WE ARE VERY CLOSER OF ALLIANCES THAT CAN KILL...

January 1991. United States.
I was in a full conjugal crisis. My second marriage was in the end. Difficult times to who thought as I, have found this time the ideal companion, the love of my life. It had been a wonderfull romance that started in the summer of 89, in NY.

The strong heat carried me often to sit down in a bar, after a whole day of studies and researches in American Universities. There I always asked for a white wine cup with mineral water cold. American habit of savor a wine that i started enjoying. In any of these ends in the afternoon, July on the 26th of 1989, i was alone, in a very nice bar in Riverdale, district in the north of Bronx, one of the preferred by the jewish that chose it as dwelling for more than 50 years.

I liked smoking while savored my drink. In this day i didn't have a lighter neither matches. As soon as i took the cigarette from the pack, appeared a flame. By the mirror, which decorated the bar stayed in my front, i could see the physiognomy of a beautiful man and my ears listened an extremely seductive voice:
- May I light your cigarrete?
The man who brought the lighter, lights my cigarette and then shot in me another flame: The attraction.

We started to talk. He wanted to know about where i had coming from, since the people who frequented that bar knew each other, they were inhabitants of the surroundings. As soon as he knew that i was Brazilian, did me feel enchanted... He knew details on the work of Tom Jobim, Djavan, Gonzaguinha and so many others from our popular music. He knew and loved our rhythm. Hours after offered to carry me at home. I was boarded in some five blocks thence. In the good bye carried my phone number.

In the following morning, at the nine o'clock, the telephone rang. It was him, inviting me to lunch.
Our first lunch was at a restaurant that was among the streets 30 and 31, in Manhattan.
He was always gentile and affectionate.
We marked a new date, this time was to dinner in La Pietra, a very pleasant Italian restaurant.
For my head it already passed that scene, so known of all of us…

- In three days I will go back to Brazil and leave such an interesting designer of interiors here!
But, i didn't have another alternative. Work, house and sons were waiting for me.
We said good-bye at the airport with an immense doubt: will it be finished?
I embarked.
Five days later I received his first letter.
In it the confession: I want to continue seeing you.
After dozens of letters and phone calls he disembarked in Rio, it was September Seven.
He stayed at a hotel, Buscky Mar in Niterói, very closer to my house.
It was an intense week in love oaths, passions and promises.
His eyes attracted me very much, they had a certain supplicant air.

He went back to the United States, but there wasn't a week that it did not arrive a love letter. Receives them left me excited, frightened with what was happening to me.
It ended up trembling, i had chills when opening them.
In that time my english was enough yet to understand everything that he wrote.
The dictionary started to be my faithful squire. I didn't want to lose anything, i didn't want to leave of understanding one only syllable.
In a beautiful day, in a correspondence, a package. This time was not already well known envelope.
I unpacked the packing quickly.
It was a ribbon recorded with the title - "Only for the eyes of Odilza."
I ran to the cassette video.
It was images of him by the streets where we had dated and made many, a lot of love declarations.
That had never happened me…
How much emotion.
How much affection.
In October he invited me to the Christmas and the New Year to pass in New York.
Difficult decision. My heart became separated. It would be the first time that i would pass these dates far away from my children.

I found better to talk with them. I spoke about my new passion, I told about emotions and for my surprise they gave me the largest force.
- "Go mother, we stay with the grandma" - they said.
My mother, that knows me as nobody, was ahead: - "If you will live in New York who will take care of me? She whined. The family piece of advice composed by my three children motivated me for the trip.
I marked passages, I made the suitcases.
When I disembarked there was, him waiting for me, more beautiful than never. We embarked in a filled black limousine of flowers and champagne.
Pomps and honors for a passionate woman.
I felt in the clouds. It could not have larger love than that.
In the night of December 24 family commemorations.
He introduced me to the mother and the brother.
Even before so many homages it didn't get me to disentangle of the remorse of having left my children in Brazil. An enormous fault.
Such feeling reminded me even of a biblical passage: - "Adam, did you eat the fruit of the good and of the evil? Asked the Lord.
- No Lord. It was the woman that induced me… "

