The Closet (Part 2)

To my great surprise, the Closet Affair seems to have come to a conclusion without further drama. Yesterday I went directly from work to my mom's place, and spent some three hours setting up the closet. B. would have liked to come, taking the bus to town, but she wasn't feeling up to it at the time, and thus ended up staying home. I called her about half-way through, half expecting her to be angry that I was still not done. She sounded okay and calm, though, and said she was talking to her mom on Skype. When I was done, I called her again, and she asked me to take home some take-away food.

Once at home, around 8 o'clock, all seemed fine, she was relieved that I returned so soon, she seems to have expected that I would end up staying at my mom's place till late in the night. While eating we talked about her sister, A., who is trying in vain to get the father of her child to behave like a dad for their 8 month old baby, and not just pay child support. The rest of the evening we spent in bed, making love, and then continued setting up her laptop.

Before we went to sleep, she had a small crisis, she started crying and imploring me not to leave her. "I won't leave you" I said, but she wasn't easy to convince, "You will, I know you will, everybody else has left me", she went to her knees, crying profusely, "I am so weak, I need you, please, please", and she again apologised for bitching about my mom the other day when I had asked about when to do the closet thing. "You don't deserve having to deal with me", "I don't deserve to be with you, you will soon tire of me"...

The Closet (Part 1)

Yesterday was C-day, Closet day. Since we moved to the new house back in March, we have had my old closet sitting in the garage. My mom would like to have this closet, she had it before I got it, and I said she could have it, we wouldn't need it anymore. B. thought we ought to throw it out, so as to avoid the hassle of having to take it to my mom's place and set it up, and she has thus moaned and complained every time the subject pops up.
The last few days my sister has prodded me to find a date where we can finally move the damn closet to my mom's house, as it seems my mom complains to my sister about never getting it. This has literally given me a headache, as I knew bringing up the subject of finding a date with B. would mean trouble at home.

But yesterday I brought it up, quite calmly. We were sitting on the bed, she was watching Brazilian TV on her laptop, I was checking my e-mails and such.

Me: My love, I have to find a day to get the closet set up at my mom's place - do you have any preferences?
B.: Oh, god, that damn closet again...
Me: Don't start again, we already talked about this, I just need to find a date.
B.: Oh, pick any day you want, I don't care...
B.: But don't you dare do it on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday - those are exclusively mine.

She doesn't look at me. I sit quiet, annoyed for a while. I had wanted to do it on Friday, as I get off work early, and the forecast says it will rain. After a few minutes silence she turns to me.

B.: Why do you even bother with her, she doesn't care about you. What does you get in return?
Me: In return? She's my mom!
B.: But why should you do it, she doesn't deserve your help...
Me: You want me to tell her and my sister than I can't help them, because you don't think she deserves my help?
B.: She never did anything for you, she abandoned you as a child, left you at a boarding school,...
Me: Stop it! That's rubbish, don't start it...

I've heard it before, it's complete rubbish really, but I get angry just the same. I get off the bed, leave the room, pick up the first thing I can grab (my wallet) and throw it against the wall in rage, credit cards and coins flying all over the place, then run out in the garden and sit in a corner trying to control my anger. She comes out after me, hugs me and says she's sorry, she shouldn't take like that to me, I don't deserve her treating me like that, she didn't mean it, please come back in.  I go in with her, she picks up my wallet and the stuff that flew out of it, I lie down on the bed, she brings me chocolate to calm me down. We talk a little. She talks with her mom on Skype, I try to call my mom to set up a date.

Later we go over to my sisters place to pick up some stuff for the baby. Afterwards the rest of the evening is quiet, she starts installing Windows on a new laptop, I browse around and help her when needed.

On Wednesday we (or I) will go to my mom's place, and set up the closet, and hopefully it won't be an issue again. I hate those episodes, though...

The Test

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail, appearing to be from a Brazilian woman, Karina, the e-mail address basically translates into "wetpussy24@...." She wrote that she was coming to Denmark for a couple of months to visit a friend of hers, someone who is also an acquaintance of my wife. Her friend had told her of me, and she would very much like to meet someone who speaks Portuguese, and since she had been told that my wife was "fat and not very beautiful", she suggested that we meet up and spend some time together, alone.  "See the photo to get an idea what I look like".

