"He Cheated," She Tweeted

But can you cheat on a lie?

This most certainly was not her normal behavior. Admit nothing. Always keep up appearances at all costs. Play the role of a happy, successful wife. These were the rules by which she lived her life and they had served her well as she gloried in her multi-million dollar home north of the San Francisco bay. Truth be told, these were not only her rules, but her morality, her justification of God's love that made her opulent lifestyle OK while others starved. The moral, you see, need not take a vow of poverty.

"Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

This was the scripture she most took to heart, strident in her diligence and vowing no surprises for her! Relentless to a fault she made sure to praise her Creator for her blessed life. She made the church the center of her spoken words, a security blanket to heaven. At times this was grueling in its drudgery, pressing herself to the limits of possession, forcing her energy down a path she did not desire. But it was "what God wants." She would have her cake and eat it too just as only the very special may do.

But now, in the twinkling of an eye, gone.

Her husband too had been forcing himself down a repressed road to fabled morality. But being the weaker sex could not keep his dick lie inside. Their mutual bond was selfishness and greed. With great and humble pride she "confessed" to her preacher this fault in her and her marriage. She'd had no intention, however, of admitting this as fatal to their union! So they went on the run, eternally trying to escape themselves. Her husband's true confession in the late night office as he ripped off his pants in furious freedom had ruined the illusion forever.

This brought many hard realities.

"Like a thief in the night." Over and over the phrase haunted her haunts. You're not supposed to be living with the thief! This isn't fair! But no slick arguments could save her this time. She'd sacrificed so much of herself over the years, this woman scorned could no longer contain her terrorist rage. Why is it I can never do what I want? What's wrong with me? It's all over. I hope everything dies!

To be plucked from the earth at this moment would be pure mercy. But Jesus did not come from the sky as expected. She was going to die this way, naked and exposed as a liar. How foolish to have trusted her lies! Never again! This was like being buried alive, suffocating to death while no human on earth knew of her travails. Every escape route was blocked, every door barred, nowhere to go.

She was too old, too ugly, too crippled to start over. She'd never lived alone in her life and the idea of facing that had grown to be her greatest fear in the dark of the night. In this her hour of need, she found out just how truly impossible it was to leave. Yet it was just as impossible to stay. For the rest of her life she'd be known as a deceived woman, too pathetic to go her own way, a moral coward sick in the soul. Nothing could ever be the same again.

Her only option was to throw herself on the mercy of the court of public opinion. Like everyone, she painted others with a brush of her own making. She expected self-righteous indignation, judgmental scorn and high-handed rebuke. Instead, her fellow liars expressed great sympathy for her plight, a holy woman betrayed by her dastardly husband, she faultless and pure. How futile the facts.

At her lowest ebb she'd managed to stitch together a new myth to be sold. But she knew till the end of days she'd live in chains, unsaved in the eyes of God, a prisoner of her own device. She faced in the mirror a Judas to her dreams. Just who had she been in this life? She'd convinced herself her material rewards were for her moral successes. As she stared into the fireplace watching wood turn to ash she asked herself, "How can it be wood ever again?"