Suffering with Man

The things some ladies do to a suffering man are out of this world 

The disrespect

The tongue lashing

The hisses

The side eyes

The mockery

The disdain

The public embarrassments 

The disrespect

The “pity” look

The “someone better than you is calling me” or “Why are you asking me who I was talking to on the phone?”

“You too are calling yourself a man,” “You are acting like a man,” or “See a man when the house is empty!”

She sees his prospect, but it is not good enough for food at that moment, and she cannot keep waiting for Godot.

For that season, he is a liability, but he has  the kind of prospect she does not want to miss out on in future

If she did anything for him, she reminds him with an insulting sneer

“I was the one that gave you the funds to process that document with my hard-earned salary.”

So many things that cannot be put into words

So many cuts and too many barbs

And then, somehow, he makes it 

He becomes successful 

She expects him to repay her for standing by him through thick and thin

He takes her to dinner

Buys her a necklace

Buys a car and puts some serious money in her bank account

He cannot buy back his respectability or shattered pride

She can never see him the way he desires to be seen

Whenever they are together she will want to take credit for his success because she stayed with him when he was struggling

But there are so many things that he remembered and didn’t want to make an issue of

She expects him to have forgotten or excused it away as things she said when she was upset

He didn’t 

He knew he didn’t make it because of her

He made it in spite of her 

Even if he could not tell the whole world the truth 

He knows it

His success feels somehow now that she is gloating about it

She didn’t deserve the joy it brings after giving him so much grief during the time of waiting 

She would say she was only motivating him when she called him a lazy dog and a gold digger

He would say she treated him like a pest and had no right to lay claim to his crown or a seat beside him as his queen

So he finds another

One with whom he would write another history

One who would see him as made and treat him with the dignity of being made

One who didn’t know the story but is kneeling in awe before the glory

He gives her place to this new one

And in his mind, justice is done

While in her mind, she suffered with him, and he refused to acknowledge her suffering by giving her place to another 

The Story of 'Suffering with Man' as told by -GSW-