Everything I was, am and will be (and the lies that came with them)

Cognitive dissonance was a word I almost forgot.

When I found it, I must've been no older than eight, wich sounds crazy but it's the last time I held a book containing psychology, or other things of the twenty first century, so it must be true.

Cognitive Dissonance is something with psychology and it means, that you have two beliefs, that don't match. Two things, that can't be true at the same time.

For example believing that lying is bad but also believing that you, personally, have to lie to protect the people you love.

It's something I think about often nowadays, now that basically everyone I love is dead. My father, my brother, my mother, all my friends and other people who could bear me.

All the lying, all the silence got worthless in the last three years.

Just because my skull nearly exploded because I tried to find out who I was. Who I am. What I'll now be.

It's a truth I always knew to an extent but it wouldn't make sense. Because it couldn't be true, so I decided it isn't.

My two beliefs that are contradicting are about my identity.

One identity is the one I lived the last ten years. I wasn't born, I just was in the desert. The boy who found me is my brother and his parents became my parents too and when I had an especially cloudy day, I could even make myself forgot that they weren't my biological family.

Although I was a bit rebellious against the Roman occupation, I wasn't anything extraordinary. I spoke the languages I was taught and did the things someone would expect from a girl. I knew the things the other people at the time knew.

The other identity is a bit more complicated. It's about a girl born October 5th 2007. A girl with three younger brothers, one who went to school up until she got taken. Taken by a woman who was anything but human who wanted the girl me to clean and dress her, to listen to all the secrets she was to scared to tell her husband.

It's someone I didn't want to think about because overtime, the girl I was wasn't me anymore. The girl I've become was more like her slaver than the people I grew up with. She had magic and knowledge and everything the girl I choose to become hadn't and I was happy.

Up until now. Because I knew and I should've known.

I knew all humans had to die one day. That's the nature of it all.

What I didn't thought about was me.

Could I even die? Because the woman who took me, she told me about the millenias she has seen come and go, she told me that she has become immortal because she ate of that golden fruit. And she told me to eat a golden fruit.

I never thought about it, all these years because I have decided that it isn't true. No, I wasn't born somewhere different, how dare you. No, I was never a maid, why do you think that? No, magic, never seen it in real life, why, do you think I'm a witch?

Funny how much I had blinded myself.

But now that all of these facades, lies, that I had forgot were lies, and everything to hold my image into place have fallen, what am I?

I look at my sunbathed hand. They have golden blood in their veins, gods, I mean. That's atleast was Frig has told me. The woman, who took me.

I wonder if it's sunlight or if my hand really shines a bit golden.

Gods, I think, they seem so far away. They're supposed to, my friend Athena once told me. If they weren't, people would constantly harass them for help and they would loose their godhood because they would loose their core: the mysteriousness.

My breathing fastens. I think about my dreams, where I would see a catastrophe and people pleading for help and me dismissing it as a simple dream.

If my biology already dehumanizes me, then my behavior does that times three.

I need a plastic bag for breathing. How could I live like that? How did I pretend to not know, when all these signs were in plain sight beforehand?

What is wrong with me, that not even the severe suffering of Cognitive dissonance was a word I almost forgot.

When I found it, I must've been no older than eight, wich sounds crazy but it's the last time I held a book containing psychology, or other things of the twenty first century, so it must be true.

Cognitive Dissonance is something with psychology and it means, that you have two beliefs, that don't match. Two things, that can't be true at the same time.

For example believing that lying is bad but also believing that you, personally, have to lie to protect the people you love.

It's something I think about often nowadays, now that basically everyone I love is dead. My father, my brother, my mother, all my friends and other people who could bear me.

All the lying, all the silence got worthless in the last three years.

Just because my skull nearly exploded because I tried to find out who I was. Who I am. What I'll now be.

It's a truth I always knew to an extent but it wouldn't make sense. Because it couldn't be true, so I decided it isn't.

My two beliefs that are contradicting are about my identity.

One identity is the one I lived the last ten years. I wasn't born, I just was in the desert. The boy who found me is my brother and his parents became my parents too and when I had an especially cloudy day, I could even make myself forgot that they weren't my biological family.

