The Story of the Garden of Eden. It’s a neat, tidy tale with a clear moral: Adam was minding his own business, Eve was curious and disobedient, ate the fruit, and doomed humanity forever.

But if you dig a little deeper into the Midrash—the ancient Jewish commentaries that fill in the gaps of the Torah—you find another story. A story that was literally too wild, too powerful, and too threatening to make it into the final cut of the Bible. It’s the story of Lilith.

And it’s the story of how we’ve been demonizing women for simply owning themselves ever since.

The story goes that in the very beginning, God didn’t create Eve from Adam’s rib. Instead, He created them equally, at the same time, from the dust of the earth. This was Lilith, the first woman.

Imagine it: two beings, formed of the same stuff, standing on the same ground. For a while, it worked. But soon, a power struggle emerged. According to the medieval text The Alphabet of Ben Sira, the argument came to a head over something incredibly basic: their sex life. Adam wanted Lilith to always lie beneath him. Lilith refused.

“Why should I lie beneath you,” she asked, “when we are both equal, created from the same dust?”

Adam, not loving this challenge to his authority, tried to force the issue. And Lilith, in a moment of sheer, audacious power, spoke the unspeakable name of God, grew wings, and flew away from the garden. She chose exile over subjugation.

God sent three angels to bring her back, with a warning: if she didn’t return, one hundred of her children would die every day. Lilith, choosing her own freedom over a life of subservience, still refused to go back to a life beneath Adam.

And that’s when the propaganda machine started.

Suddenly, Lilith wasn’t a woman fighting for equality. She was a demon. A succubus. A murderer of infants. A creature of the night who threatened the sanctity of the patriarchal family unit. History’s first feminist was re-branded as history’s first monster.

With Lilith gone, God tried again. This time, He used Adam’s rib. A bone from his side, not dust from the ground. She was created from him, for him. The Hebrew term often translated as “helpmeet” or “helper” is ezer kenegdo, which can also mean “power alongside,” but the context of her creation from his rib certainly implies a secondary, derivative status.

And yet, even this more “compliant” version of womanhood wasn’t safe from blame.

We all know what happened next. The serpent, the fruit, the temptation. But look at how the story is read. Eve was deceived. She was tricked. Adam, who was standing right there with her according to the text, ate the fruit without any recorded protest.

But who gets the blame? Who carries the weight of "The Fall" for the next several millennia? Eve.

The name itself became a slur. She became the archetype for female weakness, curiosity, and the inherent danger of feminine wiles. St. Paul later used her to justify the subjugation of women in the early church: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”

With these few words, Eve’s mistake became a life sentence for every woman who came after her. The narrative was set: women were intellectually inferior, morally weaker, and a constant source of temptation. If Eve hadn't messed up, we'd still be in paradise. Thanks a lot, Eve.

When you look at these two stories side-by-side, a chilling pattern emerges.

Lilith refused to be subservient. She demanded equality. The result? She was labeled a demon, a threat to the natural order, a creature to be feared and whose name should never be spoken.

Eve accepted her secondary status (or had it built into her very origin). She made a mistake. The result? She was labeled a sinner, a scapegoat for all of humanity’s problems, and the "proof" that women needed to be controlled.

There was no winning.

If you demand to be seen as an equal, you are an unnatural monster (a Lilith). If you exist within the system and make a single error, you are the reason for all the world’s pain (an Eve).

This isn't just ancient mytholog, it is also the blueprint for how Western society has treated women for centuries. It’s the virgin/whore dichotomy, the Madonna/whore complex. Be pure, be quiet, be submissive—but if you fail in the tiniest way, you are the original source of all sin. And if you dare to speak up and demand to be seen as a full human being, you are a hysterical, difficult, or dangerous woman.

It’s why women in power are often described as "bossy" or "cold" while men are "assertive" and "strong." It’s why a woman’s mistakes are magnified and her character is attacked, while a man’s are often excused as "boys will be boys."

In the 1970s, the Jewish feminist movement adopted Lilith as a symbol. They saw her not as a demon, but as the first independent woman. They started Lilith Magazine to give voice to a feminist Jewish perspective. They took the monster the patriarchy created and reclaimed her as a hero.

