Sometimes I wonder if I’m jealous of her.
In college, I liked being the only girl. So did my roommate Ana. She had her group of guy friends to eat with, walk to class with, hang out in the dorm with, go to parties with. I had my group too. We got along pretty well for a couple of girls who otherwise didn’t think too much of the ‘competition’.
I remember when Bill started dating Floozy. I don’t even remember her name. And Bill was an ancillary, the suitemate of two of my other long-time acquaintances. But still when Floozy was in the suite, I seethed. I didn’t think she was that pretty or that smart (though I could be wrong about the latter since I had zero classes with her and didn’t talk to her to ask how well she was doing academically). I just liked being the only girl around.
I didn’t get around; I had one boyfriend for two years in school. None of my male relationships that started with friendship ended any other way while I was there. Of course, my guy friends had girlfriends. It was college after all. But they were never a threat to me. Just Floozy, the way she sat on Bill’s couch, or joined in our conversations, her annoying laughter in the suite.
So am I jealous of her?
I wonder. I know there is plenty not to be jealous about. I’m not jealous that I wasn’t adopted. Or that my parents divorced and my mother remarried to a man who was abusive to me. I’m not jealous that I didn’t live in a trailer in backwoods country. I’m not jealous that I didn’t sleep around much, have abortions, have a child before I was done with my education. I’m not jealous of the fear and insecurity she’s known all her life, that she had no control over, or that she helped contribute to. I’m not jealous of her home now, or her face, or her body.
Am I jealous of the rest? Of the fact that she always got good grades? Jealous that she has a Ph.D? That she is published? Am I jealous that she has a healthier husband than I, or that she has a son?
I’m not jealous of the latter, because I don’t particularly care for the son she has, nor the circumstances which brought him to her. I never cared that much for school, I suppose she would say it’s because I was spoiled and for her it was her only means of escape and a better life. I don’t think she’s smarter than me when it comes to life in general or childrearing or knowing how to cook. She needs academia. It’s her identity. It’s where she can find herself. She needs the reassurance of every publication, every engagement. I am not that needy.
Or am I jealous that she had my husband first? When he was fit and adventurous? That she’s the only one able to bear him a child? That she was once so powerful as to manipulate a man to sterilize him, to put him to work for her, to cast him aside in such a manner as to make him forever follow at her heels and live in fear that she would take the one meaningful thing in his life away?
Maybe that’s it. Maybe I just want her power, to have him follow me to the ends of the earth, to want nothing more than what I hold in my hands, to reassure me that our bond will never be broken…