jealousy turning saints into the sea

From a very young age, many of my interpersonal relationships were marred by jealousy.

 

Yes, I know I have talked about this at length before, but I wanted to reexamine it again with the recently dissolution of a 25 year friendship which, like so many others, was marred by jealousy. I've been thinking about it a lot, contextualized with everything that has happened recently.

Also, I lied. I AM going to talk about what finally broke the camel's back. Screen shots be damned. 

And, once again, allow me to reiterate something about this: I do not wish for anyone to be jealous of me. I do not think so highly of myself in any regard, nor do I want to make other people jealous of me, wish that were jealous of me. That's not how I move through the world. First of all, being perceived in and of itself is absolutely horrifying to me. Secondly, it is just not a nice feeling! It's not a comfortable feeling knowing that someone in your close proximity covets something that you have, secretly resents you for it, thinks that you don't deserve it and shouldn't have it. I don't want my friends of all people to be jealous of me, I want my friends to be my friends. I do not consider myself to be particularly special, least of all special enough to be THAT jealous of. I don't want people I care about so much to secretly despise me.

Because when people are jealous of you, and think that you do not deserve whatever it is that they've decided that they deserve over you, it means they are allowed to destroy you for it (listen, I didn't say that any of this makes any actual bloody sense, okay). Just put a pin in this for later.

Sometimes they secretly dislike you for it, and sometimes it's not so secret. Sometimes they tell you in not so many words. 

From a young age, people have greatly resented my abilities.  Yes, if I can say so myself, I do think I exceed in multiple areas where I believe that I am naturally gifted--but I also work at all of these things.  It's God-given talent married to a lot of very hard work. Let me reiterate: it's a lot of hard work. I've always been gifted at writing, art, and music---talent which unfortunately isn't met with a higher social bracket. How dare I, in my lower social order, be so gifted in these areas, let alone multiple. I also recognize that gifts, even if they are gifts, are something that needs to me taken care of. That is also comes with responsibility. That it needs constant refinement. Yes, I am blessed, but there are so many people even more blessed than me, and I am humbled that someone up there thought I was an okay-enough vessel for these gifts.

I have always had a lot of what other people want, which is so funny to even think about, considering I have lacked things I need for most of my life. I came from a deficit. I came from the bottom. 

The person that I had recently separated from had often expressed jealously framed as compliments towards me. "Oh, I am so peanut butter and jealous of your skin/ figure." It felt like I was secretly being cursed, like Ursula stealing my voice. For every jealous comment framed as a compliment, there were equal amounts of downplaying my abilities and accomplishments. Or trying to frame me as privileged in some way.

I felt like their jealousy towards me was going to make me drown.  

It was incredibly palpable. Thankfully, this person is a spoiled and greedy person by nature, and so the ire of their jealously wasn't exclusively targeted at me (that's nice of the, I guess). In fact, they seemed very jealous of anyone (and just about everyone) who had something they wanted that they didn't have. Last year, they had made a  bitter comment about  someone's house and children (and mind you, this person also owns their house, and didn't do a thing to earn it). They had no idea what this person's early life was like, how hard they had worked, where they came from. All this person saw was how her life was now, not the hard road it was to get there.  And this person was jealous, bitter, and resentful.

It was a very eye-opening experience for me, because that means that someone this person knew very casually had her whole life being studied down to to the minute detail by someone who was envious of them. 

Just because she has a soft life now, doesn't mean that she still does not struggle. It doesn't mean that at one point her life wasn't soft--which is very much was NOT.

This was a little over a year ago, but now my every interaction with this person was significantly different. They knew nothing of what went on my life. I engaged with them very little, and kept things about my personal life to a bare minimum during interactions.  

As people around this person continued to have wins in life, they continued to get more and more bitter and resentful.

Fast forward to earlier this week.

I see that this person has retweeted a dog pile of an autistic creator (who is just darling and a lovely human being, by the way). This creator regularly shares her personal struggles as part of her disability advocacy, which include being attractive and not fitting other stereotypes associated with autism. She never implies that she struggles more, she just talks about how her disability is frequently being discredited because of her attractiveness (meaning that she cannot get needs of her DISABILITY met). Well, not only did the dog pile (filled with [obviously very jealous] people [none of whom were very attractive, hmmm!]) prove her very point, obviously because she is so pretty, it must mean that she has never suffered EVER, and thus deserves the punishment of an internet dog piling (once again, proving her point). I'll let you in on a little secret,  disability doesn't care about your attractiveness, and the level at which you suffer your disability is going to be whatever it is, no matter what you look like. 

I'll let you in on another little secret-- no matter how you look,  you will be socially punished in some way. This is not a contest anyone wants to win, and there are certainly no winners.

But that was my final straw.

Take the jealousy elsewhere.  Go take that energy and invest it into yourself.  Leave people who are just trying to live and work on themselves out of it. 

Please.