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When I was a child I didn’t know who I was. I knew who everyone told me to be, a good little Jewish boy who would grow up to be a good Jewish man. I built that boy out of mud with my hands and shaped him into the form others expected. On his forehead I wrote אמת, truth, hoping it would live a truth I didn’t understand.

I wrote a name of God on a piece of paper and placed it into his mouth and he lived. For 35 years he walked in my place, living a false life with my breath.

One day I could suffocate no longer and needed to die or take my breath back. In a moment of strength I removed the aleph from his head and he fell apart. He did not die as his forehead now read, for he was never alive.

I didn’t realize how much mud had accumulated over the years. How deep the shame was, how heavy the long dried pieces of dirt were. My hands, now torn and bleeding from breaking my golem apart, finally found the long forgotten paper.

I see the name I wrote was my own.