Jealousy

Jealousy is a largely wasted emotion.
I have been the jealous one, and I have been the focus of an other's jealousy.  Both sides have unique issues.  The times I've been jealous have usually been over something quite trivial, and when I look back on it I'm left wondering "what in the world was I thinking?".

As children we are innately jealous.  Someone always has something we want, but don't have.  I always wanted new things.  Being the third of four girls, I wore hand-me-downs.  Money was tight, and that's just how it was.  We ordered our school clothes in the fall from the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogues.  That was the extent of my designer wardrobe.

What I really wanted was Levi's.  All the girls at school wore Levi's jeans.  But at $40 a pair, they just weren't an option.  I remember saving my money from babysitting so I could go to the store and buy my own Levi's, all the while going to school in my Gitano jeans.  Now, it never occurred to me that Levi's didn't make ladies jeans when I was growing up, or that the girls at school who were wearing them were shaped just like the boys.  I was not.

When I'd finally saved enough money for my prized purchase, I went to a store up on the Ligonier diamond.  After digging through piles of jeans and making countless trips to the dressing room, I found a pair that fit.  It was horrible!  I looked like a barrel.  The jeans were unforgiving, shaped for a person built like a plank of wood.  I had acquired what I was jealous of, but it did not make me happy.

Being the object of some one's jealousy isn't any better.  I've actually never really understood what there is about me to be jealous of.  This has happened twice in my adult life, and both times cause extreme pain for me.  Seems like it should have ended differently since I supposedly had the prize, right?

I had a turbulent friendship with a co-worker.  Perhaps I let it go on too long, but I understood some issues from her past and I really wanted to help her, to be a friend, not not abandon her.  One night she called me, in a fit of rage, and I was clearly able to see just how deep-seeded her jealousy was.  She screamed at me that she "would take the important people in my life away".  I laughed it off, thinking that those who truly loved and befriended me would see through her schemes and stand by me.  She set her plan in motion, and within a year had won over those she was focused on.  Her jealousy of me had messed up my life.  She acquired what I had, but it didn't make her happy.  In fact, she is more miserable now than she was then.

I say we should make our own happiness.  We don't know what is going on in someone else's life, and what it may be taking for them to have/be what you long for.  They say grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  Maybe it's just getting more fertilizer.