Jealousy

Dear Diary,

I think there’s something wrong with me. I’ve always been a jealous person but this -. This is just -. It’s sick. I know that. There’s something wrong with me. Maybe I should see someone – a psychiatrist or counsellor. Oh yeah and what would I say? ‘I’m jealous of my husband because I think he’s beating up another woman’? I’d be sectioned on the spot. Everyone has…odd thoughts from time to time. Don’t they? It doesn’t make me mad. If I was mad and needed to be, you know, removed from society, I wouldn’t think anything of it. I’d think it was normal to be jealous because of…you know. And I don’t. I know it’s wrong. I just can’t seem to help it.

I keep thinking of him with her. I keep imagining him hitting her. His hand slapping her face. He’s not an angry person, at least, not with me. What is it about her that gets him so worked up? That’s the thing, you see, she gets him all worked up – angry, yes, but it’s passionate, you know? He’s just not like that with me.

Not that I want him to be beating me up. Of course I don’t want that, it’s just -. If he’s going to beat anyone up it should be me, I am his wife, after all. It’s ‘wife-beater’ not ‘other-woman-beater’, you know? It’s almost like he’s having an affair – a really twisted affair.

What is wrong with me? Besides, I don’t know that he is. It’s not like I’ve seen him or anything. I’ve got no proof. It’s just, she gets these bruises and she uses the old ‘I fell over’ or ‘I walked into something’ lines. Everyone knows what that means. Maybe it’s someone else but it always seems to be when she’s been with him. Like that time they went on that business conference – just them – and then she had that awful… I’ve seen him shouting at her in the street. He’s never shouted like that at me. It made me feel so…unneeded.

What’s so special about her, anyway? What makes her such a good punch-bag? What victim-like quality does she have that I don’t?

Maybe I should be more irritating.