Us. Always us, women, the criminals. We carried the fault of our own existence.
I tried deceive me. I pretend that this would not inconvenience me anymore.
Nothing could destroy the departures to the theater, the dinners, the walks by the park… finally, the city and their apples, Big Apple, there, there adorn it a new life, which i knew, waited for me.
Two days after Christmas, he got ready to sleep, when I listened:
- Do you want to marry with me?
My head twirled.
A mixed of emotions, responsibilities, compromisings danced exaggerated for my mind.
In the middle of this miscellany of thoughts I remembered that, when he slept, he snored and gave some small frights in the bed, own of who has unquiet sleep…

My memory brought me back until the story of little cockroach lady.
I seemed to hear my mother read, in my favorite infantile book, the passage that little cockrouch lady asks the bugs, which want to marry with her, which noise did they do when they sleep.
One of the requirements, considered by her, to choose with which of them she would marry.
I accepted the same request with all that snore.
Five days later we bought the engagement ring. Ring that for me had an enormous meaning.
During all my life I looked for a family that considered normal: the man, the woman, the children gathered to the lunch table on Sunday. It was that what i wanted, without a doubt.
He liberated me of one time that i wanted to forget.
Time that further on, I will tell to you.
On that moment i was living a romance, a story of loving fantasy of truth, with everything that is entitled. I could not lose that chance.
I didn't want to let me influence for a sentence that was dictated to me by the mother of an american friend , when I told to her that i would marry with him.
After thinking some minutes she shot:
- Odilza, don't marry with this man. I don't know him. It seems crazy, but it is a strong intuition.
- No, i said to myself.
Nothing would disturb that love story.

In the first days of January I returned to Brazil.
In my room, under a table where i had put several crystals, I joined the two astral maps that she had order to do: mine and the one of him.
With the maps the astrologer gave me a recorded ribbon.
I listened and got intrigued.
In it, the astrologer told me that the stars indicated surprises, in a marriage, due to lies and a lot of deceptions.
Immediately I thought about my American friend's mother's sentence.
It had been enough some seconds to feel half stupid, after all i was living a romance and so much… and he, in anything, looked other intentions to not to be the one of living the whole feeling that demonstrated to feel for me.
I didn't resist to the distance.
One month and little later I went to meet him again.

My son of the middle, was in California. He had gone study English and accommodated at my sister's house that lived there.
I took with me my youngest child, then with 13 years. Soon, soon, the one of the middle joined to us.
It was a party.
They liked my new partner and the many cheesburgers with French fries offered by him.
I , every day, more passionate.
We marked the marriage for July of that same year. He single and i divorced. We would not have legal problems.
I remembered a journalist friend that took me to his house well and told me:
- Odilza, are you sure that what you really want for your life?
- Yes, it is. I spoke without a doubt.
Three months before the ceremony he came to Brazil for one week.
I began there to notice some difference.
I repaired that he was quite bad-tempered, temperamental.
Am i exaggerating?
Is it carzy to get scared with some almost explosive reactions?
A certain fear appeared and I shot doing me many questions.
Do I owe or not to get married?
Is it worthwhile?
Do I insist or do I give up?
Subjects that pursued me day and night were. A mountain of doubts devastated me.
I ran once again for my therapist.
But, it was already everything ready for the marriage.
Besides he promised me to assume financially during the time that would have to study to be approved in USMLE - United States Legal Medical Examination - the certificate that it allows to exercise the medicine in American territory.
It was everything that I wanted profissionaly.
I went ahead. Nothing of pessimism, I decreed myself.

It was a beautiful party. In the Club of English of Niterói - Rio Cricket - civil ceremony, to have dinner for many invited and my lilac dress.
How many dreams!!!
Three days later we went all to New York, him, my mother-in-law and an American friend that was our godfather.
Behind me I left a promising career.
Our apartment had been set up by him, in Riverdale, the same neighborhood where we met each other.
We settled and soon I began a deepened course of English to face without problems the exam of USMLE.
As promised he would pay the course.
And I, started to have a quite simple life.
It transported me of train, in the meals, food to kilo… I needed to sustain me with the 50 dollars that he gave for a week.
What i received, here in Brazil, was the necessary for my children's sustenance that were living with my mother. The oldest preferred to be with the father, but even so I maintained all the extra expenses financially.
In the course of time I noticed that i needed to get ready still more. I needed, and a lot, to review the medical matters as much the basic ones as the clinics.
I went until the Curso Kaplan, preparatory for USMLE.
They would be three years of daily studies and eight thousand dollars. Of this total one, two thousand dollars of deposit and the remaining parceled out in three years.
I arrived animated home.

