My strongest attribute is my patience but I have seen it be my downfall as well. Take for example, the last person in line is going to be limited as resources are less available. Yet, often when someone is last they can embody all those those before them. Kind of like when you have to give a speech, you have a frame of reference as others spoke before you on how to stand, where to look, how to sound and with how loud you must be to be heard. I am used to being last and its become second nature to put others first. There's something innate in me in wanting to care for others. I believe Albert Einstein said...if you dont live for others than you are not living.

Ironically, I was in the psychiatric hospital when someone saw me race across the room in my chair as I was the last one to make it there. That had been the group assignment, apparently I wasn't thinking like everyone else and I sat there. When it dawned on me to make my way across the room, everyone else had gone. So, I dragged myself and the chair over in lightening speed. I don't know why but everyone was impressed. I think it was because I made it in record time but the odd thing was that the group leader had congratulated me and told me that I was actually first. I thought she was nuts for thinking that but she made sense when she started to explain how everyone moves in their own time. I guess I had demonstrated that with my absent thinking. I had mulled over the story of the Rabbit and the Tortoise for a quick synopsis of things but sat back confused as I ever was. "Okay, last is first in the mental ward, go figure." This what I was thinking at the time.

Over the years, I have been positioning myself to be first. As a woman, whose a mother and wife, it is easy to find youself put last. Is it by our own doing as the general caretaker? I am unsure but in conversations with friends I know that it happens and there is nothing more to do than climb up and out of that mindset.

I see myself jockeying for position in getting my needs met, usually concerning my emotional needs. It's a fact of life that being number one reaps its rewards. I have learned this from being last and by putting my children's need before me. I consider it patience, but others might consider it naive and dumb.  I currently have a need to be seen and heard, after a childhood ruled by the idea that children are not to be seen or heard. So, I continue on not knowing if I matter to others.