The Waiting Game

Anyone who knows me would say I spend my whole life doing.

I would say I spend it waiting.

In the late summer of 1975, I waited an extra three weeks in my mother's womb before starting to push my way out. By the time I decided it was time to go, my mother's belly was hanging so low that she had to hold it up with both hands. By the time I started pushing headfirst, it took me only four hours to get out.

I've been impatient ever since.

When I get up in the morning, I can't wait to go back to bed. When I eat lunch, I can't wait for dinner. When I go to a concert or a movie, I can't wait for it to be over. When I send an email or leave a voicemail, I excitedly wait until it becomes excruciatingly clear that a reply will not come.

During most of my childhood, I waited. I waited for my father to come home from work every night except for Sunday. The waiting was worst on Friday nights, when my father kept late bank hours, but on Friday nights, I got to keep him at home instead of losing him to his night job in the credit department at Sears.

When my father wasn't home, while I waited for his return, I also waited for the yelling to stop. I waited for someone to discover the hell I was living in and whisk me away. I waited to be older, to move out and to  escape the yelling forever.

My whole life, I've waited to be older so that life would get better. When I was in college - and finally out of my parents' house - I couldn't wait to graduate. When I graduated, I couldn't wait to move to New York. (I did the next day.) When I moved to New York, I couldn't wait to get a job in the music industry. (I did within a month.) When I started as an assistant at Atlantic Records, I couldn't wait to get my own office and have someone else answer my phones. (I did in just over two years.) As a budding executive, I couldn't wait to make more money than my father. (I did by the time I was 30. He was 58.)

After the tumultuous decade of my 20s - an age I'd held such high hopes for - everyone told me that life would get so much better in my 30s. I'm still waiting for that.

I'm still waiting to lose my baby fat. I'm still waiting to be dateable. I'm still waiting for a reason, a purpose, a destiny, a comfort.

And all the while I'm waiting, I just have to keep moving forward.

Right now, in this moment, I'm waiting to find out whether or not I'm moving to LA in April. Time is ticking away, time for packing and apartment-hunting and car-buying and address-changing and long-last-looking and teary goodbye-ing. But I can wait a few minutes, a few hours, a few days. There are much bigger things that have kept me waiting for much longer.

Some things may keep me waiting forever...

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