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For a being who had naught to do but think and remember for such a long time, my memory fails me. Regardless, I shall attempt to recount my tale here. I was jealous of them once, of their ability to move freely - to walk, and talk, and interact. I would watch them. I saw only mere glimpses into their lives, of course, but through their actions and through their eyes I could feel their emotions. I saw love in couples both young and old, who walked with clasped hands and their bodies close. I saw pain and sorrow in the eyes of many, heads held down as they walked and tears in their eyes. I saw joy in the young children who giggled, skipping down the street. I observed emotions, I understood what they felt, and yet I now somehow fail to feel it myself.
He carved me out of thick marble, starting rough and slowly chipping down details. I remember that originally, everything was blurry - layers still covering what would become my eyes. As he continued to carve down my form, to hone in on the intricacies, my vision became clearer. My vision from then on was like crystal, my first clear memory was of my creator's face. He knew me. He shaped and molded me into what I would become, spending hours on perfecting me, on filing down my flaws. Any imperfections he saw in me, he focused on, stopping not until I was exactly the way he envisioned. I got to watch him work, for a time. Placed in the corner of his workshop, I saw him pour over other marble blocks just as he did with me. Uncovering the hidden figures inside of marble appeared to come naturally to him, his carving fluid and full of emotion. I enjoyed those days, the peace of the workshop, watching him work in a calm and yet frantic silence.
Nothing can last forever, however, and soon enough I was relocated. I was placed on the outskirts of a beautiful garden centerpiece, with my brethren standing guard next to me. We watched as many came past us, they talked and interacted and I got my first taste of freedom. I enjoyed watching the people, seeing their conversations, their emotions, their love. I wished that for myself, but being unable to move I found this an impossibility. I resigned myself to watching. I saw many, but there was one child in particular that I grew attached to - a little girl, who seemed to admire me. Whenever her mother would bring her to the public gardens, she would play for a short time and then come and rest in the shade provided by my cold body. She spent hours staring up at me on hot summer days, with adoration in her eyes - and here, I saw myself for the first time. In her big doe eyes, I saw an image of myself. I knew how skillful my creator was, I had seen some of his creations afterall, but never before did I even think to imagine how I looked. I was perfect, soft streaks of black flowed across the surface of my smooth limbs, my hair curled softly as it flowed in the wind. I grew to love watching myself in the child's eyes, etching my likeness into my memory. I remember how the girls' hair flowed in the same way, whenever a soft breeze was present. Even when she grew, and she stopped visiting often, her hair was still the same. During her adult years, she slowly began visiting me less and less, but I always recognised her hair. She no longer looked at me with the adoration of youth, however, she looked at me more with contempt. She felt hatred towards me now, but deep in her eyes there was a glint of longing, of want of a thing she believed she could never obtain. I was made to embody perfectness but she, in her youth, was jealous of me. I did not see her for many years, until she was old and near her death. This time, however, she had that sparkle back in her eyes. I watched her take her last breath, dying in my shade - the shade that she hid in as a child. Her experiences stuck with me, the development of her feelings - her growth - I wanted it for myself. I thought about her a lot over the years, the young girl who could have been me. I saw many like her, children who grew from admiring my beauty to hating what I represented. Seeing hatred, I grew it also. I grew to hate the stares that I received, wanting only to be able to withdraw and seek solace back in the familiarity of my creators workshop.
I got my wish, in a way, I found peace and silence. The rule of the area fell to a man with a young adult daughter. She, like many others found my presence insulting and demanded I be removed, she got her wish. I was yanked with ropes onto the back of a cart, and dumped unceremoniously in a patch of tall shrubs in the middle of nowhere. I hated them, the people who treated me carelessly, not for my sake but for the sake of my creator. I knew that he would be long gone by now, I was his. I contain his emotions, his care, his love, and they treated that with a lack of care. My cheek splintered off from the fall, and I felt weakness seeping in. I was left there for such a long time. Without the people I had no way of tracking time. I learnt to look closely at the world in my time in the greenery, I became more one with the world. Acid burnt into my skin as lichen took hold, and then in the corpse of the lichen grew moss. My limbs slowly chipped and my leg snapped when a stray tree fell upon it. Nature grew into me, and I grew into it - I learnt to appreciate the small things in life, the ants that carried food back to their colony, the jumping spiders that hid in morning dew, the termites that grew their family in the tree that struck me.
I was found eventually, dug out of the shrubs with care, and saved. They may have spoken a strange language, foreign to my old ears, but I could feel the care that they put into every action. They talked, they argued - over me I gathered - they laughed and had a childlike glint in their eyes, like the girl from so long ago. I was hoisted ever so softly into a soft box, my cheek and leg in a separate one and transported. I don't know how long I was moved for, my vision obscured by the dark. I shut off my brain, for a time, overwhelmed by the noise. When I came back to life, I was being mounted into a display - preserved as I was, with clear plates and rods making my lost pieces float just above where they should be. I was once again a display. And many came to see me, a new sense of adoration in their eyes.
I have come full circle, just like the girl who visited me so long ago. I suppose that I learnt from her, how to grow and develop. She came full circle too, she grew from a child full of adoration and admiration, to a woman with feelings of hatred towards herself, to an elderly woman - like she was in her youth. For myself, before, I was presented as a beauty - made to embody a goddess, my hair flowing in the wind, posed in a graceful and elegant manner. I was admired as a symbol of perfectness, for a time, before hatred replaced admiration and I was shunned. I grew to hate myself too, in this period. The feelings of others influenced my view of myself. In nature, I found myself, I decayed and rotted and in the process became healthier than ever before. My life came full circle too, back to being on display, back to being admired. Still a symbol of perfectness, as my creator intended, but now not a false flawlessness, but a raw one full of nature and blemishes. I embody the decay and pain that comes with growth. I have grown, just as the girl did, just as the lichen did from my body - maybe this is what was intended for me afterall, maybe I should be comfortable where I am. Maybe I should never have been jealous of her. Although I have struggled with expressing myself due to my stoney nature, maybe I've just been a human all along.