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

by Evanna Lynch

Too often in life – and in stories – we rush to find the happy ending, even if that ending is an artifice.

We have this compulsion to turn every story into a fairy tale.

We’re afraid that if we show these ugly, unpalatable parts of ourselves, it will be too much for others; that nobody will love and accept us, and we’ll be left alone with only the worst parts of ourselves for company.

I decided, in that moment, that I didn’t like science. It forced brutal, uncompromising restraints on my imagination that there was no coming back from.

Women weren’t born, sliding easily in a cloud of perfume and pollen from the inside of a flower; they were sculpted: by life, by their mothers, by misfortune, but mostly, pathetically, by the stupid, hapless girls they had been before.

The problem with this chapter of eating disorder memoirs is that it’s very difficult to write about anorexia without bragging about anorexia, and an account of that specific, intense time in the grip of anorexia plays too neatly into the egoic thirst of the disorder – however long it’s lain dormant.

Because this book – spoiler warning – is not about how great I was at anorexia for a while. It’s about how the relentless pursuit of perfection is a sad way to spend a life, and why you should wake up and pull yourself out of that downward spiral as soon as you possibly can.

And then Luna Lovegood shows up in chapter ten, and I am not prepared for her. I am instantly entranced by the girl with the straggly, waist-length, dirty-blond hair and aura of distinct dottiness.

‘It will get easier’ is probably the most offensive thing you can say to someone in the grip of pain. You are borrowing from a future that isn’t promised, a future that depends entirely on their endurance of the pain. You are taking for granted a well of strength within them that they may not possess, fast-forwarding through the ugly bits that you don’t want to watch but they must live through, nonetheless.

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.

Dreaming is underrated, I think, so often dismissed as a fanciful, childish, passive activity for immature people not rooted in reality.

Human beings of flesh and blood are not meant to be evaluated via numbers and charts and measurements. Metrics are for robots and outer space. They’re not a good assessment of a person.

As the noted philosopher Britney Spears sang on her pop hit ‘Circus’: ‘There’s only two types of people in the world/ The ones that entertain and the ones that observe.’

‘Why don’t you worry in the other direction?’ she demanded, nailing me with her penetrating green gaze, which lovingly refused to ever let her students off the hook. ‘Why don’t you worry that it will all work out and you’ll meet all your creative matches and you’ll be too successful and too happy and too busy with how much work you have? Why must you always anticipate the absolute worst-case scenario, when you could worry that everything will just be too wonderful? Why do you do that? Why?’ Good point, I thought. Why do I?

Had I been taught to listen to, cherish and respect my body, rather than being frightened out of it with overfeeding and forced compliance, I might now have a better relationship with it.

As I look at my body, I think back to a moment, long ago, when I had looked in the mirror as a child and wondered would anyone ever want this odd, pale, freckly creature. And I decide, now, in this moment, that I want it; I want this body. I want to inhabit her, enjoy her, care for her, and defend her in this world.