It’s a powerful act: to look at the stories we’ve been told and ask, "Who benefits from this narrative?"

Lilith was demonized for being her own person. Eve was villainized for making a choice in a system rigged against her. They are two sides of the same coin—the "good woman" and the "bad woman"—both designed to keep women in line.

So the next time you hear the story of the Garden of Eden, remember Lilith, who flew away. Remember Eve, who bore the blame for millions. And remember that the urge for freedom, the desire for equality, and the courage to make choices, even the wrong ones, isn't demonic. It’s human.

Maybe it’s time we stopped demonizing women for being exactly that.

Three cups of black coffee in me today and I'm wondering why my heart is thumping so much. I make the connection between the two, obviously, but somehow I always forget and I still end up over caffeinated. 

I don't sleep very well and so coffee has been a necessary evil in my life for decades now. It also used to help me lower my appetite and weight, but not so much as I get older.

Oddly enough, though, I do find black coffee curbs my sugar fix need. I thought it was in my head, but then I looked it up:

Yes, there is a strong link between drinking black coffee and reduced sugar cravings, primarily because it helps stabilize blood sugar and suppresses appetite. The caffeine and compounds like chlorogenic acid can increase metabolism, promote fat-burning, and reduce hunger, which helps curb the desire for sweet, calorie-dense foods. 

Key Connections Between Black Coffee and Lower Sugar Intake:

• Appetite Suppression: Coffee, particularly black, can boost metabolism and reduce hunger, making you less likely to crave sugary snacks.
• Hormonal Regulation: Drinking black coffee can increase levels of serotonin, which suppresses appetite, and decrease the hunger-inducing hormone ghrelin.
• No Added Sugar: By drinking black coffee, you eliminate the daily intake of sugar and cream, which can prevent the cycle of craving more sugar later in the day.
• Improved Insulin Sensitivity: While high caffeine intake can cause short-term spikes in some, long-term black coffee consumption is associated with better blood sugar control and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. 

I've been doing some early spring cleaning and accidentally came across a "mystery" thumb drive of writings I thought I had gotten rid of years ago. At first I didn't know what was on it, but when I popped it in my laptop and called up my documents I found dozens of short stories and an early draft of a 623 page novel I started writing around 2011. 

It was considerably different than the version I finished in the mid-teens (and threw away) and I remember now that I thought I also got rid of the first version because parts of it were just too emotionally real for me, despite how it was pretty much 99.99999% (you get the picture) fiction.

I recently read that imagining conversations, known as jouska, can make the brain react similarly to real experiences because mental simulation activates the same neurological networks involved in actual speech and social processing. 

This creeps me out more than I can say because I very much like to separate fact from fiction and not imagine insanely unrealistic or hopeful things. I did this when I was much, much younger and it did nothing but cause anguish and trouble.

I've never quite gotten the grasp of taking a very small real life thing and turning it into completely different fiction...it feels very, very wrong, somehow, like I'm even more unwell than I previously thought. So why I'm sharing the first part of it, I honestly have no clue. Perhaps I'm trying to exorcise something within myself. 

Most of the novel turn a sharp turn after page 30 and went in a completely different, bonkers direction, which is one reason I threw away the second draft (that at the time I thought was the only draft). Besides the rather bad, definitely melodramatic writing in it, there was an inherent sickness about all of it, embedded deep within what I stupidly thought was love and romance with an imaginary woman I pulled out of my warped imagination back then.

*(I am happy, though, to discover that Exodus disbanded in 2013 and that its president, Alan Chambers, apologized for the pain caused by promoting "reparative" therapy and admitted that sexual orientation cannot be changed, acknowledging the group had failed).

No Coming Back From This One

Nancy didn’t come out and tell me she didn’t love me anymore. In fact, she desperately tried to hide the fact. But it was in her eyes, in their sadness and in the guilt she could never quite hide.

I knew that if I confronted her, she’d only deny it and that she would feel even worse than she already did. I thought about making myself the bad guy and leaving, but I wasn’t sure I was strong enough. On the other hand, I knew between her commitment and my inability to let her go, things could continue to be heart-breaking but non-moving for a long, long time.

