My best friend has changed. She used to float like a butterfly, but never stung like a bee. Her words were laced with kindness; she was shy and wandered from place to place. Meeting her was a breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed then, but one that I would want everyone to experience. She was like a dog—a small one—one that wagged its tail whenever it got even a glimpse of someone it liked. She was a perfect example of a good daughter. Not the smartest or sharpest tool in the shed, but the most delicate, intricate, and beautiful one. She treated everybody with respect, she never raised her voice, and she was fun to hang out and eat lunch with. If I were to describe her as a scene, she would be a large grassy field with bumble bees, meadows, and a plain with lush greens.
Now, things have changed. Once, she got really hurt, and she not only let herself down, but me, too. She went somewhere for six months, and when she came back, she had morphed into a new person. When I see her, I see that the once flourishing green plain has turned into an ashy grey. Her words are now ragged, like a valley of mountains. When did she start to swear? When I look at her, all I see are mountains, and the sight is not pretty. Sometimes she slips up, she says something wrong, and I stare at her and think to myself, ‘she’s changed’. What used to be a serene scene is now riddled with mountains. In the middle of her environment is a volcano that’s on the verge of erupting, but when I look back, it turns out it already has. It’s no longer active, in fact, and it seems the flow of lava destroyed all of the flowers and green. Her own volcano erupted when she was riddled with misfortunes and gravely injured. ‘It’s a bad thing,’ I thought. Why has she become a person I’m not familiar with? Is she still my best friend, even after we have drifted apart?
For some reason, I hated this change. I hated how my picture of her—a perfect daughter, one who would never raise her voice or be snarky—had changed. I used to think that things could have been easier if she had stayed the same. That if she hadn’t changed, my life would be more predictable and easier to navigate through, but that just isn’t true. It’s not true at all. While looking at my best friend, I’ve failed to recognize my own change. I turned a blind eye to myself and, in the process, directed my attention to others close to me. One day, my best friend and I were talking to a friend we hadn’t seen in a while, and she was the one who brought up the topic of change. She realized my best friend had changed, too.
“Who are you? Who took her?” she joked, but it was nothing but. We all laughed it off, but the question remained in the back of my mind. I thought about who she was, who she has become. At that very moment, I realized I was thinking about the wrong thing. Who am I to answer on her behalf? On the surface, there is a concrete answer. You can give your name, your family, what you’re known for, but who you are never stays the same on the inside. As life goes on, so do the moments and memories that continue to shape us. That is what change truly is.
As the days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, I have gotten to know her again. Instead, the more I look at her character, her mistakes, her humanity, I begin to find solace in it. I find some things have stayed the same, like her interests and her humor. I look at how she’s represented. I look at the mountains; the ones that used to be an obstacle now seem like a wonder of the environment. There are flowers and forests on these mountains, there are animals that live there. She’s changed, but with that change, she’s grown as a person. Like a butterfly, she had cocooned herself for those six months she was away, and when she came back, she was a butterfly.
Earlier, I talked about her environment, her scene. It’s a dull grey with mountains and a volcano. It turns out that everybody has a volcano inside of them. It just takes time for it to erupt, for people to metamorphosize. Now, I understand. Maybe it’s ok for people to change. Maybe mountains and volcanoes aren’t so bad after all. I think I’m starting to like this view.
