Patience, by its very definition, has an end. Patience is: the good natured tolerance and delay in agitation for delay or incompetence. No where in there does it say it is indefinite. But where do you draw the line? Especially when you know there is a good person behind the offending behavior. How much time do you give to the want of change, without that change actually manifesting? I don't have the answers to these questions, perhaps no one does. Or, more likely, it is individually based on the person and relative situation. What I present is only an analysis of what a patient person, one patient person goes through. Loss. Sorrowful, gut wrenching loss. And that loss is recurring. Not a singular event. It happens over and over again. Hope, love, then loss. After all, patience is not eternal. It becomes necessary, over time, to withdraw. To minimize the wounding. Patience can be a good thing, but it also wounds. Maybe if others knew of the wounds they might be a little more careful. Take a little more care in how they treat themselves as well as others. Perhaps, to most it is a foreign concept, that how you treat yourself effects others. The thought that when you mistreat yourself, others are the ones who are pained and harmed is something that most have not come to terms with. We are all interconnected and that is something we can not stop. We are tied by our own humanity, or inhumanity as the case may be. But we are still all interconnected. When one develops a bond to another, there is joy. The shared reality that develops can either be nurturing or harmful. And when one within that shared reality acts detrimentally, it effects the whole of the shared reality. In this way, how we treat ourselves is how we treat others. Too many of us don't treat ourselves with respect, then we expect to gain that necessary respect from others. That can not happen. We all need to respect ourselves. Treat ourselves gently and with reverence. In this way we can then treat others gently and with reverence. Patience needs to be rewarded, or it disappears. Wounds will eventually overtake it, if it isn't.