There’s a man I know

Take a man who has no connection to the outside world. His home and business are located in the same building only one floor apart. He has no employees, rarely leaves the building and has very few friends. The only contact he has with people are customers who one cannot really get to know, even if they are regulars.

The only way a man with such a sheltered life could possibly meet new people would be via the Internet. After all, most of his time at work is spent behind the computer on a daily basis. This man then becomes a little frustrated with life during a time when his wife is out of the country. A friendship formed with other women on a forum where he is a member soon becomes a temptation for him. He then decides to take advantage of the fact that he is alone and is in need of some form of adventure in his life.

He begins to take a special interest in one woman in particular who seems to have become a member on the forum only because she watched him for six months beforehand. She was interested way before she knew him and when she tells him of this fact, his ego reaches new levels. Being alone, he decides to travel half way across the country to meet with her. But little did he realize that the adventure he was about to take was something he couldn’t get away from. Something that would haunt him for months down the road.

Over the next several months, this man tries hard to hide what he has done. He knows his wife has had suspicions all along and has been questioning him on a daily basis. However, he found it hard to hide it when the other woman would not let him forget. She continues harassing him in every way, shape and form to the point where he becomes physically and emotionally sick. He cannot get rid of her and being that he has never been in this type of situation before, he doesn’t know what to do. All he can think of are different ways to try to discourage this obsessive woman who will not take no for an answer.

As time goes by, he has a friend of his help get rid of her. Another woman with whom he had been friends with for only a short time. However, this woman helper does not know the real truth. He uses his friend to get the other woman jealous and after about a month, she finally gets the point, accepts it and leaves him alone.

This man should have felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders now that his wife will never find out. However, in the effort to hide his affair, he starts treating his wife badly and spends more time away from home which begins causing major problems in his marriage. In an attempt to conceal what he has done, he decides to confront his wife with silly accusations regarding their marriage basically blaming her for everything.

As the days pass, he begins to break. He knows that he cannot keep this from his wife much longer and he also knows that she is smarter then he gives her credit for. All his actions and words indicate that he has done something wrong but being so caught up in his guilt and trying to get rid of the other woman; he cannot see what he has become.

Then one day, his wife finds out and confronts him. He doesn’t know what to say or do. The only thing that comes to his mind is to deny it, even though it is all in writing. He has no expression on his face and has no words to say to dignify his actions.

From that day forward, he begins to get more and more confused about who he is and what he wants. He begins to see all his thoughts run through his mind like a marquee. He cannot pick one single thought to concentrate on. He begins to realize that he has much more to deal with then just what has happened with that obsessive woman. Now he has a failing business, a wife who knows what he is capable of, a family he might lose in the process and a life that is very uncertain.

His appearance then begins to change as though he aged ten years in a matter of a few days. He doesn’t look very healthy but he doesn’t look like he’s sick either. He looks like a man who has taken the wrong road in life, realizing that along the way, he has lost a big part of who he was.

He finally comes to the point where he begins to shelter himself with denial from all he is facing. He starts to believe that he is a hard drive and can defrag any time he wants by erasing or deleting parts of his past, wiping clear the memory of things he no longer wants to remember that have gone wrong in his life.