Ten
The only way a caterpillar can become a butterfly is to let his world end so his new one can be reborn.
Strangely, I identified with the caterpillar, ugly and lost. But I was ready. Ready to perhaps become a butterfly.
I wasn’t sure, however, I wanted my entire world to end. Some of it I really wanted to keep. Maybe that’s where the real struggle lay for me all along.
In reconciling who I wanted to be with who I already was.
I never thought I could be both a man and a popstar. The very thought nearly ate me alive and killed both. I still wasn’t sure how it would all work together, but I did know something.
It would.
By sheer will, I would transform the life I had to the life I wanted. Some of it I would bring from the past… to be transformed into something new and more beautiful.
Like a butterfly.
Stuck as a caterpillar, but I want to be a butterfly. Butterfly.
The song in my head had become a reflection of me. Of the life I was living. And I was beginning to believe Nate. Beginning to think it might be the best song I’d ever done.
Time was the last thing I wanted to give Violet, but now I realized she was right. I needed it, too. Taking time didn’t mean I loved her any less.
It meant I loved her more.
In order to go back to her and promise we could make it work, to prove to her that I was no shit for real about wanting to be with her, I had to get my life in order. I had to be the man she brought out in me. A man who deserved her.
So that’s what I did. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Instead of walking into the label as a drunk, angry kid with too much talent to be ignored, I went in there sober, with a level head and a list of shit I wanted.
I still had way too much talent to be ignored, which obviously worked in my favor.
My newfound confidence (actually, I always had confidence; I just chose to channel it in a different—shittier—way) earned me some approving nods, and I got pretty much everything I wanted.
Before the meeting with the label, I sat down with Becca. I told her exactly how it was going to be from here on out, and I set up serious boundaries. She wasn’t my mother, my boss, or fuck, even my friend. She was my manager. I employed her. Yes, she had say in my career. That was her job, but I had the power to veto everything. She learned real fast that I was going to start exercising that right.
She put up some resistance. I knew she would. In the end, she caved because I already had another manager frothing at the mouth to work with me, and I made sure she damn well knew it.
Guess that time Becca told me there were still people in the industry who liked me, who remembered who I was before fame turned me into a monster, was true. Soon as I came in humbled and apologetic, with that passion back in my eyes and rules in my hand, people were willing to take a chance on me.
I wasn’t going to let them down, not this time.
I wasn’t going to let myself down either.
I finally understood something they kept saying in rehab. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. You can’t find a solution if you won’t admit there’s a problem.
I don’t know why it took me so long to admit there was a problem. I was grateful, though. I finally got there.
A lot of the credit went to Violet for showing me what it was like to be real again. To be grateful for what I had, even if it wasn’t perfect.
Ha. Imagine that. The Perfect Ten wasn’t actually perfect.
She didn’t even know she was teaching me those things. Maybe that’s why the lesson stuck this time.
Or maybe it’s because my heart got involved. Because I fell in love.
The entire flight back to New York, I stared out the window at the white, fluffy clouds that stretched across an endless sky, and I thought.
A few new team members were with me. I’d already promised them I wouldn’t be a dickface. Everything was set up. Everything was put in place.
There were just a few more things I needed to handle.
I picked up the phone and punched in a familiar number, a number I had no intention of forgetting again.
“I’m eating all the Fruity Pebbles,” Nate said, chewing obnoxiously when he answered the phone.
I laughed. “Your ass better go get some more.”
“You coming back?” he asked, smacking his lips.
“Will be landing within the hour.”
His voice was more serious when he replied, “You get everything straight?”
“Almost,” I said, then glanced back out at the clouds.
“Anything I can help you with?”
I smiled to myself. “Actually, I need your help with all of it. You game?”
“I like games,” he said, crunching loud again. “Hit me.”
I told him. Then I told him more.
I had to hold the phone away from my ear when he replied. The guys on the other side of the plane laughed.
After I hung up the phone, I was full of excitement, the kind I hadn’t felt in a long time. With Nate onboard, everything was finalized.
Now I just needed to get the girl.
To spread my wings and fly.