EVE AND PSYCHE

You want me to be your Eve, who you will wear as a wedding ring on your hand.

You want me to give up my name and to take yours. Not only that - you want me to keep the honor of your name and to continue your kind.

You want me to leave my birthplace and go to live in yours. Because that is how you thought, it was best for me.

You want me to be your Eve. Caring for your home. To bear you children and take care of them. You want to put me in portraits that you will show to everyone.

You want me to hide my beauty, to become a shadow of myself, not to attract seduction and sin. At the same time, you are busy admiring other women, making them a subject of temptation.

You want me to become your shadow that will keep the fire on in your home and keep your name clean from gossips. And during that time you will be busy hunting for free hearts, to whom you cannot promise anything. Because I can no longer be a temptation for you. Because they cannot be your slaves. You are a hunter. And this is the justification you have devised for yourself.

You do not want me to be something whole and independent that you will love as a free woman. No, you want me as your half who you will blame for the lack of harmony in yourself.

You want everything from me. You have too many chains for me. Chains that will take away my freedom and make me your slave.

If I cannot do all these earthly feats, you will not hesitate to get rid of me. You will let me leave alone, with a tainted honor, rejected and abused. If it is meant that your family line will not be continued, you will blame me for this. You'll blame me for not being able to give birth to your children without even searching for the reason in yourself and telling me that  an infertile woman has no place in your home.

And I am your Eve. I cook your food. I warm your bed. And it all carries the name of love.

Who are you? A God?

To marry me, I must be a saint. To love me, you want me to be a sinner. I must be able to combine these two so controversial roles with perfection. You do not think this is cruel to my soul. Because you think I do not deserve to have a soul. You think you deserve the best, and I am born to serve you faithfully. For the faithful service, I may be rewarded someday. If your capricious mood decides I deserve it. You only take from me. You take the warmth of my heart to warm up your cold selfish heart. You take without hesitation and without feeling guilty from the beauty and power of my mind to inspire your life. But you are not making a commitment to me. You are like a thief of emotions. You take from me with full hands. And when a new gentle inspiration comes, you leave me without thinking, following your instincts. You leave me broken in pieces, without showing interest what is going on with me. You can be very cruel. You are sure I have no soul because I do not need it.

Only one woman is never enough. You are a hunter. A hunter is your heart and your body. You change the laws and the rules so that you can legally own several female bodies. Is there a room for so many female bodies in your home? And in your heart? Or it remains cold, despite the abundance of female flesh, simply because it is not capable of true love. It has not learned to sacrifice, but only to hunt.

You did not allow me to inherit your home and property for a long time. Your male children had more advantages and influence in society than I did. Your daughters cannot yet be your legitimate heirs anywhere. Just because they are in female bodies and you have decided that they are less valuable to society than you are. You can be very unfair.

You have been taking badly my public appearances for a long time, and my social engagement has frightened you. Because, in your opinion, my place had to be in the kitchen or in your bed. Like your favourite servant. I had no right to fight for social justice because it could have made me fight for myself. And you were afraid of losing your influence.

You want me like Eve to sin with and then to blame me for your sin. You have for long accused me of the fall of the human race. You thought my curiosity and insidious nature were to blame that God casted us out of the Paradise. You pointed me like a sinner, who you accused of all the sins on the earth. For you I was the personification of evil and sin, and you did not allow me to spread the word of God because you felt that I was not worthy enough of this holy role. You were torturing yourself in order to take away your desire for me from your heart.

You have been blaming me for a long time being a witch who you ordered to be burnt at the stake. All women must obey if they want to save their lives.

You did not allow me first to fall in love with you for a long time. And if it did happen to me, then you did not let me first to admit my love to you. Cowardly you were accusing my love of unpurity, and myself of perverted. You were ordering the others to stone me because to death I first recognized my love to you. You were willing to put your own heart to hell of anguish, but do not give up on my right to be in something first or just better than you.

And if a fate so decides and in its cruel irony you fall in love with a woman not from your ethnicity, then you do everything you can to destroy this love. You do your best that no one of your tribe knows about this different love because they will not approve it, they will condemn you along with your love. And although you are a hunter, you are not that brave, you want your people to approve you.  And you are avoiding me, destroying as a shameful and forbidden experience. You carefully cut off the place in your body that remembers me. But why, even then, the memory of me bleeds and hurts? This is my curse for you - to remember me and to suffer for me when you are with other women, small women, easy women.

You kept, you insisted on having the first and last word for everything. You were changing the laws to serve you. I did not have the saying about anything. I had to be your beautiful but obedient shadow.

There have been years in which your cruel and unfair attitude to me has changed me. Your hypocritical and cowardly attitude made me to see. To look around and see that what you call your shadow is actually more than that. In my beautiful and seductive body is locked a world that you never wanted to touch. This is my secret world in which you are not allowed because, according to your policy, it does not exist. Winter after winter, spring after spring. I became more and more bold and free. And you were more and more afraid of my power and influence.

There is another woman in me. I am a Psyche. Ancient and mythical. Wild and free soul. It does not need wedding rings. It cannot be captured in portraits. It cannot be replaced by anything.

 I am an element you do not understand. So it is easier for you to wear me like a ring on your hand.

I was not born only for your satisfaction. This role is too small for me. I want everyone to see my beauty. I want everyone to fall in love with my mind. I want to feed everyone with the goodness of my heart. I bring this food to everyone. And it will never end or age. An immortal energy that passes through time. It does not need marriage. Not a wedding ring as a material proof of your love. Its children are proud and free, they are not afraid to love the different. Because they love not only their bodies but also their souls.

I make everyone who touches me to dream and burn for justice in this world. A world in which our souls are equal.

I am Eve and Psyche. I am the gentle force, the harmony that rules the world.

(Elena S. Lyubenova)