I've always had a bit of an issue with impatience. I don't like to wait. Really though, who does? Not being able to tolerate waiting or a slower pace can present problems, and they are usually of the sort that only result from a lack of patience. I know more than a little something about this. I may have gotten better over the years, but this issue still affects my overall energy and that is something that isn't okay with me.
At one time anything would have me tapping my foot and biting my tongue as the process or time something took whittled away at my demeanor. Most of the time (I said most) it's a lack of patience with myself. I want to get something finished or see more obvious results of work I've done, but it doesn't seem like I'm making any forward progress. That's when I get edgy and irritable, which is exactly the kind of reaction I don't want to have. Not when I could avoid it altogether, and I can if I just alter my thinking 'in the moment'. That's the tricky part. Good thing I'm fairly obstinent, I won't allow myself to continue doing things that don't benefit my overall growth. At least I won't let it get out of hand anyway.
When it comes to food however, it is definitely tough to maintain a bright outlook. Not all food mind you, just the foods that my body seems to be hellbent on rejecting. Every few years since finding out I had an onion allergy, I seem to start reacting poorly to something else. Five years ago I stopped eating gluten, and then I cut out as many processed gf carbs as I could because even those didn't agree with me. What makes it frustrating is that I'm far from a picky eater. I love food! Until the onion allergy, I never thought twice about trying new foods. If the opportunity to taste something new presented itself, I was always game. A food allergy will end that excitement quick.
If I know a food could even potentially have something I can't eat in it, I avoid it without hesitation, and these days without regret. It gets easier to pass on foods I may have once enjoyed, now that I have had enough awful experiences consuming them post-allergy onset. What I am bothered by, what makes me testy with impatience is when I eat somthing that doesn't have any of my allergy triggers in it and it makes me feel like I ate a big pile of onion bagels. The painful — quite literally painful process of narrowing down the potential offenders is tediously slow. Not only is the answer rarely found by removing the first food/ingredient, but trying to sort through it all means a lot of agonizing, or at the very least supremely uncomfortable nights. When your digestive system is irritated, everything is an offender. So, after a reaction you have to let everything heal before you willing subject yourself to the inner chaos all over again. Each and every time you remove an ingredient/food. Not fun, and trying on the most angelic and patient of people, of which I am neither. Pity those who have to put up with me on a daily basis when this happens. Thankfully they love me anyway.
So what is the upside to this? Well, eventually I figure out what food my body has decided it no longer wants to process. In the meantime, I get to appreciate what being healthy and feeling good is worth. It is hard to lose sight of those things when you are in a cycle of digestive distress. You embrace things like waking up and feeling great because your stomach isn't in pain, or your abdomen isn't distended from inflammatory reactions. To be blunt, you appreciate regularity, not to mention all foods that enter, work their way through and exit your body without much ado. My allergies could be far worse than they are, so even as I wince at the thought of the discomfort, I know that I'll survive. The worst of it truly is the effect it has on my nerves. When you're not naturally a patient person, having that shortcoming challenged certainly tests your resolve to be the better version of yourself you've worked so hard to become.
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