The Discard — E A CARTER

In 2009, in the departure hall of Copenhagen airport, I met the man I would love, look up to, and be a devoted wife to for nine years. I thought we would be together until the very end. In January 2019, he said he wanted to be with me until he died.

On June 21 2019, he left me. It was the longest day of the year. I remember it with aching clarity. I had cried for hours, and, at last numb and locked in shock, I stood for two hours in the front hall waiting—willing—him to come back. Midnight drew in. The door remained closed and the Scandinavian summer's night's darkness refused to fall.

I hated it. I wanted the darkness. I wanted the day to end. It took a long time.

And when it did, the darkness lasted for months.

After over ten years spent together, I only saw him one time more after that day. Exactly one month later, on July 21, his mother arrived to tell me her son had decided to divorce me. And then, as if I were an item from a shop being returned, she proceeded to explain how I needed to sign the papers they were filing and it would all be done.

I said he could tell me this himself. She called him. He arrived a long time later even though he was only ten minutes' drive away. When he walked in, he glared at me with loathing. He stood there, rigid, and hard with hate. I couldn't understand. He had left me for another woman. I was certain he would see she wasn't right for him and come back to me, the woman who could navigate his anger, moods, and difficult personality. He was a king to me, at times a cruel tyrant, but I loved him anyway. I was certain no other woman would remain with him once they discovered the man behind the mask. It would be a fling, a thing that would happen in the life of our marriage. Infidelities happen. Not this. Not whatever this had become.

I was sat down at the dining table, three against one, his mother, father, him—and me—to be told what was going to happen to me. Despite me expressing my wish to have this conversation alone with my husband, his father answered almost all of my tearful questions. When I would ask a question only my husband could answer, he would look at his father as if he might read the answer on his father's face, then say something meaningless. A non-answer. I always said he would make a good politician.

He got what he wanted with the help of his parents, as he always did, at my expense. But I wanted him to be happy and said so. I saw no point in forcing a man to be with me if that was not where he wanted to be. He packed up the rest of his belongings with his father's help while his mother remained with me at the dining table. I watched as he left the house with remains of our marriage packed into blue IKEA bags. When he finished, he no longer hated me. He looked at me with affection and even hugged me warmly. He said we would be friends.

It never came to pass. On Sept 21, on the autumn solstice, he filed for divorce, precisely three months from the day he left. I signed the divorce he wanted, hoping by signing it he might fulfill that promise of friendship. I was wrong. I never saw him again. I was discarded. Already I had been told he no longer wanted to speak with me on the phone, and then I was told not even to email him.

Soon, despite him claiming all he wanted was the divorce so he could legally 'get rid of me', and that he didn't care about the assets, I was once more an 'obstacle' to his happiness, and that I was' ruining his life' simply by existing. Once more the object of his intense hatred, so powerful at times I could feel it in the midst of my day, I was again put under siege by him and his parents as they held back financial support promised if I signed the divorce they wanted. They came at me with a homemade 'legal' division of assets agreement (in Swedish legalese) wholly in their son's favor. I was told I didn't need a lawyer, that they could take care of everything, I just needed to sign it and it would all be fine. They said they were 'taking care of me' and 'trying to be fair.' I disagreed. This made them very angry.

My lawyer was there every step of the way, keeping me safe from the sharks I came to realize they truly were. I often wondered how people with no formal education could have so much wealth. Ah. Now I knew. It had been there all along in the stories they told of 'favors' they did for those less fortunate. The same 'favor' they pretended to be offering me. They feast upon the weak and exploit them for their own profit. And now I was dinner.

But I would prove to be a bitter meal. I might be alone in Sweden, with them using their money and influence to isolate me from what small circle of friends I had found, but I would not give in or give up. They saw me as a dumb girl with no sense of the rules of Swedish law they could hoodwink for their profit. They thought wrong.

Despite the global pandemic and UK lockdown preventing my move in May, I was intimidated, threatened, and accused of procrastinating settling the assets. It no longer seemed to matter I had been promised the freedom to remain in the house until the end of May 2020 after which the assets would be divided, or that if there were extraordinary circumstances preventing me from moving at that point, I could pay to remain in the house a little longer without any issue.

No, the narrative shifted into something else in Feb 2020 once my ex-husband grew bored of the novelty of having the divorce he wanted in the autumn. No longer was he willing to fulfill his end of the agreement for my having signed (against my will) the 'quick divorce' he had to have no matter what. What was promised was tossed aside in a slavering hunger to 'get as much money for the house as possible' even if it meant putting me and my cats on the street in the middle of a pandemic. They shouted at me, and threatened me with court because I was 'difficult'. I was glad of it, even if the reason they gave for taking me to court was an utter lie. At least in court the settlement of assets would be fair and legal, and I would never be forced onto the street.

And now, at last, the lockdown eases. I make my plans and look to the western horizon, to where my new life awaits in a world free of tyranny, intimidation, threats, and false accusations. To where I will write without fear, to where I will sleep without nightmares, to where I will be able to live again, smile again, laugh again.

Love again.