Her idea of love and my idea were completely different. She thought you should stay no matter what or, rather, she would have if our circumstances had been “normal.” I thought pity was the cruelest form of love. I'd rather she hate me with all of her heart than love me lukewarm affection and solid obligation.

Could there be any relationship out there in the world stranger than ours, I used to ask myself the first year we were together. Not counting the non-lesbian lesbian factor, of course.

We never mentioned the l word. We both thought it sounded ugly and that it instantly brought to mind women clad in plaid who wore their hair slicked back and spoke like the very men they supposedly hated, if you went by the stereotypes. We were different from them, wanted no part of what seemed more political identity than honest love.

We referred to ourselves, just between us, as ‘romantic friends.’ Because there was romance (some) and there was friendship (lots) but not much more.

We had secrets, both shared and separate, all almost as old as we were. We had known each other in high school and the night we had bumped into each other decades later had sparked one of the biggest shocks of my life. It had also brought memories back I hoped I'd lost forever, thought for sure I’d lost forever.

Nancy, I strongly suspected, was working up the courage to tell me she had recently realized she might very well like men as well as women, or even maybe instead of, though I’m not so sure that was the right way to phrase exactly what was going on. I wasn’t really sure, never had been, that she was gay at all.

Two weeks ago, when I was picking up her gym bag after it fell over in the hallway, some literature from *Exodus slipped out. There was no way I could miss the bold print strongly proclaiming anyone could leave the "sinful lifestyle of homosexuality." I felt as sick about the flier as the people who wrote it probably would about me.

Instead of maturely and gently confronting her I fell into deep despair and had recently returned to drinking in secret to alleviate that and the fact that lately she often came home from work faintly smelling of cologne.

Nancy had never been comfortable with labeling and that had made perfect sense, but there was a distinct difference between refusal to be pinned down by labels and the shame of what lay behind those labels.

One night I arrived at our apartment early because we had lost power at the library in the middle of a heat wave and been given the option of taking personal leave instead of going to another branch.

I walked in the door, half closing my eyes in case I saw something I’d never be able to un-see. I didn't think Nancy would ever bring someone home to fool around with, but my insecurities and paranoia had been growing.

Her fidelity, in my mind, was hanging by a thin thread. And if she had acted on any of her feelings, it wouldn't have been her fault. There's only so much that makes you want to stay when you fall out of love with someone.

How could it really be cheating, anyway, when we what had was so undefinable, so non-eternal?

And if she were going to Exodus meetings? That discussion would probably go a whole different way and wouldn't explain the intense guilt she seemed to be experiencing for what she saw as hurting me. Anyone who firmly believed homosexuality was a sin wouldn’t feel guilty about feeling guilty about it, right?

I remained this way for a few seconds, not realizing Nancy sat at our small kitchen table, watching me, her finely shaped hands clasped around a coffee cup as if using it for a heater. If I had looked closer, I might have even seen her shivering the slightest.

If I’d had my eyes open, maybe I would have seen that something was wrong. If I hadn’t been so self-absorbed, maybe I would have asked about it. But I didn’t really have to ask because I would have known, did know. She was waiting for the right time to confess her dying love.

“Are you okay?” She asked and I opened my eyes more to find her looking a bit alarmed and very concerned. It touched me and, for a second, tricked me into thinking I was wrong about everything related to us. I couldn’t remember her ever looking at me with such intense concern before.

Maybe she did love me the way I longed for her to. No one, short of my mother before she had thrown me out when I came out, had ever shown such genuine worry for me before.

But her gentleness, her uncanny ability to size up exactly what was going on no matter what you said might be happening otherwise…well, that was easy to mistake for something bigger, something more life-lasting and loving.

I'd never known anyone else like Nancy before. Ever. She was both so reserved and the most vital person I knew, quiet but present everywhere and she made everything, from chores to her clothes, seem magical.

I cleared my throat, hoped it didn’t show that I’d been crying. “Um, yeah. Just getting a migraine, that’s all.”

I know! I know, I wanted to tell her. You don’t have to stay. You. Don’t. Have to stay. (You’re free to go. You can leave right now! I wanted to scream.)

