Jealousy Ruins Lives And Destroys Cities

Growing up in a family of hard astrology believers, I’ve always been told to stay weary of jealousy and its fearsome claws that split your soul. Being born a Scorpio, I have always been told to never succumb to this feeling, to separate myself from it, even if it means creating a distance from the people causing it. Jealousy was the thing that terrified everyone; it ruined lives and crumbled cities.

So as I grew, I thought I was doing pretty well. I was hardly ever jealous of other kids on the playground. If their houses were bigger, if they had more toys, if they had twenty pets or that the teacher might have liked them better never really mattered. All I knew was that what I had was what I had, and I should be happy and grateful about it. All I knew was that I had the choice of either sitting around sulking, or climbing a bunch of monkey bars because I could.

Even through adolescence, and cringe, puberty, I never really faced a moment in my life where I compared my maturity to other girls. Sometimes I felt strong waves of frustration when boys preferred my best friend to me, and I admit jealousy did take over. But a few hours of being alone, a good book, some music and salty chips, I was good as new.

But now, as a young adult, I have begun to feel that, sometimes, I might want, I might need, the things that other people have. For instance, see that girl over there? Yeah her parents are super rich, I wish I was rich then I could do this this and this. Oh that girl over there? Yeah her boyfriend is so romantic and lovely, ugh I wish I had a boyfriend like that, or even, a boyfriend at all. Or euh that girl? Yeah her parents had a family portrait photo-shoot in Disneyland when she was like what, six months old? I wish my parents were considerate (or ridiculous) enough to do that. And golly, that boy has my dream job! How did he get where he is? It’s so fucking unfair.

These shallow thoughts have begun to pop into my head at such rapid rate, leaving me overwhelmed and confused and feeling like absolute shit. I never thought I was a judgmental person, or envious at all. It seems as if all those years of suppressing this form of emotion caused it to develop in a little dark part of my mind, and now that it is in full spurt, it has decided to ambush the most vulnerable parts of my mind.

But as I vainly cry over caramel fudge and kit kats, I realize that I have (not only become a fucking cliché) reached two very rational conclusions. Firstly: this is either happening because I am feeling more and more insecure about the things I want to achieve in life. This is intensified by witnessing other people my age getting closer to achieving their aspirations, which makes me incredibly nervous about life in general. And, in order to get through this, instead of feeling happy for other people, I decide to put myself down using jealousy as my vice.

Or maybe now that I am growing older, this sense of self-doubt is beginning to mature. My tender age is forcing me to understand all the reasons I should have been jealous of those kids on the playground as well as my best friend’s piggy giggle. Maybe because I am growing older, I have become more self-aware, closer to realizing that the things I truly want are actually silly and unachievable. This understanding leaves a raw torn mark. By seeing my friends doing things that I wished I had chosen to do, is like pouring citric acid all over it. Millions and millions of times over.