Me: Oh..hi…Jealousy, didn’t expect to find you here…
Jealousy: Ahh..just as well..nobody expects to find me. In fact, most go to lengths to avoid me like the plague, and yet, to be honest, I never go anywhere uninvited. You invited me here.
Me: Me? Umm..sorry Jealousy but I don’t remember inviting you here. In fact, to be honest, I am feeling quite uncomfortable as your presence has caused something within me to be searing with indescribable emotion- and that’s making my face flush crimson.
Jealousy: Well, that’s the warmth you are extending to your guest- ME! You invited me to stay with you and so, I am entering the cozy space you’ve made for me inside your heart and I kinda like it there. The temperature flaring up is just me unpacking all the new emotions you MUST experience to realize how you really feel.
Me: How I really feel? How I REALLY feel…about what? I don’t know what you are saying. <looks down>
Jealousy: About the girl friend he brought along last weekend. What else?
Me: I don’t know what you are talking about. And you know what- I’m really tired, just let me be.
Jealousy: You think that’d help you avoid me? I will be wherever you are- because you will carry me in you.
Me: Listen, I don’t want to feel like this, okay…<starts crying>
Jealousy: I am not sorry you are crying, I won’t be- And not because I am heartless but because it will wash away the hurt and anger you feel. It is okay to feel that way. Being jealous in love isn’t a bad thing. I don’t know why people think of me this way- ignoring me, avoiding me, pushing me away or even projecting me onto somebody else- like it’d relieve them of the part that is their own to bear!
Me: But I don’t like being jealous in love. I want to be different, okay- I want to be kind and accepting of her. I want to make friends with her because he is. And God knows I tried too. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t help but notice the way their hands accidentally bumped into each other when they reached out for the drink, I couldn’t help notice the way she smiled then, and the twinkle in his eye. I couldn’t help but notice how she seemed to laugh a li’l harder on his jokes all the way home and how he insisted she stay back coz we were catching his favorite-est movie ever! I couldn’t help looking at her from the corner of my eye to figure what was so attractive about her..I just couldn’t…okay..
I didn’t want to feel whatever it is that you made me feel coz I wanted to be with him- glad for his presence in my life and happy to see him happy! Why did you have to make me feel like someone was clutching at the pounding machine in my chest and trying to pull it out..why, Jealousy?
Jealousy: Because you need to experience everything that is new to grow. How could you possibly imagine that by pretending to be someone you aren’t you could rid yourself of my company? How could you possibly think that just because you imagine a certain ‘response’ to be the ‘ideal’ response to a situation, you can superimpose some other ‘appropriate’ feeling on top of what you really feel?
So you threw some things around and sobbed until the wee hours of the morning and even worried about something between him and her. But all of it allowed you to show me around all the anger, the pain and discomfort inside of you- so the tears streaming out could wash over. If anything, my visit is an opportunity for you to discover how you truly feel and what lesson you need to learn to accept yourself the way you are, own all the emotions you feel with radical honesty and still forge the path to finding and sustaining the love you desire and deserve.
Me: So this way I feel- like a crazed person who whips up nightmarish scenarios in her head and wants to do something even more terrible to avert any such thing- all of this does not make me a bad person?
Jealousy: Not at all, dear. Not at all.
Me: So, I can be jealous in love- and feel like that all the time?
Jealousy: Yes, you can be jealous in love dear, but you don’t feel this all the time, do you? You need to feel this only until you can accept everything that love entails- embrace it with all the force of your heart- and use it to find a newer understanding of yourself and the love you want. Not need, but want. After that, you should bid adieu and let me go. Else, my crazy shall start kicking in- and then, it’d get ugly. Fair warning.
Me: Really?
Jealousy: Really.
Me: Thanks, Jealousy.
Jealousy: You are welcome. I think it shall soon be time to leave. Let me start packing!
Me: Here, let me help.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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