The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and the Glory of Growing Up

by Evanna Lynch

We’re afraid that if we fully surrender to our darkness, we’ll never come back from it.

I was going to turn into a woman. My body would grow up – there was no point denying it anymore – but would I?

It seems that, day by day, the older I get, the more people I meet, the more abundantly clear it is that I have nothing special, nothing exceptional, nothing that anchors me to life and love.

Her face fell, her hands still proffering the cake on its dainty china dish. She looked disproportionately sad, like I’d taken something precious from her.

To sit and watch TV or eat a little more cereal would be equivalent to saying, ‘I am enough’ – and I simply wasn’t. Every waking minute was an opportunity for self-improvement.

I’m simply pointing out that an eating disorder is a mental condition, and that the physical problems that occur are side effects, and so it will never work to use the strategy of trying to seize and pull apart the problem in one’s hands,

sympathy quickly turns to frustration when people realise that you are the one keeping you sick,

Sometimes things are just unremittingly shit and the only respectful thing to do is to stand next to the person going through it and scream along with them.

you’re not meant to feel sad over something that was so destructive to you and everyone in your life.

of distraction, it is because they are reflecting something within you that is longing to be expressed.

Was a life not worth redeeming simply because you’d been given it?

It was truly revelatory – and a little disconcerting – to observe how you could use an iron sense of discipline to care for your body rather than punish it.