Continuing to write fiction…one day at a time.
If I were a different type of person, I could likely find a reason for such treason. I could blame my parents for being too strict, perhaps, in some cosmic sense, I’m to pay for the sins of my father…and maybe even the sins of my mother. But really, the decision to become an adulteress is not a conscious one. It is a vulnerable one. Men and women alike, there are few, if any, who move through affairs with malicious intent. Unlike those devilish “one-night stands,” affairs are a balm to soothe an aching heart, they fill those tiny voids in your heart that you never realized existed. They are an awakening, a realization, in a way. They force you to see your reflection with foreign eyes, the face is familiar, but the thoughts are entirely new. Nothing is sacred anymore, your beliefs, your morals, not gone, only changed. You find yourself asking, “What do you truly hold dear?” Then, you struggle even more, trying to reconcile the person you’ve become…or perhaps always were.
Then, of course, you get found out. Perhaps through admission, or, more often, you get caught. Either way, the villagers will happily light the pyre beneath your feet, burning you for not adhering to their moral code. Yet as your soul drifts to some new dimension, you discover that the morality preached is seldom righteous. The villagers have their own dirty little secrets, their lives are a lie, and you have become their sacrifice to absolve their own sins.
It was never a life goal to view relationships as disposable. I soon found myself asking, “When did loyalty become possession?” I was not in love anymore, my marriage had become a contract, my life one of obligation and possession. My shoulders had become weak from carrying so many burdens, sustaining verbal abuse, and floundering through countless failures. It is probably a bit easier to understand that my dalliance was inevitable. A hand was extended, offering to lift my burdens, a heart was offered to fill those spaces that had been recklessly abandoned. I’m sure, as human as you are, you might possibly offer some understanding.