After this course i would be approved without problems. I would have my diploma recognized in the United States and an unimaginable future waited for me.
My happiness lasted a few.
When I told to my husband about my plans listened, immediately.
- I don't have conditions of paying this.
I tried to argue, I recalled the promise to me done, I asked if some had happened unexpected in his financial life.
I didn't receive any answer to convince me.
I felt betrayed.
I packed my suitcase and came to Brazil to pass Christmas.
Here, I decided to take advantage of a change in the law that favored the counting of my time of service in INAMPS - later WELFARE DEPARTMENT and SUS. It was the opportunity to retire.
The insecurity was the incentive that i needed to organize the whole necessary documentation.
My husband, in the most absolute silence. Nor a phone call. Nor a ticket.
When I called talked about amenities, anything regarding our lives, money or courses.
In the beginning of January of 1991 I went back to my American house.
I went to meet again my husband.
To resume my life.
To try to resume.
My head was a thousand.
I didn't need a lot to notice that everything was at the end.

The marriage, clear, was not more the same. The dialogues being scarce, the feeling wearing away, the sensation of one more failure restraining.
I didn't support more that situation. At the same time i didn't have forces to abandon my husband, to separate for the second time.
It would be to my solemnity confirmed definition.
- You are really an incompetent one.

To wake up, to leave of house, to return, find him, to sleep beside him or no… to have to support him…
The routine cut me.
- I don't want that", I told to me without stopping.
But where is the exit?
I didn't see anything.
Everything was infinitely distant and unattainable.
Oh ! Yes. An alternative was well there, very closer and it was it that I held on to.
I started to wait for the ends of the afternoons, with anxiety and an immense will of advancing the pointers of the clock so that soon they reached the six hours. I would be with him, in another situation.
Later in the afternoon, in the bar, it was the hour that after some drinks he was more casual and silabava some words with me.
Everyday the same thing.
They were two, three Dry Martini. Me and him.
To find the friends in the bar was part of an old habit of him. Do they remember that I met him in that same bar?
In that it adapts his behaved as the man before.
I felt dear, understood.
It was as one swim that was happening with us.
We talked about everything, until we laughed at nonsenses that didn't have the smallest grace.
There i reconciled what i needed: me, him and Dry Martini's pleasant and anaesthetic company.
I formed an alliance with the glass as the only escape valve by hand, after all in him it felt more relaxed.
It was the time of my relief.
I enter in the bar, all the final ones in the afternoon, and left in the street all my fears, my frustrations, my insecurities.
That good that a place existed like this. That wonderful escape he started to act for me.
After the third glass i spoke English more easiness, i made an effort and got to be cheerful.
The following day, soon in the morning, there it was her: the depression.
It was a vicious circle.
Like this my days, my hours of anguish it passed. I made a mistake. I increased my suffering. After all i knew exactly about what was doing with me.
It was not any ignorant one to have the exact conscience that the wrong road of the solution of the problems that devastated me was proceeding. But the own mistake was the easiest of the rails on that moment.
I avoided to think in the reality, in the it distances of the children, in the abandonment of my career, in the delivery to a love that could not be permitted.
I wanted to have hopes.
The Real devastated me.
I didn't have forces against him.
I allowed the false to take care of me.
It was much easier.
However, I could not stop noticing that the embotamentos assumed me every day with more energy.
I began to forget names simple, current. In one day i wanted to speak with somebody on the light that was in my headboard and didn't get to remember of the name of that luzinha.
To forget of names as the one of the abatjour, for instance, they started to be constant.
I wanted to count a case, or a fact, to somebody and forgot about the characters' names, of the continuity of the story. Not to know expressions and words constrained me, but it always took in the game.
- "That memory, mine", said, as if nothing of abnormal was happening to me.
And the time went passing... and the routine of the bar, the depression increasing.
His financial situation only worsened. The business of decoration of interiors started to not to pay nor the expenses of the company. The partner gave up.
The breakings of the labor agreements increased and they did with that he was forced to leave of Manhattan. To find other veins, not always so profitable. IT WAS THE RECESSION.
