“I hate that song.”

“What song?”

“‘Patience’ by GnR,” I mutter impatiently. “Oh,” he replies. “I love it.”

I have no patience. It’s a wonder I’m a parent. Right now, I’m losing patience over my fake nails making mistakes across the keyboard. Missed keystrokes infuriate me. I took typing class for two hours a day for almost a  year. Mistakes, I don’t have time for.

I have no patience for slow drivers on the road. I can barely wait for the ink to dry before I’ve spent the better part of a loan. I get overwhelmed when someone takes their time responding to an email or a text message. I have little patience for people who can’t make up their mind, for the toast to pop, the microwave to beep, and opportunities to come along.

My patience – or lack there of – contributes to an entire host of emotional issues, and shortcomings I can attest to.

I’m impatient that you’re still in the bathroom. Fair.

I’m too impatient to wait for you to adapt to my quirks in this relationship. I’m breaking up with you. Unfair.

See where I’m going with this?

And it contributes to my hobbies, extracurricular activities, and passions. I’m a jill of all trades, of sorts, because I don’t have the patience to learn one thing, and do it really, really well. I can kinda write, kinda play the piano, kinda paint, kinda write music, kinda draw, kinda sing – you get the idea. I have this notion that if I can’t learn it and get it done in some wishy washy time frame I’ve made up in my mind, I’m bored and on to the next thing.

Every misstroke I’ve had to backspace and delete has contributed to my anxiety in this blog, side bar.

But where my patience really runs out – it’s the broken promises, the failure on intent. It’s the refusal to play it straight, and speak it out loud. It’s the guessing games, and wonders why you haven’t made any effort. Why the owness is on me to break the ice, the tension. Why – when it was your responsibility, are you playing games with my head and my heart and forcing me to conjure up excuses for the inexcusable way you excused me from your life.

I have no patience for it.

What can we do – those of us with little capacity to wait, be still and let the chips fall where they may? I don’t have the answers, I don’t. I just know when I’m careening off a cliff of intolerance, and that’s when I have to pull back and shut my mouth before I’m road raging a missed keystroke, a boyfriend driving slow in the fast lane, a child pitching a fit in the grocery store, or the WiFi kicking out.

And sometimes, it means accepting the consequences of being on the short stick of impatience. What it meant to sever a friendship early. A relationship faster. Giving up a chance a moment too soon.

As Axl wailed – all we need is just need a little patience.

— c ☆