Jealousy and I are Now Separated

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. ~ John Dewey.

I was 32 years old when my shattered heart thrust me into seeking help. At this time, I had lost the desire to eat, to get out of bed, to take care of my children – I was rudderless.  At 40, I was two years sober, and I had a strong desire to look myself in the mirror with kindness, instead of feeling repulsion. At 64, as I reflect, I feel extreme gratitude and pleasurable relief that I said yes to the call for sanity. Benjamin Franklin said, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” HARD, indeed!!!!  

In therapy I began to form relationships with words, like integrity, manipulation, choice, and jealousy. Are you manipulative, was a deep dive question.  I was given a questionnaire with multiple choice responses. WOW, I learned that yes, I was manipulative, and that I had used this skillfully in my violent marriage. Getting to know this about me, the being that lived under my skin, was humbling and humiliating. The process took courage and bravery to continue opening to my life experiences and choices, so that I could understand how this me came to be. 

Discovering that I had a shaky relationship with integrity, had me visualizing a life of living in a cave, surely that would be easier. I was learning how to life respectfully in my second half of life. 

By far, the hardest discovery was the one that felt more like a Siamese twin, jealousy. In fact, I believed that jealousy was part of expressing love. The movie Endless Love, with Brooke Shields, portrays what I believed was “real love.” The education to unlearn this belief, felt like I was going through a surgical procedure, without anesthesia.

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that. ~ Oliver stone

Three years into my journey of self-discovery, I was riding home from work with a friend, and I belched out, with sadness, my most recent jealousy encounter.

“I don’t feel jealousy,” she stated, as a fact. 

I didn’t respond, verbally, my response showed on my face as I felt my eyebrows move down toward my nose and the faint lines, between my eyes, turned into two vertical gouges. My insides tightened up as I stored the self-professed statement into internal folders: “That’s a lie and I will prove it,” and the other file called, “I knew I couldn’t trust you.” Both folders were bulging with statements that I would use when the opportunity arose to help support that I was right, which helped me feel safer, and I was ALWAYS seeking safety. 

Envy and jealousy are two words that lived in me, actively, for much of my life. Add a dose of insecurity, roll in obsession, and you have the mixture for insanity.  As I write these words, the furrow revisits my brow, and my solar plexus tightens up.  After years of practicing self-love, meditation, journaling, and a deep dive into the truth about love, I now recognize the warning signs of this thought process and I seek to calm the insecurity that was just sparked. Truth is that it’s not that I don’t feel jealous or envious, it’s that I now have tools to come back to my center. Tools like hearing a warning from Robbie the robot, “Danger Will Robinson, danger.”  

At age 7, Lost in Space was one of my favorite TV shows. I loved that the robot’s focus was to keep Will and his family safe. As a child I didn’t have a robot and my internal me was doughy and lacking ingredients that supported health and well-being. As I grew into my teen years, I began to stuff my feelings with frozen cinnamon rolls. I would eat them, as if they were a popsicle, but I stuffed them in, because it was a secret, done at night, except for the soft light that appeared when I opened the freezer door. I was feeding my insecurity, my loneliness, my confusion – I was feeding lost. 

At 15, I met him. I was crazy for him, right off the bat. At 16, he was vibrant, energetic, funny, and the girls were drawn to him. He was a gymnast, not a good gymnast, but he really liked it.  We had been “in love” for 6 months, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas and he had a gymnastic meet in a town about 80 miles away. My mom could see how much this meant to me, so she allowed me to open a Christmas gift, a beautiful turtleneck sweater and bell bottom pants. The colors were of fall, and they made my waist long deep almond brown hair shine. My hair was my favorite feature. She said I could drive the 80 miles, but I would have to take my 12-year-old sister, who was the age I was when I started driving.  As I dressed, I was lost in my fantasy, full of romance and happy endings. I had been sneaking “True Secrets” magazines out of my grandmother’s top drawer, tucked under her neatly folded house-dresses, for a couple of years, so I had plenty of fantasy to dream with. As I combed my hair and looked at myself in the mirror, I visualized the whole scene playing out.  I would walk in slow motion, into the gym. He would see me walking in and run to me. He wouldn’t have words because he would be so excited that I was there, but his performance would show how much he felt loved and supported by me.  He would be his best on the parallel bars, and he would “stick” his feet into the mat on the floor exercise. I would be the reason he won first place. 

As my sister and I pulled out of the driveway, mom said, “Be careful.” 

It is a mystery to me how I knew the 80-mile route, and then found the school, but I did. In hindsight, I can see how brave I was.  I had determination, my imagination fueled the whole trip and the steps it took to go into the gym to ready myself for his first-place accomplishments. As we walked into the gym, my heart pounded in anticipation. The sound was loud and echoey. I was nervous as I stood by the bleachers awaiting the moment that he would run to me. And then, there it was, the moment … but when he saw me, I realized that I hadn’t seen this look before, so I wasn’t prepared for the devastation I would soon feel. His roaring whisper thrust out of his swollen veins. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

I stuttered, in a small voice, “I, I, I, wanted to surprise you.”

“GET OUT OF HERE. LEAVE. RIGHT NOW!” 

This would be the first, of many times, that I would come to know rage in his face. I soon learned all the expressions that told me I should be fearful of what was in front of me, but I didn’t take them seriously. I was “being in love.”

The only thing I remember about the long drive home, in the dark, was silence, that is after I threatened my sister, “If you tell mom about this, I will hurt you.” 

The next day would bring about my first real experience with jealousy, and it ran through me like a virus.  I learned that he was interested in another gymnast and that they had begun a kissing relationship on that very night. She was quickly invading “my territory.” Her calls came frequently in the night, warning me to stay away from him. Catching them on his bed, so lost in lust that they didn’t hear me come in the room, merged my jealousy into insanity. The sounds that came out of me that day were not known to me. An animal in a bear trap would be one way to describe it. I was roaring out the years of pain over my mother leaving our family and my witnessing the pain of my dad’s broken heart. Years of searching for mom and ultimately taking my dad to the emergency room because he screamed and melted down the paneling wall. I learned he had a nervous breakdown.  The betrayal, my betrayal, spun me out of control. Jealousy was injuring me and threatening to injure them too. I didn’t turn to cinnamon rolls that night, I turned to a the green bottle of 100 Excedrin tablets, the same act that my dad stuffed into his broken heart, hoping to rest his pain.   

I believe that Robbie the robot saved me that night, because I got scared and admitted that I had taken the whole bottle of Excedrin. This led to a frantic ride to the emergency room, the same hospital that I drove daddy to when he melted down the wall.  This would be the first time that a broken heart would try and take my life.

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that. ~ Oliver stone

I later apologized to my friend, who stated she didn’t feel jealousy. I have also removed the bulging files, that I held in evidence to prove that I wasn’t safe in the world and that people were not trustworthy. A dear friend told me, “Your picker is broken.” She recognized that I was drawn to those that were wounded, as I was. My journey led me to have friends that were truth tellers and, with love, shared insights to support my unlearning and learning.   

It’s been 30 years since I emptied a bottle in despair, hoping to be filled with the sweetness of the frozen cinnamon rolls. Today I turn to prayer and meditation. These practices love and nurture the stirrings of jealousy, which still show up, but it’s no longer a virus, it’s a mosquito bite and it’s soothed by the reminder that “I am enough,” and that it is possible to live peacefully knowing that jealousy is just part of me, it is not me. I am love.