The Lie

The first affair.

It was air after being suffocated. It was freedom.

Let’s call him Michael. I lied to him. Told him I wasn’t married. Well, I guess that wasn’t a lie. I told him we weren’t together at all. That was a lie.

Him and I went to college together. We studied together everyday. I went to his house. We went to lunch together. We got coffee together. We had sex. He was mine. I wasn’t his.

The lies. They ate at my soul. I thought that I fell in love with him. I lost weight. I exercised like a maniac. I found ways to release the guilt. My soul suffered. My body, it looked great.

The few people who knew, some supported. Some didn’t. One told him everything.

He was amazing. His smile lit my life, his laugh was infectious. He never talked nasty to me. He never called me names. He celebrated my achievements with me. He helped me study when I faltered in school. He was honest, believed in doing right. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

But that wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. It was mirage that I put in place of a real person, because I was desperately searching. I wasn’t in love with him. I liked how he made me feel. How free I felt when I was with him. The person I thought of him as in my head, it wasn’t who the real person was. The real person, he was just human. Not the demi-god I turned him into.

In the end. He called Tom. He told him everything. Because, the reality of it was that he was better than what I was making him. A secret.

Tom didn’t take it overly well. I told him I would leave. He told me to stay.

This was the beginning of us trying to fix our relationship. To put the pieces back together.