It’s always this way: a secret pendulum in your soul swinging you from one end to the other.

It started with a grudge; @RanaJones stole your look. She died her hair blonde and drew her eyebrows like yours, her #NewMe. Then she stole your man. When Eli started liking her photos, then popping up in the comments with hearts and fire emojis, the end was in sight.

He dodged you in the DMs, shrugging his bitmoji’s shoulders and criticizing your jealousy. You tried to stay calm, told yourself that nothing was really lost, until Rana posted the #SoftLaunch that hit harder than Juice Wrld’s death. Eli ghosted you.

“Focus on your presence,” said a DM from @GreenaNina, a houseplants influencer with over 35,000 followers. “It’s how you regain your power.”

She meant, of course, your Instagram presence. And why not? You felt absent, nonexistent. You wanted power.

So you built a lighthouse of content. Reels upon reels about post-breakup self-care, slideshows on finding a loyal partner, yin yoga boomerangs, impossibly vulnerable selfies, all scaffolded with comments on the stories of shining influencers whose surplus of light you hoped to reflect at just the right angle to amplify yours.

You gave up privacy. You gained followers, and got sick. Suddenly, your body of work seemed engorged, and your content lacked content. Your photos were attractive, delicious, resplendent, perfect, and inconsequential. Your followers drank from the images, not their source. You were alone, still.

So you deleted it all, sacrificed an impressive spread of workout vids, dating tips, and bikini pics to the gods of new beginnings. You felt light, unencumbered, new. By destroying your life as a creator, you freed yourself to create.

But your followers disapproved. They left in droves, without so much as a thanking hands emoji for your labor. What’s freedom without anyone to share it with? you wondered.

As if breaking your heart weren’t enough, @RanaJones passed you up in follower count. She wanted to break your spirit too.

But you clawed your way back, filming frenzied tutorials on makeup application and forced perspective. In the views on a time lapse of your face, you saw Eli’s handle. First: pride, then confusion. The tumult made you spiral; you deleted the story and all of your posts.

The cycle continued, more or less, in this fashion. Like a disembodied bulimia, your sacrifice fed the revulsion that demanded it. Eventually, you tied bricks to your ankles and walked off the Malibu Pier, but a lifeguard saw and pulled you out. Later, you jumped in front of a moving bus, and all you got was a broken arm, more fodder for content.

You suffered your guilt in silence, watching your hot, happy peers smile through their pristine square windows, and smiling back. One of them, the only one you considered, perhaps, to be a friend, took notice.

“In the pupa stage,” said @GreenaNina. “Much of the body is destroyed and rebuilt so the adult insect can be stronger, and look different, in the imago stage.”

You were headed towards something, an imago, and after each digital purge, you felt a tenderness for your future self that had not yet ripened. You studied this feeling, learned, over time, to cultivate it on its own, without purging.

What you learned is called forgiveness.

You spent less time on the Gram, wore less makeup. The images you saw there took on new meanings: a model you used to envy, grinning on a boat, a sunset’s afterglow in pink and orange, a blue butterfly circling a dandelion, a gorgeous home furnished with recycled junk, an ass—twerking indefinitely, infinitely, twerking for no one, for itself, for light, for air, for the inalienable right to exist.

You quit hate-scrolling. Rana’s follower count became a distant memory. As did yours. You found joy in cooking. You went dancing. You practiced the self-care you only preached before. You stopped seeing yourself as a lighthouse—became, instead, a harbor.

Now you see it: that painful cycle was part and parcel of your growth, your imagination tore itself asunder to lay a true foundation for self-love. George, your now-partner, tells people that he loves dating an ex-influencer, because fake validation goes nowhere. “The challenge is,” he says. “You have to mean it.”

Lying in his arms after a full and hearty dinner of roast chicken with rosemary and thyme and potatoes bathed in au jus he tells you he has never held anything so beautiful in his life, and you know he means it, but when he praises your eyebrows, or an outfit, you still squirm a little inside.

It doesn’t matter. You understand what the squirming is now; it’s your old larval self trying to get around, even though you can fly.

That’s it, the end of the story. Although, perhaps you’d like it more if it were slimmer?

A secret pendulum in your soul.

A grudge: @RanaJones (17,228 followers) stole your man. Eli commented fire emojis.

Then ghosted you.  

“Presence,” said @GreenaNina (35,142 followers).

You felt like a ghost. You wanted to be seen.

You built a lighthouse. You got famous, and ill.  

So you tore it down.  

Your fame dissipated. You remade it, and yourself.

And so went the cycle. You feasted on revulsion. You jumped in front of a bus but only broke an arm. Good content.

@GreenaNina: “The pupal body yearns to be an imago.”

Self-destruction begat tenderness. Tenderness begat forgiveness.

You cooked, danced, turned your body into a harbor.

George loves you, but receiving his love is your greatest challenge.

Now, you seek the challenge—beating your wings is the sole way to fly.

And if it were slimmer still?

There’s a ghost in your pendulum soul.

You fled it, into the light.

You got free, got lost, got free, got sick.

You tried to take your life and failed.

Insects ravage their bodies to improve their image. And you?

Tender sacrifices, the thorns of love’s rose.

You're a monarch butterfly.

Better… right?

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