THE GIRL WHO WANTED TO BE GOD — an extract

Chapter 1
Monday, 20th of July 2015, Germany

Max was hurting, Weltschmerz, or what she called it, Grundschmerz, a pain that came with growing up as a human being in this world. The pain was another layer of skin, fitting too tightly or too loosely at times. A constant itch and pressure that made Max grind her teeth and her shoulders tighten with the tension in her body. The last time she was entirely free of this persistent pain was when Max was six years old. She was eighteen now. Twelve years with this maddening pain, but it was not always as acute as it was at this very moment. Right now, Max sat in a circle with her 26 classmates. They had to plan the last details concerning their graduation ceremony. Three people had the word. The rest of them were just here to witness and feel the expanse of their meaninglessness, also a part of the Grundschmerz. And Max felt it, and she knew this was only the beginning. When the ceremony was over on Saturday this absence of meaning would spread even further into every aspect of her life, bringing with it the increasing acuteness of the Grundschmerz. She had to find a solution and she had less than a week to do so. 

The whole class was sitting under a big old oak tree in a corner of the squared schoolyard. They had a good view of the school building from here. Every door and window in the faded pink concrete construction could be monitored from under the tree. Max looked up towards the oak tree’s many little bouquets of leaves and the tiny acorns, still green. Some of the leaves were tinted with autumn colours, an effect of the dry and hot last weeks. The all-encompassing heat did not help with the Grundschmerz and it did not help with Max’s ability to form any ideas of how to get rid of it. Right now, she tried to concentrate on the last time she felt entirely free of this pain. The one time she had felt the complete opposite of it. Maybe, there were some clues as to how to be free of it again. 

It was three days after Christmas Eve the year she had turned six. This third day, after the official celebration, was the first day of the holiday season that her parents and Max had to themselves. It was very cold and the snow had fallen everywhere. Max focused on the cold and could finally see herself and her parents that day. The three of them had gone sledging earlier. Max remembered them all laughing almost constantly. On their way home, along the many decorated houses, they were still laughing. Everything around them was covered in a healthy layer of snow. Max kept running ahead to see new houses and new lights. When she saw the heavy wooden door of the small chapel at the one end of their street, slightly ajar, she knew it was an invitation. Over the Christmas period the chapel was open every day from 10am until 9pm, but Max did not know that then. To her it was the first time she had ever seen the door open, the lights coming from inside, a little Christmas miracle. Her breath was visible in little puffs of steam right in front of her. All of a sudden the warmth of laughter escaped her and she was shivering. The chapel was a sanctuary, now, she an exhausted refugee after a long day's flight from perilous circumstances.

With hunched shoulders, she entered the chapel, as a beggar, squeezing through the opening. Three lamps above both sides of the rows of benches must have illuminated the scene, but in her memory, there were only the candles. The altar at the front was almost discreet, almost modest, compared to the huge painting that was framed by gold ornaments at the wall, right behind it. Max could not remember what the painting was meant to depict, surely a part of the usual images of Jesus' journey from cradle to cross. Even at the age of six Max must have seen them so often in so many different versions that this new golden frame was all she noticed. What had attracted her to the painting were not just the pretty ornaments, but right underneath the painting, they had sat up a candleholder, a huge candleholder with at least 20 something thin candlesticks. Right next to the structure was a basket full of more of the same candles not yet lit. A tag on the basket explained that you were meant to donate at least one euro to take one of the candles. Max had learned to read over the past three months and understood perfectly well. The next few moments had been so often replayed in her mind over the years that they had a dream-like quality to them. They were brighter in Max's memory than the rest of the day. If someone would have observed what she was doing, it would not have seemed like much, or of any real significance, just a kid too impatient, or unwilling to wait for their parents. All she did was pick up a candle from the basket, light it on one of the other candles, stick it on a free spot on the holder and stare into the flames for a bit.

To this day Max struggled to put words to what actually happened. Maybe, it was an epiphany? Maybe, it was some kind of spiritual or religious experience? None of these words were right to describe what she had felt. What she had felt, as she now knew, was the opposite of the Grundschmerz. Her skin fit perfectly. In her mind, she had just stolen this candle. She had done it on purpose, secure in the knowledge that she could always claim ignorance or that she simply forgot to tell her parents to put in the one coin. Enveloped by the heat of the candles, she congratulated herself on her cunning. Her body began to thaw, after the whole day out in the cold, it returned to a more natural relaxed state of being. As the rigidity melted away from her body, her mind too, became more flexible. She could stretch her thoughts all over the last few days and then further over the last three months, her first months of school, and then even further, until the very edge of her memories when things got blurry. All she could make out after this edge, were lights, muffled voices and distinct physical things, like hurt, or hunger, or a particular brand of delight that made her toes and fingertips tingle and a warmth spread from a spot just under her heart. All these memories, it was all her, it had all contributed to Max being where she was. This realisation ignited that little spot under her heart. This heat that grew from within made her feel connected to the hotness of the lit candles and everything else that lay outside her memories, outside herself. Max had tried to keep a focus on her stolen candle. It was taller than the others, but it would soon shrink. The thought would have made her sad any other instance in her life, but at that moment it did not seem sad, but rather comforting.

Everything was, and was going to be, just as it was meant to be. Max could not see, but feel the entire picture, created by the puzzle that was her world. She was meant to steal the candle, meant to be a person that would steal that candle and meant to be a person that would keep staring at the candles admiring her own, deviously well-planned, excuses. The world was at peace with Max. Max was at peace with the world. When she realised this, she thought, this must be what God feels like every day, every second. After all, if anyone knew that things were, exactly, how they were meant to be, it must be God. She closed her eyes and wished to feel like this forever, to be God. As the wish was formulated in her mind, the flame of her stolen candle licked a little higher. At least that was what it seemed like to Max at that moment. A coincidence, if it even happened at all. Regardless, little six-year-old Max saw it clearly and interpreted it as a sign, as a promise. A promise that she could be God and feel like this every day, every second, a promise that had not been held.

Ever since that day it seemed this feeling of connection and belonging had slowly, at first, almost unnoticeable turned into to its direct opposite. There were certain cornerstones, in this development towards the hell of the Grundschmerz. Max could not pinpoint them all, but there was this first birthday that did not feel like a birthday anymore that stood out as a big one. Then there was a more recent one that came to mind, the end of a friendship. The first friendship break up that had a real end date and real tears. And now there was another of these milestones right around the corner. It was the last week of her school life, and she knew the end of school would not bring relief, like so many of her classmates seemed to assume. Max knew it would only increase the Grundschmerz. Because she also knew that she could not go back. Max could not be six years old again. She could not be God.