If there’s one thing I’m normally good at, it’s waiting. Early in life, I had no time to waste: I was born a month early, hit most milestones sooner than my siblings, was weaned in practically no time, and spooked an aunt on Halloween by reading the neighbors’ yard signs and decorations when I was three years old.* To hear my father tell it, I tried to skip childhood entirely and proceed directly to my sixties, even as he and my mom were in their twenties.
That all changed by my teen or tween years, though — the milestone precocity, not my honorary AARP status — and it seemed that until my mid-twenties all I did was wait. Even after meeting my ex and experiencing the sort of happiness I’d half-expected to remain forever out of reach, there was still a lot of waiting: waiting to move in together; waiting for her to conquer her self-loathing and control issues, and to value herself and our relationship appropriately and make decisions that would enable us to fully commit to the next stage of our lives. And then waiting to feel whole again once she decided the next stage of hers, and all of those thereafter, wouldn’t include me.
Later, once Crankenstein entered the picture, I was always waiting for her to be free and for her training to be over, for her eating disorder and depression to cause fewer ruckuses, for her student loans to be gone, for her anxiety and childhood trauma to stop holding us hostage. If anyone knows about waiting, it’s Crankenstein — that’s part of what made us so compatible a decade ago: a shared tendency toward our respective brands of asceticism, and an almost deranged willingness to delay gratification in pursuit of what we want.**
These days I’m waiting for a better sense of what my future might hold: whether I’ll have to file for SSDI in my forties and if I’ll retain all (or most of) my marbles and independence; whether I’ll ever be a mom or recapture the contentment I’ve enjoyed only fleetingly in the past. And then there are the dumber, smaller waits, like one that’s about to enter its third week. I’ve been expecting something special that was purchased with funds previously earmarked for student loans, and even though it was sent via Priority Mail, and even though it’s in a giant box, it’s been subjected to one post office blunder after the next.
“Theresa strikes again,” I think every time I refresh the online status or call my local postal branch to check on its progress. She was the legendarily inept postal clerk who used to incite an almost homicidal rage in my ex every time she sent parcels when we were long-distance. I’m reminded of her, the patron saint of USPS doofuses, on the rare occasion I’m trapped in mail hell. This special delivery is something I’ll have to sign for and don’t want left on the porch, so I’m reluctant to make many plans. There’s no telling from one day to the next whether it will arrive within hours, months, or never, or whether it will be usable by the time it reappears.
It’s something I’ve wanted for around 25 years, so waiting a bit longer won’t kill me. If anything, it might make me more appreciative, even though I almost called this post “Anticipation is Making Me Hate.” We’ll see what tomorrow brings, but I’m not too optimistic.
* My mom claims I went straight from breastmilk to sippy cups; my dad jokes I found bottles patronizing.
** It’s probably always been hard to find that in a partner, but I suspect social media has made it extra hard for Millennials and subsequent generations.