The Goodbye

Thursday I got this email sent to me from my wife while I was at work. I don't understand why it is she feels that my family in general and my mom in particular hasn't accepted her. All is good now, though...

I learned that in life there are times to arrive and to leave, I came into your life for a reason and with a special purpose and now a cycle is coming to an end and you are now ready, I believe the time for me to leave has come, to leave you alone and free to love for real someone who lives up to your expectations, the daughter-in-law of your mother's dreams, who is accepted and admired for real by all of you.

My love, I have seen many signs that our love came to its end, and I will not stay here any more, as an inconvenience to your family and in your life, I am leaving and with me will go our child, I believe it's better this way, your are not ready to be a father yet, and my child would give you even more problems, for however dead I might be, he or she would always have some of my ways that would inconvenient you and the woman with whom you will reconstruct your life.

The point, M., is that I don't want to live in the constant fear that any day your mother will introduce another Brazilian in our lives, who will end up destroying us, I don't want another loss in my life, it was enough for me to lose my dad, I would die if I ever saw you in the arms of another woman, I know your mother didn't desist yet from introducing another Brazilian in our lives and I know it will destroy us, I know nothing will stop your mom from that obsession that she has with destroying me using other Brazilians, I know nothing I do will help me win over her heart, as I have noticed that it is impossible to conquer her, I give up, for me it's the end of the line. But before I leave for good, I want a goodbye a sweet night of love for the two of us with love, caresses and tenderness, and you will love me for the last time, you will have me alive in your arms for the last time.

Always remember one thing, no matter where I am I will always be rooting for your happiness, next to my dad you are the one I loved most in my life, never forget that I really loved you from the first moment, my little piece of heaven, [...], but surely you made me very intensely happy, more than I ever dreamt of being, my first and only love and [...], you will always be the best man I ever had.

Be very happy my love

I will be waiting for our reunion my M., with ETERNAL LOVE, your F.

[My own translation from Portuguese]

The HIV Test

At some point we talked about doing HIV tests on both of us, just to make sure all was well. She said she feared to have been infected with HIV from her previous relations, but hadn't done the test out of fear to get a positive result. When she got pregnant, we asked the doctor to do the test along with the other testing done at the same time. As we left the doctor's office, she talked about how she was sure she was infected, not only that, but that she feared having infected me with it as well, and she felt very bad. I tried to calm her down, and talked about the very low probability of both cases. The doctor had said the result would be due in two days. In those two days she lay mostly in bed, unable to eat, out of worry that the result would be positive. On the day the result should be due, she called me at 8.01 o'clock at work to remind me to call the doctor's office to get the results. After calling several times during the day, it turned out that it would be a couple of more days before the results of the tests were due. She reacted with rage, debasing the Danish health system and the doctor, while at the same time airing her suspicion that either I or the doctor was lying about the result. Mostly she seemed to think that I was lying, and simply did not want to tell her that it had been a positive test. Two days more of waiting, although she seemed to relax a bit more. I finally got the result from the doctor's office - it turned out negative, as I had expected. She was a little relieved, but still wasn't convinced that I wasn't lying to her about the result, thinking that it had been positive, and that I just wanted to spare her the details. For several days she has kept talking about why I don't tell her the truth, alternating with speculation that the result might be a false negative, or that they probably switched the blood samples at the laboratory. Months later she still isn't convinced her test didn't show up positive, and still asks me if I am telling her the truth.