Patience moves toward something; it endures a present difficulty in service of a future good it has clearly seen and chosen.

Compliance moves away from something; it submits to a present harm in order to avoid a confrontation it fears, and it chooses nothing, because it is not really choosing at all but only flinching.

And the tragedy is that from the inside they are almost impossible to tell apart, because both involve not-fighting, both involve absorbing, both involve the quiet swallowing of a grievance.

I told myself for three years that I was being patient with my husband’s family, and I genuinely believed it, and the belief was precious to me because it let me feel like a good and loving woman rather than a frightened and diminishing one.

But there was a test I never applied, the test that separates the two, and it is this: patience has a destination, and compliance does not.

If I had truly been patient, I could have named the future I was enduring toward — the day the difficulty would resolve, the good it would purchase.