In between

I once read that the hardest part of a butterfly’s life is not learning to fly, but breaking out of the cocoon. I believe it to be true, for I have shed an old identity.

Its remnants still cling, like the final threads of silk on new skin, fragile and unfamiliar. I am no longer who I was, but I have not yet learned how to be who I am becoming. I find myself returning to a question I have always carried, though it no longer sounds the same.

Once, it asked me what I was meant to do.

Now, it asks what I must do to become what I am meant to be.

The possibilities multiply. Some days I feel like a writer. Some days, an artist. At times, an engineer who still thinks in structures and systems. I wonder if I am becoming poetic, or philosophical, or simply more aware. I ask myself if I am meant to build something, to found something, to market, to create, to teach. If I am meant to settle into a life, or to move through many. If I am meant to root myself somewhere, or to travel, chasing that feeling of being awake, of feeling enlightened by the simple universality of being human.

Perhaps this is what it feels like when an idea of success loosens its grip. Earlier, it felt important to become great at one thing, to go deep enough that it could define me. Now, it feels less about choosing a single shape and more about allowing many. Less about arriving, more about unfolding.

Maybe I am not meant to rush this metamorphosis.

Maybe I am meant to be in between.

Not the worm I once was.

Not yet the butterfly I will be.

Just in between, in the only place where becoming is possible.