It kind of sickened me (even now) to realize that I had always thought of her through the years well before we'd met again that night. Who holds on to a high school crush that long?

“Oh no! That's terrible!” Her intense exclamation wasn’t one of sarcasm. She always felt bad for anyone under the weather. “Why don’t you get ready for bed and get under the covers and I’ll bring you some tea and get a heating pad for your forehead?”

Now her kindness threatened to undo me and there was no holding back the tears. Her brown eyes widened and her brown pony-tailed hair bounced back and forth as she leaped up from the table to come over and hug me.

“Don’t touch me,” I wanted to scream, but didn’t, of course.

Ever since I'd had known her there had been something so appealing and unique about her sincere capacity to care, whether it came through in her gentle touch or the way she really listened to people. She didn’t care if you were rich or poor, popular or geeky, pretty or ugly. She just wanted to help.

“Oh, Aggie. What is it? What’s wrong?” She stood right in front of me, brushed the hair out of my eyes and placed the back of her hand against my forehead.

Even her long and slender fingers were full of kindness. Her sad eyes came from that kindness because if she didn’t care about my feelings, about the guilt, she would just go on, happy as can be. She should be happy. She should.

“You’re burning up!”

I tried to deny it, but it was obvious (and a complete surprise to me) that I actually was sick and I just avoided throwing up the lunch I’d shakily eaten earlier that day. At least until I made it to the bathroom.

Deep down in my heart I knew I should have refused her help, refused the way she stayed with me through the night, next to the toilet, pulling my hair back from my face, until I stopped throwing up, hugging me tight when I had uncontrollable shakes.

But the comfort of her arms around me and the way she held back my hair proved irresistible and when she continued to ask me why I was crying, I blamed it on how tired and sick I was and just cried more.

Even after it was clear I had thrown up all I could throw up, she stayed there, rocking me back and forth while saying, “I’m so sorry, Aggie. I am so sorry.”

Even she couldn't add, "It'll get better. You'll see," like she usually did when I was sick. It would have been a lie. She knew the real reason I was sick just as I knew why her apologies filled with sorrow.

She had tried so very very hard to be there for me in every kind of way, her pain so clear when she couldn’t. I should be the one comforting her.

The sickest, most shameful, painful thing about love, I always thought, was when you kept on loving someone long after you knew she didn’t want you to.

 

I'm reading Where Sleeping Girls Lie and this passage hits hard:

It was hard to think that you might never see someone again. Though, with her luck, you might see them again, in your daydreams and nightmares.

There have been at least three people in my lifetime I knew I would never see again and it hurt so much the pain took a long time to go away. And though I truly never have seen them again, they do indeed show up in my dreams and nightmares.

 

(Written with my input and details I gave AI, but still with AI...I'm currently working on a version of this without any AI at all...I'm trying to get back to writing fiction again...back in the early 90s I used to love writing Quantum Leap fan fiction and posting it a Prodigy Quantum Leap fan board.

Even though I like Maddie's character a lot on School Spirits, I like Rhonda the most and was trying to write a story about her from a new character's point of view.)

The fluorescent lights in the hallway near the old home economics room flickered like they always did: annoying, eternal, stuck in 1992 or whenever the bulb last gave up. Charley was wandering, half-listening to the distant echo of the pep rally that never quite reached the ghosts anymore, when he noticed her.

She was sitting cross-legged against the wall, knees drawn up, long chestnut hair falling over her face like a curtain. A faded denim jacket with tiny embroidered flowers on the shoulders, acid-washed jeans, high-top sneakers that had once been white. She looked... early '80s. Not Wally's flashy football-jock '83, but quieter. Smaller.

She didn't look up when he stopped.

"Hey," Charley said gently. "You... new around here? Or old new?"

The girl flinched, shoulders hunching tighter. After a long beat she whispered, "I'm not new. I've always been here."

Charley crouched a few feet away, giving her space. "I'm Charley. Died in the cafeteria. Long story involving fries and a really bad day. You got a name?"

"Holly," she said so softly he almost missed it. "Holly Whitaker. Class of... '82, I think. I stopped counting after a while."

Charley's eyebrows shot up. "Eighty-two? That's before Wally. He's '84—football field, big tackle gone wrong. He's been here since then and he's met pretty much everyone. How have we never...?"

