Remember that feeling of being 5 years old, and you did something, maybe you learned to read, or drew a good picture or finally remembered how to spell Mississippi, or maybe even something else, completely trivial. But what ever it was, a feeling of pure and unadulterated joy would work its way through your body, and a huge smile would work its way across your face, and you'd run to Mom and Dad and show them what ever you'd finally figured out, and no matter how trivial it was, they'd make you feel like you'd just won the Nobel Prize.
I still remember that feeling, like you're on top of the world, and nothing will ever bring you down. The problem is all good things come to an end... No happy feeling can last forever, and honestly? It seems to me that most happy feelings don't last longer than a few hours at most. If your lucky when your few moments of happiness are up, something else will happen to make your insides light up all over again.
I think that happiness is a lot like a butterfly. Sometimes it's there, so close you can almost touch it, but then you move a little too suddenly, reach out a little to quickly, and you startle it away, and mere seconds before you're about to manage to finally have it within your grasp, it flutters away. And you can't do anything about it. And life moves on, but without your butterfly, and then, all of a sudden, it will reappear, and land on your shoulder one day when you're holding too still, and you'll remember how to smile, and laugh, and for a time you'll be happy, until the butterfly finds another place, warmer, with prettier flowers.
Sometimes I think that you're my butterfly. Not that my happiness depends entirely on you, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me. You've probably long forgotten this, or maybe you haven't, but have simply never thought of how it had affected me, because I know for a fact that it never occurred to Mom and Dad that maybe I was scared too, and maybe I was upset, and maybe they should've tried to remember their second child. But I've never forgotten that first time you had to go to the hospital. And because I was only 11 at the time, I wasn't allowed to visit, so Mom and Dad packed me off to Grandma's and Grandpa's for that week and a half, and I don't think I'd ever felt so alone. I remember this, not only because of the incredibly fear, the loneliness I'd felt, but because it was the first time I'd thought of you as my butterfly. Because the past 3 years, I'd lost my big brother, and that November I'd thought I'd finally gotten him back. But I moved, just a little too fast, so you had to fly away. You had to fly away from me, and it happened again, and again, and again...
I hope that you'll stop flying away from me soon...
Love,
Your Little Sister
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