Today, I have the patience of a saint. Ask Amethyst.......she will verify how she will marvel at how I never lose my focus. Never lose my cool. Never do I take personally when she’s struggling or navigating a difficult space. Even when she’s angry or upset at me I remain calm and patient with her.
I wasn’t always so.
As a child of Irish decent you can imagine the hazing I would get for my ginger hair. I admit, I wasn’t as bad as many other red-heads. I at least had some brown in there....it wasn’t too bad. However, my last name is distinctly Irish. One that is AWFUL!! No child should have to suffer under it!! I would get bullied regularly and often. Every recess I had dozens (no exaggeration) of older kids that would chase me all around the playground. If they caught me, I was kicked, spit on, or otherwise treated cruelly. If I cried, well, that was just fuel to the fire. I remember, one day I had enough. I went home and vowed that this was going to end!
The next morning I wore my pointed toe cowboy boots (I grew up in a rural farming community in northern Wisconsin) to school. The second recess was available I walked outside and waited in a corner of the building by the lunchroom doors that everyone would exit from. I found the kid I wanted and tackled him to the ground. I punched him and stood up proceeding to kick him as hard as I could across his whole body. The rest of the bullies just stood there with their jaws on the ground. It was unprovoked, sure. They didn’t know who they had messed with, that much came into focus for them. The playground monitor/lunch lady had the misfortune of trying to get me off of him. I bit her in the breast.......hard. Of course I was in trouble.....I got expelled for a couple days. It didn’t matter. No one messed with me again. I was tired of running everywhere, afraid of my own shadow. I was tired of not allowing my anger out and fear of what they would do if they caught me. I lost my patience.
In high school as a freshman I remember picking up the rear-end of a Volkswagen bug to move it out of my way as I was heading for a classmate that tried to harm a girl I was interested in. I had no patience or understanding for how a person could be so cruel to another human being. Of course, my running on the playground also fueled my impatience.
When I was 17 I remember being taken to the psychologist by my mother and her new husband. He was intentionally being a dick trying to get under my skin. For what purpose to this day I do not know. But under my skin he got. I flew off the handle in a rage screaming from the back seat that he was mean and while the car was going down the freeway at 55 mph I opened the door to get out. I would be damned if I was going to stay here and take that kind of abuse. I wasn’t very patient. I couldn’t handle my rage and anger very well which was a dead giveaway of my impatience back then.
When I was married in my mid-twenties and had children......well, we all know how children can truly test our patience. But, I also accept it was around that time that I began to pick up on the tools to learn patience. Something that was never modeled to me as a child. Something no one ever sat down to try to teach me. Around the same time BDSM came into my life. I began training and my Master saw instantly the little temper tantrum Irish boy that was deathly afraid to let go of his anger. He saw how easily my buttons could be pushed. How I would grit my teeth and smile as if everything was OK. How little control I had of my own patience.
He spent a lot of time that first year especially teaching me how to not allow my anger to control me but how to control my anger instead,
“Allow it to move through you, give it a voice” Master Jeff would say. “You have a dummy here, hit it in your anger. Release that rage.”
“NEVER!” I replied. “I should never hit someone in anger. What kind of thing are you attempting to teach me? That it’s okay for me to lose my patience and hit someone??????!!!!!”
“Boy,” he only called me boy when he was dead serious and affectionately referring to me as his son, “I ask that you trust me here. Don’t try to understand, let that go.........just feel what you are angry about. Lose your patience and release the frustration. NOW!”
I tore apart several floggers over the course of the first year. They were all cheapies of course, but that didn’t help me to feel any better. I only ever thought I was simply allowing my anger to get the best of me. And I worried that I was being unnecessarily violent and cruel for no reason other than because I was angry. I was terribly concerned I was beginning a pattern of abuse (as I have written about before).
After my first year of training Master Jeff came to me to ask how I felt about where I was going. We discussed a great many things as I had come so far in a year. A part of that discussion is as follows:
“I am concerned about my lack of patience Sir. It troubles me deeply that I can fly off the handle with such rage and anger simply because I seem to lack such basic restraint of emotions.”
“The question I have is this, do you feel you are in control?”
I hated when he did this, what did he want me to say??? “No! That’s the concerning piece for me. I feel absolutely out of control, and that is terrifying to me!”
“If you are not in control, what is?”
Here we go again!! “My anger is in control! It is ruling me!”
