It comes on fast, and it comes on strong.
Jealousy.
Hurt.
Rejection.
Disappointment.
Fear.
And, anger.
These are all parts of jealousy.
I cannot define jealousy without including each of these feelings.
I’ve carried these feelings my whole life, and to be honest, they make me weary.
But, there’s something else.
A strange feeling in jealousy.
In a lineup, you’d quickly pick it out as the one that does not belong. But, it does.
I know, because jealousy is a feeling that has been there with me, my whole life.
It was there when I was a little girl, in yet another foster home, starting yet another school.
When I was locked in the dark room with the dark person, with the dark marking pooling onto his shirt.
I know, because it was there as I was unpacking strangers’ Christmas ornaments, studying them for the first time, yet again.
It was there when I was hiding in a battered women’s shelter.
It was there as I looked upon the ultrasound monitor, as I looked upon my lifeless baby, bobbing gently in his waters of my love.
It was there when I sat, crutching my broken womb in the shadow of my car waiting for my husband and his father to come to the hospital to pick me up after I learned that our baby was not alive.
It is here, as I meet with jealousy today, my lifelong teacher, my invisible twin.
Jealous, I am, for husbands who have not received the phone call my husband did that day.
Jealous, I am, for children, who do not have to share their mother with bereavement.
Jealous, I am, for women who bask in naivety in pregnancy and birth.
For people who do not know what I carry in my heart.
For people who feel simplicity.
What a rich sorrow when I allow this jealousy a place to manifest in full emotion.
When I heave, when I crumble, when I sob and cry loudly and weep unabashedly.
When I slip to my knees, collapse in tears, when I moan, when I groan,
“What is this supposed to mean?”
What is the purpose of this jealousy? What is it for? What good will it do? Bring? Grow?
I do not yearn for others to have this pain – quite the opposite, I instead simply want their simplicity.
In shame, I try to push this jealousy away with logic that there is no room for jealousy in gratefulness and humility.
Oh, gratefulness and humility, my weaknesses. How I desire to have poise and grace and humility!
But, I allow myself this meeting with jealousy. Not all the time, but, sometimes.
On a day, such as today.
I encounter it, and I invite it in.
For a time, the wailing and the crying fill and float and linger.
And then, on the floor, soaked in tears, throat and soul raw, something happens.
A stillness creeps.
The sixth feeling, it quietly appears.
It’s presence, a whisper.
It doesn’t answer the questions – at least, not immediately.
And, I’ll tell you, it often brings with it, even more questions!
It’s a part of jealousy that is as real as the others.
What is it for? What will it do? Bring? Grow?
I don’t know.
But this part of jealousy is as real as the others, and so I sit with it, this stillness, this whisper.
Strangely, it draws me into community, simply by it’s feeling, without answers, without solutions, without reason.
Community, that I felt abandoned from, forgotten from, neglected from.
Community, that I so, very, achingly, desperately, wearily, need.
By it’s own simple merit and by it’s own intrinsic goodness, it soothes and heals, this often unaccounted for, sixth part of jealousy. It is:
Hope.
May you listen for the whisper.