In a new taskwork it passed to be led by a woman with whom he fought everyday.
It was very difficult for him to arrange another work, other activity.
The meaning of the "my job", my work, for the American is very strong, infinitely larger than for us Brazilian.
I started to live together with financial debts, enmities, lies and a lot of attempts of being being wrong. He didn't measure efforts to count with my money in the search for his financial recovery.
Everything took me to anguishes every time larger.
In June of 1991 I needed to come to Brazil to continue in the course of the paper work so that it got, in definitive, my retirement.
In this time I started to live together with small hemorrhages. During almost the whole month bled. It was a secretion that had color of meat water.
I decided then to conclude what had done in me, like you it will be knowing in the next pages.
The bondage of trumpets, after all, it will be avenged.
I decided to do the total hysterectomy - the retreat of the reproductive apparel.
It was my only road.
After all children have to be of the same father and of the same mother. It was that thought on that moment.
Here, in my earth, far away from him, I went diffuses, without resistance, for the depression.
Depression that more than ever was present in my days.
After almost one year I found my former hairdresser that, coming across my suffering, it took me the a cult of a certain Evangelical Church.
I was introduced to a shepherdess that, after a long conversation, she revealed me:
- "Works" "exist done for you, done by somebody that wants you very badly. Not only to you, but to your children also."
I was disoriented.
I didn't have the smallest condition of reacting in another way.
Afraid I accepted what was proposed me.
With the help of a couple of siblings of the Church and of the shepherdess we left for Salvador, in Bahia.
There it would be the work that needed to be undone.
The trip went of bus.
A distance difficult of being expired. But, on that moment, the only thing that i wanted was to arrive in lands baianos and to end with that that was delaying my life, taking me for a lot close to the chaos.
We disembarked at the six hours of the afternoon.
One hour later we were already going to the Pond of Abaeté.
As soon as we arrived, after a concentration of some minutes, the shepherdess decided: appeared for the sand, in a certain direction, and we headed for the suitable direction.
We arrived to the point and we stopped.
There it would be buried what was done for me and my children of bad.
We put ourselves to dig the very humid sand. The level of water had lowered.
Some time then, that I don't get to need well, we found a package, the content was rolled up in a black plastic.
We opened.
Inside, an immense leaf of brown paper with the sayings:
It is "for Odilza"
And more: the paper involved dolls without head, with the body spit by several pins and a piece of a my old clothes.
In the hour I remembered her.
There was not as wandering.
It had belonged yes, to my wardrobes.
Due to my perplexity I fell of knees, in weeping, thanking God for the opportunity of to find and to destroy the substratum of the cruelty to me driven.
Everything burned that was found.
I cried, convulsivamente, without stopping.
It was too much for me.
I never imagined to pass for that.
Stories like this, i only knew of hearing somebody count and i always listened to them with a lot of distrust. It is at this time was me who was living an almost unreal episode for my beginnings.
However, I got myself to control after some hours.
I don't know exactly for how long we were there, kneeling, praying. For me it seemed an eternity.
In the prayers, I remember well, that we asked for the protection of God. Only he could liberate my family and me of so many evils.
I didn't see another exit.
It was the only comfort that could notice.
I knew that during all my life, it was part of my daily habits, to ask light and spirit peace to the Superior Being. For me, Jesus Christ.
And how could i be witnessing of everything?
My head seemed to be in a great and confused knot.
We went back to Rio, soon the following day.
Another bus trip.
Another distance to expire.
Another challenge to decipher.
Some days later, and don't ask me to explain the reason, I started to find the peace. An intense Peace.
Informed of the scientific and medical methods to disentangle me of that cursed addiction of drinking, I was discovered stronger in the faith to execute, in practice, the one that my knowledge dictated me and that until that moment, it found disabled me of following them.
I began policing me.
I started to increase, slowly, the time far away from that treacherous and unfortunate refuge.
Few weeks later I stopped drinking and of smoking.
I began to recover my self-esteem.
I went away, happily, of the depression.
As we felt victorious!
As it is good to wake up and in the saying:
"You are being again.