“Ah.....is it? Every time you are angry now you make a choice. When you lose your patience it no longer wells up within you until it simply pours out of you. You can recognize it instantly and you choose to release how you feel about losing your patience. YOU choose to release what is inside you. You simply choose to release it right now with a flogger and a dummy. You are in control.”
I admit, I completely failed to recognize this truth. He had trained me to respond to myself. To witness myself and give it an expression. I was trapped in fear by my expression. I judged my expression as wrong, because of my childhood fears of being abusive as my father was to my mother. But, the truth was, I wasn’t anything like my father. I was channeling those emotions to a healthy outlet. I used to take it out on others. I would eat my feelings until they welled up inside of me and they would spill out in ways I thought others wouldn’t notice. The truth was I was rude, snippy, bitchy, bitter, angry all because I wouldn’t allow myself the permission to simply feel and release. Because I judged my expression as wrong. NO expression is wrong if you are in a safe environment and/or given permission.
“This next year we will focus on releasing the attachment to your anger. You’ve accepted that you lacked patience. I have purposely pushed your patience to create spaces where you had to let go of the emotions that came up for you. Now, you’re growing in patience, because you’re seeing how petty some of the things you’re being pushed by really are. They aren’t creating the same anger within you. They’re creating understanding, which is the beginning of patience.”
Over the next year of training he would push my patience and then ask me to define how I felt verbally. Even if it was screaming at times. Over time, the sound of what I was expressing was foolishness to me. It seemed silly to
voice these words of exasperation or frustration over my inability to compose myself and understand why something bothered me in such a way.
By the time my training was done I had a much better grasp on my anger. My patience still needed work, but I no longer lashed out or tried to swallow what I felt. I gave it a voice. Even if it was as simple as me expressing that I was struggling to be patient in this moment over a given thing. I learned when others would try to take advantage of that space and push my buttons even harder. I learned how to express succinctly what was bothering me and why. As time grew on I began to discover how I had looked at my impatience as this nuisance and problem when really it was the very thing that taught me how to have strength and character. To listen, truly listen without taking things personal or feeling attacked. I discovered how to respect myself, my emotions, when I was feeling energetically low and I was becoming cranky by expressing to those around me just that and giving myself permission to leave or do what I had to to rejuvenate myself.
I read a quote somewhere that has been my guidance throughout the process of learning patience...........
An individual that masters patience masters everything else........
It was written in the context of an M/s dynamic. Master being literal.
I have seen the wisdom, personally, behind such a statement. Patience has taught me more about myself than anything or any training ever could.
Without patience I couldn’t navigate the deep emotions of a submissive. I would be triggered or working from my mechanisms because I wouldn’t take the time necessary to truly see what was going on. That it isn’t about me even if the attack is at me. It is no different than me taking the flogger on the dummy. It’s the way in which I processed my lack of patience. My anger. My rage. It is neither good nor bad. It is just an expression. The more I gave myself permission the more I accepted I was choosing to love me. To heal me. To acknowledge me and my value. Even though I struggled to see that through my lens. Through my lens I saw impatience, anger, rage as the enemy. The last thing anyone needed or wanted or deserved. So much so that I ran from it. Hid it. All the while I could never because it was a part of me. My feelings. My emotions. It existed. Denying it only made it worse. It had to be faced. I didn’t have a choice. If I was going to grow, this was the next step. I discovered this because I needed to understand that every s type will enter into this same space. The LAST thing any s types want to face is their anger. Their rage. Because it is usually tied to their hurt. Their shame. Their self image. It may not be as mine was about my impatience (though my impatience was definitely about my self image) regardless it is about their inability to be patient and gracious to themselves enough to accept it’s OK to feel the feelings that come up for them when they’re scared, hurt, nervous, doubtful, afraid.
Today, I am able to hold a safe space for others here because I can hold a space for myself. Because I know the panic that can set in over the unchecked rage. I understand the fear that exists in what kind of damage you may do when you’re that afraid. I know how it feels to not believe you’re in control of your own emotional capacity because you lack the ability to manage what is coming at you. In all of this I have learned how to be gracious and kind with myself. I have discovered how to lead others to the same space...........peace. True inner peace where you don’t second guess yourself or question your comfort. Where you KNOW you’re safe within yourself.
You want to learn patience?
You sure?
Because the best way is to have that patience tested, pushed, prodded, poked and stretched. You’ll want to give up more than you want to continue. And yet, for some unknown reason, you’ll continue. Because you must........
I truly hope today that you find the peace that passes all understanding within you.
Namaste
Drago and Amethyst
