Who Is Sheila?

"Who am I?"

It was a question she'd only murmured to herself up to this point in life. A wrong answer could mean an annihilating ruin, cast into the deepest depths of hell. So best not to know.

But why now, at 57, as she's getting ready with her morning makeup, dabbing and brushing, seeing her face in the mirror same as a thousand times before, did this question burst forth?

Perhaps one can only hold one's secrets in for so long. Shame she didn't die before this question came to the fore. She could have pulled off the perfect crime.

Sheila the Hidden Housewife had mastered her role as the dutiful wife, loving mother, and - most of all - fierce protector of her way-of-life. So fierce, in fact, she'd killed to protect it.

Murder weighs on one's mind and only gets heavier over time.

Perhaps that also explained her recent nightmares of entrapped suffocation, eternally drowning in horror.

The art of successfully living a lie is in one's dedication. Oh, the bitterness she swallows on a daily basis, grinding her into tormented rage.

Just make it stop!! Someone make it stop! This can't go on!

And, yet, it does. Certainly a question is in order with such a dilemma.

"Who am I?"

Her previous answers of "Nobody" wouldn't suffice this time. But if she were something or somebody that would mean she'd spent a lifetime in self-betrayal. A 'nobody' does what is expected and the world applauds. That had become the center of her life.

The murder of her love had been a necessary evil, she reasoned. After all, worldly approval is all a 'nobody' has to live for. Only if she's 'somebody' would it be a crime.

An old and cold fate awaits her the rest of her remaining days. She'd made sure her world is locked tight where no one can get in to speak unwanted words - which also means no way out.

"Confess!"

Nooo, you idiot! NEVER do that. You'll die on the streets alone and unforgiven. You'll die with your lies in a snake filled pit, hated by any who see you!

Yet she must come clean somehow. Even set for life with her millions she raged against imaginary foes who wished to destroy her. They were the reason she has no future.

Yes, her Bible told her she must be a clean spirit. But not now. Maybe tomorrow.