Holly finally lifted her head. Pale eyes, tired. "I didn't want to be met. I stayed out of the way. Library stacks. Back stairwells. The costume loft above the auditorium when no one was looking. People didn't notice me when I was alive. Turns out being invisible carries over."

Charley sat fully now, legs crossed. "Wallflowers gotta stick together, I guess. Come on. There's a group. We meet in the theater sometimes. No pressure, but... you don't have to keep hiding."

She shook her head fast. "I can't. I don't even know how I-I wake up every day thinking maybe today I'll remember. Maybe today it'll click and I can... go. But it's been-" Her voice cracked. "Over forty years. I still feel like I just got here. Like I should be cramming for midterms or avoiding eye contact in the cafeteria. Not this."

Charley reached out instinctively, then remembered: no touch. He let his hand drop. "Yeah. That part doesn't get easier. But you're not alone in the stuck feeling."

He convinced her to walk with him. Slowly. Like coaxing a stray cat.

When they reached the theater, Wally was already there, sprawled in a front-row seat, tossing a ghostly football up and catching it. Rhonda leaned against the stage, flipping through an ancient copy of The Bell Jar she'd read approximately four hundred times. Quinn sat nearby, headphones on, sketching something abstract on their leg with a finger that left no mark.

Wally sat up straight when he saw them. "Charley? Who's the new kid?"

"Not new," Charley said. "Old. Holly. Class of '82. Apparently she's been our invisible neighbor this whole time."

Wally blinked. "Eighty-two? Dude. I've been here since '83 and I swear I've never seen you."

Holly shrank back toward the aisle. "I... stayed quiet."

Rhonda snapped the book shut. "Quiet's a choice. Also a survival skill. I get it." She hopped off the stage and walked over, sizing Holly up without hostility, just curiosity. "You look like you're still waiting for the bell to ring so you can disappear to lunch. Been there."

Quinn pulled off the headphones. "Hi. I'm Quinn. Bus crash, '04. Took me forever to even talk to anyone. You're okay."

Holly managed a tiny nod.

Charley gestured everyone closer. "Holly's having a hard time remembering. Or accepting. Any of it. Maybe we can help her figure out what happened? Like we did with... well, everything else around here."

Wally rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, I don't remember seeing you around back then, but I was kind of... loud. Football guys weren't exactly subtle. If you were in the shadows, I probably ran right past you."

"I was," Holly said. "Always. I liked the darkroom. Developing pictures no one would ever see. I was working on a project the day it happened. Something about light and memory. Ironic, right?" She laughed once, hollow. "I remember walking down the hall after last bell. Feeling... off. Dizzy. Like the floor was tilting. Then nothing. Just waking up here. Same clothes. Same headache that never leaves."

Rhonda tilted her head. "Dizzy. Hallway. No blood, no crash, no obvious trauma. Could be medical. Aneurysm. Heart thing. Stroke. Sometimes it's quiet."

"Or someone," Quinn added softly. "Pushed down stairs. Locked somewhere. People hide bodies, or death, sometimes."

Holly shivered. "I don't want to think someone hated me enough to... I wasn't worth hating. I was barely worth noticing."

Wally leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Hey. Being a wallflower doesn't make you worthless. It just means the world was too loud for you. Doesn't mean you deserved whatever happened."

Rhonda crossed her arms. "We're gonna walk your last day. Step by step. Darkroom to hallway to wherever it ended. If there's a scar, your scar, we'll find it. Stare it down until it gives up the truth."

Charley smiled at Holly. "You don't have to do it alone. We're good at this by now. Ghosts gotta stick together."

Holly looked around at them: Wally's earnest grin, Rhonda's guarded kindness, Quinn's quiet solidarity, Charley's gentle patience, and for the first time in four decades, she didn't feel quite so see-through.

"Okay," she whispered. "But... slowly?"

"Slowly," Rhonda promised.

They started walking. Out of the theater, down the dim corridors, toward the place where Holly's life had quietly ended and her afterlife had quietly begun. Somewhere in the walls of Split River High, a forgotten truth was waiting. And this time, someone was finally looking for it.