You are really the warrior that, of one times to here decided if to deny. If it devastates. To be reduced to that life imposed by him in a brutal way.
As it is good to know who is you, again."
The fact of stopping drinking passed going away still more of my husband.
Only who already passed for similar situations, or it is passing, that knows exactly what I want to say.
It is an unequaled joy.
To maintain the reins of our own lives is for who wants and it can. It is not for any one. But, it is important to have in mind that any one can, since you hold on to the right weapons.
Have the necessary attendance and, above all, have faith and get to recover the trust in herself.
Don't doubt.
Yes you can , reacquire any to be the force.
She is there inside of you. It is enough that you get to open the eyes, to see her.
It is there our great challenge:
to want to see.
To visualize him all.
To leave of that reunion everything it is illuminated and strengthened.
This force cannot delegate to anybody. Only to us same.
And all are capable.
Don't hesitate.
Try and it will verify that I am not counting any fairy tale.
Don't become shy of asking medical help, of a group of solemnity-help, of a CHURCH. A lot of times the force comes from where fewer waited.
Don't consider the social condition, the intellectuality degree, the scientific notion of the world… In a lot of times we are diffuse for a force that we ignored and that we considered mediocre and she-ass.
No.
Don't despise any opportunity of help. The one that you need is to find thereal force.
Something that impels her.
That gives the alert of the self-esteem.
That tells:
You can.
It is important you to know that:
Few women identify the abuse of the alcohol as the main disease. However, researches as the one of American College of Women's Health Physician, of May of 1999, show that, they exist, today, six million alcoholic women, only in the United States. Almost 10% of them have less than 30 years of age and the proportion is larger in women after the 40. And what does the one happen here with us?
While the men drink with more frequency in the youth, between 21 and 34 years, the habit of the drink in the women continues growing in the stocking age, from 50 to 64 years.
Even the call "moderate drink" it can be harmful for the women. This because the woman's corporal volume is usually smaller than the one of the man as well as the corporal proportion - fat and muscle - and the hepatic metabolism.
This means that if a woman and a man drink the same amount of alcohol the woman will be made drunk first and the alcohol will take more time to leave the organism.
Know you that the denial, the saying not to itself own, it is the women's main reason not to seek for a doctor and ask for help. But this is not the only reason of the growth of the alcoholism.
The shame of admitting alcoholic is very strong.
It is easy to find a reason for us to isolate ourselves before this "failure", the one of not resisting to the drink.
The excuses appear fast done an arrow: - I come from a family of alcoholics.
- I only drink to sleep, to relax, to feel sexier, to anesthetize my painful feelings…
And many, many other answers, they are used on behalf of I cannot leave him that" and of the "who knows about my life, I am me."
It is rare find, in the clinics, a woman that says, without before being questioned insistently, that it depends on the alcohol to get to pass, or to reduce, the problems of the life.
Keep those letters: C U C E
They mean:
C - to cut
U - to upset
C - criminal
E - eyes
CUCE is the name of a test created by Women's goes Sobriety - Women for the Sobriety - broadly used by the professionals of the health in the United States, to evaluate up to where you it is dependent of alcohol, or not.
They have enough two or three answers "yes", to the questions below, for the diagnosis to confirm, in 80, 90% of the cases, that you are a serious one run for office becoming a dependent of the alcohol.
Answer to the questions:
1. you, some time, did already feel that you had to CUT the alcoholic drink ?
2. did the people already UPSET you criticizing your habit of drinking?
3. you already felt bad or CRIMINAL regarding the habit of drinking?
4. did you already begin to drink, did it already take the first drink, soon in the beginning of the day, in the morning, to liberate of your hangover, that opener of EYES is?

Make your evaluation and think well on your conclusion.
It is not time to seek a doctor or a group of help?
Answer to you, as soon as can.
The habit of drinking alone it is common and highly dangerous. This will appears, above all, when goes by a great loss, being it material or affectionate.
Be attentive.
Happily the solemnity groups help religious persons, or no, they are dispersed for the whole country. Nobody needs to know that you needed them.
It is not without reason that you call themselves ANONYMS.
In the following page, I will continue to tell to you as I got to get rid, forever, of that company disastrous and highly perverse.