Generosity of Spirit

Okay. Scenes from a marriage...

Way back when, as in, when I was in the middle of the seven-and-a-half year relationship with The Ex, we had a disagreement. Not unusual. Y'see, my brother and his wife were coming into NYC and visiting us in Brooklyn. I told them I'd meet them at the Port Authority Bus Terminal when they got in, and together we would find our way via subway out to Boerum Hill.

When I got off the phone, The Ex gave me that look of his that would freeze piping hot tomato soup and said, "Why did you tell them you'd meet them at the bus station?"

Why?

Well, because my brother and his wife aren't very familiar with the subway system, and because it's a grim place, especially after a long bus ride, and it would be nice to find a friendly face on the platform.

That, of course, didn't cut it.

The Ex's argument? My brother and his wife are adults. Adults are capable of carefully reading one of the many subway maps that the TA posts throughout the system, and determining a route to a station that is a mere two blocks from our house. It is WRONG and BAD to treat an adult as if he or she were a child.

[Note: That's the second time today that I've employed the subjunctive mood in the blog. "...[A]s if he or she were a child." Although common to anyone who has studied french, the subjunctive is a rare thing in English. It's used to indicate something that the speaker forsees or would like to see happening, but over which the speaker has no control. To do it, you generally use the third person plural form of the verb regardless of the gender and number of the subject. For example, "if I were a rich man..." Or an even more common one, "God bless you!" If you omit the subjunctive, those could be "If I was a rich man..." and "God blesses you!" Anyway...]

And so we argued. He won. Well, as usual, he didn't so much 'win' as just wear me down, to the point where I would give in to shut him up. Then, I tried my usual passive-aggressive tactic, trying to shame him into seeing things my way, and called my brother and told him that in fact I would not be meeting him at the Port Authority, but that he would have to find his way to the Hoyt-Schemerhorn station on the 2/3 line on his own, while The Ex listened in on the conversation. The attempt to shame didn't work. He knew no shame when it came to being flint-hearted. And, he had his creepy therapist, who had a svengali-like hold on The Ex and his other clients, named Stanley Weinberg who has his offices on West 12th Street (oops! Did I just type that? Must make a note to go back and delete that at some point), to back him up. "Stanley says..."

The Ex was nothing if not consistent. One of the biggest fights we had when we were together was when I took a small table we were giving to my friend Andrea and walked it over the six blocks to her apartment on 14th Street. He was furious. Why couldn't Andrea come and pick up the table herself.

But... but... but...

Why am I telling all of this to you good people? To get you to see how despicable he was and probably still is? Yeah, there's that. But soldier on.

At the end of seven and a half years with this man, I wouldn't lift a finger for anybody. "Well, that's your tough luck" and "I hope you learn a lesson from this" became my unspoken credo as well as his.

I thought about this the other day, when I offered to give one of my co-workers a ride home, even though he lives out of the way. As I did so, I flashed on the face of The Ex, purple with rage and framed with blond hair.

Generosity of Spirit. Looking for opportunities to help, and to bring a little bit of joy to the lives of those around us. I've got to find ways to rekindle that in myself. Got to got to got to.

If only to deliver (yet another) final Fuck You to the man who made me so unhappy for too long.

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