beings had lived very different lives. Tears streamed down the cracks of a widening smile. “Life happened to them. As it does to all of us,” she thought to herself. What it held for them both was change- drastic, but beautiful change. They had very different ways of getting there but they both learned, in time, to fly.  

“But which one am I?” She questioned aloud. “Am I the dandelion- at the end of my brightest days?” She barely thought the full sentence before the problems of her life attacked from all sides, telling her those days were indeed behind her. “No.” She silenced the thoughts. “I choose butterfly; my brightest days are still ahead.” She sternly decided. “I am in chrysalis!” She exclaimed; suddenly and unexpectedly recalling a high school biology term which denoted the time a caterpillar spends in its cocoon. “That is what I am deciding. I can’t control everything that happens in my life, but I can control my reaction to it. My perception of it. Just like the flower, just like the butterfly- they both went through extreme, but natural stages. If I had been that little caterpillar I would have been scared to death of everything that was happening to me… But because of it, not in spite of it and not without it… the wonder at what I had become… ” her thoughts trailed off as whimsy danced in her golden eyes witnessing the waning sun. “To learn to fly, I have to let life happen,” was the last thought she had before she got up from the grass to go telephone her friend.