Although I was a bit rebellious against the Roman occupation, I wasn't anything extraordinary. I spoke the languages I was taught and did the things someone would expect from a girl. I knew the things the other people at the time knew.

The other identity is a bit more complicated. It's about a girl born October 5th 2007. A girl with three younger brothers, one who went to school up until she got taken. Taken by a woman who was anything but human who wanted the girl me to clean and dress her, to listen to all the secrets she was to scared to tell her husband.

It's someone I didn't want to think about because overtime, the girl I was wasn't me anymore. The girl I've become was more like her slaver than the people I grew up with. She had magic and knowledge and everything the girl I choose to become hadn't and I was happy.

Up until now. Because I knew and I should've known.

I knew all humans had to die one day. That's the nature of it all.

What I didn't thought about was me.

Could I even die? Because the woman who took me, she told me about the millenias she has seen come and go, she told me that she has become immortal because she ate of that golden fruit. And she told me to eat a golden fruit.

I never thought about it, all these years because I have decided that it isn't true. No, I wasn't born somewhere different, how dare you. No, I was never a maid, why do you think that? No, magic, never seen it in real life, why, do you think I'm a witch?

Funny how much I had blinded myself.

But now that all of these facades, lies, that I had forgot were lies, and everything to hold my image into place have fallen, what am I?

I look at my sunbathed hand. They have golden blood in their veins, gods, I mean. That's atleast was Frig has told me. The woman, who took me.

I wonder if it's sunlight or if my hand really shines a bit golden.

Gods, I think, they seem so far away. They're supposed to, my friend Athena once told me. If they weren't, people would constantly harass them for help and they would loose their godhood because they would loose their core: the mysteriousness.

My breathing fastens. I think about my dreams, where I would see a catastrophe and people pleading for help and me dismissing it as a simple dream.

If my biology already dehumanizes me, then my behavior does that times three.

I need a plastic bag for breathing. How could I live like that? How did I pretend to not know, when all these signs were hiding in plain sight beforehand?

What is wrong with me, that not even the severe suffering of other people could clock in my senses?

My sight turns blurry. Could I have...stopped my loved ones death? Could I have prevented it?

I run through my memory wich gets reflected in my breathing with every passing heartbeat more and more.

I could have. Probably. Surely.

The magic that I have possessed the whole time, the one I have already mastered a long time ago, could have stopped my father's illness. My mother's heart failure. I gulp. My brother's execution.

My nails claw themselves into my arms. I look down on the ground. My brother always says, that little creatures always tell the truth.

(I was taller than him and always called him my little brother)

I think I now know. Know who I am (or what).

I am the girl I've been the last ten years. I am a human, I'm a storyteller, who sometimes forgets what's real and what isn't.

I am my brother's sister and my parents' child. I like wrestling and weaving because at their core, they're the same. A battle with tactics.

(I am a liar. I never gave them the chance to meet all of me)

I am the girl I've been the first eight years of my life, although she wasn't really much. I know that there will be toilets and TV and I know that I won't be able to tell anyone that because then I would be hunted a witch or, worse, worshipped a goddess.

(I am a coward. I should've said no. I should've done anything but obey. I should've said no, I should have said no, I should've said no)

Wich brings me to the third thing I am: A goddess. The goddess of war, beauty and death to be precise, wich honestly means just the same.

I am a goddess and I am forbidden to care too much. Forbidden to help because it would destroy me. I am supposed to be worshipped until everything (other?) humans know about me isn't me anymore.

(I am a monster. One that could never be satisfied up until it preys itself a child too. It will only be a matter of time up until I'm just like Frig. )

All these people shouldn't be the same person. But they are. They will be. They must be.

(I am a hypocrite. It isn't possible to be all these things at once but it has to be. I can't be a goddess but I must be. The people are praying to me, they're begging for my help. I must help them.

But I can't be her, the goddess they want. At my core I am still the child I was and the teenage girl whose self I have carefully constructed. It's the ones I want to be. It's the ones I'll never be able to be again.)