Patience is a virtue

I am not a patient person. I can be patient. I can patiently wait to get my oil changed. I can patiently wait for my clothes to dry in the dryer. But if it is something that I really really want, I am not patient. For instance, the other day I used my friends hot rollers. After I used them, I really wanted some for myself. So even though I didn't have a lot of money in my bank account, I went out and bought them the next day. I should have patiently waited until my next pay check and bought them then. I am so inpatient when I want something I will go to extremes to get it. When Derek and I broke up, I wanted SO badly to be over it, to be done. When I found out how many girls he had cheated on me with, I gave myself one week to get over it. One week to be sad. HA! That worked out well for me, obviously. Now when I go out on dates, I want to feel comfortable. I want to really care about someone, I want to have that closeness again. And if I don't have that right away, I'm done. I move on to the next person. Needless to say, constantly disappointed. I don't want to wait. I want it now. Marilyn says that this is the little kid in me. The portion of myself that is still immature. We talked about this the other day. I realized something important. Every meaningful relationship I have in my life with my friends, has taken time. Many of my friends I have had for years and years. These are the people that I can depend on. That are there for me when my car breaks down, or when I need a ride, or when I need to eat dinner, they feed me. I visited the family I used to babysit for, for many years. They have six kids. The triplets were eight months old when I started working for them, and they are about to turn five now. I haven't seen them since October. I know there is a reason for that. Derek was really involved with their family, he used to take the boys to the skate park every single weekend. There were a lot of memories there. Every time I went up there, the boys would ask me about him. The triplets would say to me "Li Li, where's derek?". Heartbreaking. How do you explain that to them? They aren't my kids, although they always felt like it. But, they knew us as a couple. I got tired of saying that I didn't know where he was. So I stopped going up there. They are my second family down in San Diego. I can count on them for anything. But I couldn't do it anymore. So with my new found happiness, I went over to their house. I'm laying on the couch with one of the babies (they are five, and I still call them babies), Aubrey walks up to me and a smile comes across her face, "Li Li, you're here. I missed you. Where have you been?" I say "I know love, I miss you too, I've just been busy." She says "well it makes me really happy that you are here now." It makes me really happy that I am here now too. My relationship has evolved with their family over the years I've known them. I went from being an employee to a family member. My point here is that it takes time. You don't trust someone, love someone, depend on someone overnight. What if I had wanted my relationship with their family to be what it is now, when I first started? That would have been weird right? Well, this carries on into my life now. I don't know how to date, because I don't know how to be patient. I don't know how to learn to love someone. I feel like it is something that should just happen right away. But it doesn't. So this week, I told Marilyn I wanted to work on patience. She said to me "With patience, comes difficulty. So be prepared."