Patience

The first four decades of my life, I accepted the dictum that was canon in my nuclear family and later, in my marriage, that my needs should come last after the needs and wants of my loved ones, for that was the only way I would be deemed a good daughter and good wife. I went after those titles “Good Daughter”, “Good Wife”, as though winning them would put money in my bank account and food on my table. I never allowed my personal satisfaction, my own quality of life, to enter the equation.

By age thirty-nine, I had given up my hard-earned profession as a high school English teacher, a diploma and certificate that had taken me ten years longer to earn than it might have, had I not still been in the throes of trying to please my parents. I’d put indefinite ‘hold’ on my dream of being a writer. I’d given up my family, my friends, my employment, to live outside my country of birth, and take a job the parameters of which were unimaginative and thus, excruciatingly boring. I did this all to please my then-husband.

Yes, I went after those two titles with the determination and bullheadedness I do everything else. The revelation that my spiritual immolation and sacrifice of self was not going to get me the love and life satisfaction for which I thirsted, came to me…tritely, I’m sorry to say.

It was on my fortieth birthday. I was all dressed up. My then-husband promised to take me out to dinner, just one of many promises he’d broken. Instead, I sat at our kitchen table in a foreign country, eating a slice of my birthday cake, alone.

It wasn’t even that incident that ended that marriage. In fact, it was something much worse, because for some of us, goals don’t just die hard, they have to go down in flames.

My real life began the day I allowed myself to walk away from those goals, and since then, I’ve felt an urgency to make up for lost time. But, along with the low self-esteem I’d lost, something valuable was also sacrificed: Patience. In the years that followed my emancipation I led my life as though there were a bomb strapped to my soul, and it was ticking mirthfully.

It’s ironic that in the last third of my life, when I see people my age dropping down with no warning, like flies sprayed with DEET, I am relearning patience.

Patience that helps me understand, instead of get angry.

Patience that helps me ignore the small irritations, and focus on the bigger picture.

Patience that helps me laugh instead of roll my eyes.

Patience that helps me trust in others again, instead of only myself.