I would love to say I've always struggled with being a patient person, but that would imply I ever gave it any thought. For some reason, patience has always seemed like some foreign concept that I had no part of. It was kind of like speculating what was happening in someone else's backyard. Interesting and full of possibilities . . . but not really any of my business.
Instead, I always kind of viewed life like Wile E. Coyote falling off of a cliff. Sure, sometimes I would have my fall broken by branches or rocks, but eventually, I was going to smash into the ground below. It didn't matter if I was patient about this. It was going to happen, it was going to be bad, and my thoughts were best spent on how I could salvage things after impact.
Patience always felt like some kind of distant luxury. It was for people who were moving from one good situation to the next. It was their rather easy struggle with handling their own anticipation. That just wasn't my life. The closest I came to patience was learning how to stay sane in the midst of dread, and I really wasn't even all that good at that.
I've talked to a lot of people who grew up poor and chaotic. I've read a lot of stuff by them as well. One of the things we struggle with as adults is learning to measure out situations. The best example I can give you of this has to do with one of my eating problems.
See, I have a lot of trouble forcing myself to ration out fun food. For most of my life, if I bought a box of cookies, I ate them until they were gone. There wasn't any 'I eat one now and then there will be more for later.' Nope. I would eat them until the box was empty. This kind of binge eating happened because when I was a kid, treats were always at risk to be taken away from me.
If one of my step-fathers noticed I liked something, it suddenly became a weapon for them. The second stepfather was the worst about this. I can remember several times when he would get my mom to buy my favorite candy and then forbid me from eating any. I would have to sit there and watch the rest of them eat it. I'm not really sure what he was trying to accomplish with this. The only thing he did accomplish with it was making me want to rip out his throat. Oh, and I guess he accomplished to plant these seeds of "eat it until it's gone so they can't take it away from you' mentality. Asshole.
Anyway, in this process of trying to become a somewhat healed and sane person, I think I'm going to start exploring this concept of patience. It's been flirting with me since the beginning of the year. The whole Tax Thing was a lesson in patience. I had to keep myself calm and remind myself that it would be solved. The knit project is a lesson in patience as well. One of the colors is fairly dreadful to my sense of taste, but I know that it's going to look beautiful with everything else.
Most importantly, I think I need to explore patience as a tactic for sustaining long and involved processes, such as losing weight. I need to learn how to use this patience stuff to keep myself focused on the big picture, to console me when I get discouraged, and to keep me going as this process begins to lose its novelty.
This isn't going to be easy. It may seem strange to a lot of you, but I just honestly have very little clue as to how to be patient. I get agitated and nervous. I start to fall back into dread. Or, you know, I just get bored and say 'fuck it' to the whole process. That isn't serving me well though, so I want to change it. I want to learn to be a patient person, who can use this power of patience to get her through the day. Even the stressful shitty days.
I have no idea if I can do this, but I'm going to try.
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