Revealingly I saw the e-mail just after my wife had called and said that she wasn't able to log in to her account, could I please check if I was able to log into mine. But even without this, I would probably not have fallen for this trick (not that I would want to do any such thing, even if it had been for real). In any case I called her bluff and forwarded the e-mail to my wife's e-mail address, and told her that she can trust me, and doesn't need to test me like that. I was tempted to play along, and write back that we could indeed meet up every so often, but desisted since B. would perhaps get on the verge of suicide if she didn't see that I was just kidding with her.

When I got home she still tried to pretend it wasn't her who sent that e-mail for a while, but in the end she gave up and admitted.

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.

The "Legoland" Incident

My sister had asked if I could drive her and her family to Billund airport when they were going on holiday. I agreed. When it turned out that they would go to the Legoland theme park the day before flying away on holiday, and stay the night at the airport hotel, we talked about maybe going all of us. However the weather turned out to be not very good, and B. was suffering from nausea and vomiting. Before I left home she was barely able to eat or drink, and vomited even the little water she was able to drink. She would cry and point to some tiny red specks in the vomit, saying, "Look, I am vomiting blood!" While giving the impression that she was on the verge of dying, she also said that this was what it was like every day after I went off to work. She went back to bed, and we agreed that I would only take my sister's family to Billund, and not go into the theme park with them.

The day before she had herself said that it would probably take about three hours, as it would take about one hour driving each way, and the rest would be the taken up by the neverending slowness and waiting she was always accusing my family of.

It did indeed take three hours from I left home till I was back again. Some time was spent waiting at my sister's house, some time I was waiting at a supermarket where they had to buy something, and quite a lot of time was spent waiting while they checked in at the airport hotel, dropping off the luggage before going to the theme park. I dropped them off at the theme park, and called B. to say that I was on my way home now, just to get a scolding for taking so long and not being on my way home sooner.

When I got home, she was very angry that I had taken so long, leaving her alone "to die", just for something as unimportant as taking my sister's family to the airport. The final straw to her was on hearing that I hadn't just dropped them off at the airport hotel, but had waited for them, and drived them to the theme park afterwards. I had abandonned her, left her to die miserably, I should have understood that in reality she never wanted me to leave, but rather to tell my sister that they could take themselves to the airport, that I had a wife who was ill, who needed my care. She wanted divorce, she wanted to kill herself, if it wasn't for the baby. She wanted to throw me out of the house, "go live with your mom", but as I refused she instead took her bed linen and her laptop, and moved to the guest room, where she stayed for a couple of hours. Only when she had to go to the bathroom to vomit again did she come out. When she returned from the bathroom she was crawling on all four, and complaining to the dog of how bad I treated her.

Suicide - Threats and attempts

The suicide issue comes up almost every single day, a few times just subtly and unspecific: "I will never return to Brazil alive", "If you ever leave me I don't want to live anymore", "Do you remember what music you promised you would play while pouring my ashes into the sea?" (Whitney Houston, in The Bodyguard). Every fight however - and many times even just a minor disagreement - leads to new and clear threats of suicide.

Different ways she has attempted, or pretended to attempt suicide:

• Pills: She would swallow, or claim to have swallowed, 5-10 Valium. This has happened both in Manaus, Kolding, Lund, and Hovedgård.
• Jumping out of the window: She would open the window and lean out, as if trying to jump, but finally let me pull her back in. She has done this in Kolding, Lund and Dublin.
• Jumping out in front of traffic: She would try to throw herself out in front of a car, while walking along a street, I would hold her back, and she would fight to get free. She has done this in Kolding and Copenhagen.
• Cut a wrist or her throat with a knife: She would take a kitchen knife, or try to break open a Gillette razor in order to extract the blades, and threaten to cut her wrist or her throat with it. She has done this in Kolding, Hovedgård, and Dublin.
• Jumping off a bridge: Talked about jumping off from a bridge (Vejle), which lead me to hide the car keys over night, so she couldn't leave on her own while I was asleep.
• Electrocution: Talked about filling the bathtube with water, sit in it, and dropping the hair dryer into it.
  

Threatening killing me, or us both:
On a few occations she has threatened to kill me: Once in Ireland she put her hands around my throat, as to strangulate me, although she only tried halfheartedly. On the same occation she threatened to disturb me while driving the car, so as to crash us into oncoming traffic and thus kill us both. Other times she has just made vague threats: "I will kill you if you betray me".