Bittersweet Realization

RDNG 332

Mrs. Burnett

Bittersweet Realization

Change is inevitable, yet it is something that I fear most. Throughout life we go through uncountable changes. The changes we go through in life are very similar to the stages a caterpillar goes when becoming a butterfly. Before the insect turns into a beautiful butterfly is has to start as a plain caterpillar, then is wraps itself into a brilliant cocoon, only to soon morph into a astonishingly stunning butterfly. Without the changes this butterfly had to go through it would have never become the magnificent creature we ah about. Similarly, as people we must endure changes, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Nonetheless these changes are what morph us into the people who we are.

August 2006, my life was about to change again, unknowingly I had begun my transformation. I’ll never forget the night I watched the U-haul pull out of the driveway. This was the day that officiated my sister moving from being my sister, to being my sister and the wife of her husband, a bittersweet realization. That night was the night she and her new husband would begin their move, thousands of miles away, to their new home in Virginia. I was so happy for her, yet wanted her to stay so badly. She was my sister. How dare this man come in a steal her from me? She was my big sister, my only sister, and now she was being whisked thousands of miles away. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever survive without her being only a ten-minute drive from me. I soon came to realize it would be changes like this that would help me transform into the woman I was to become.

Paralleling my bittersweet realization, Patricia MacLachlan writes about a woman who is also undergoing a bittersweet transformation. Sarah has made the decision to move thousands of miles away from her brother, from her home, from everything familiar she knows. Her move is one of grief but also of a newfound happiness. Sarah quoted, “There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.” Unlike me, Sarah knew before that she was at the beginning stage of her transformation that would ultimately morph her into the mother, woman, and wife she was meant to be. It was not solely the move that changed Sarah; it was also the experiences that accompanied it. Later on in the book, Sarah states, “I will always miss my old home, but the truth of it is I would miss you more.” In order for us to be able to change we must give something up to gain something else, often something better and more satisfying. Similar to the butterfly, we to must take the chance and give up being caterpillars to ever have the chance