Green Eyed Monster In The Mirror
Women have a multitude of reasons to be jealous, but my moments of jealousy towards others have been fleeting. I don’t really want your car or your wardrobe. I don’t covet your wealthy parents or your Instagram followers.
I’m jealous of the person I think I am supposed to be.
I’m jealous of myself in a different form — the more perfect, tolerant, kind, calm Caitlin. This compulsion has taken years to pinpoint. In the way that others might covet external objects, I desperately want to be internally “better.” It’s informed by years of therapy, which encourage a natural and normal path through growth. No quick and easy fix exists, but I would like for my feet to be firmly planted in the future. If the process of living is determined by making mistakes and learning from them, I’d like to fast-forward to the part where I, Caitlin, have learned it all and can now walk around as a whole, complete person. That life seems easier than what I have now.
As it stands currently, my life is good. Arguably, a lot of the time, it’s great. I have a job that offers me enough financial stability to travel and pursue writing. I live in a beautiful city with an active arts community, one that I’m lucky enough to participate in as an arts and culture writer. I have an amazing partner who has been supportive of all my dreams and goals for the past six years. And yet, I crave more and grow resentful of how stagnant the march towards a more realized sense of perfection becomes. That jealousy and bitterness mounts and the person I currently am devolves, donning a disgusting sheen.
These feelings stem from anxiety. Anxiety thrives in future tense. It assumes an endless string of questions that are unanswerable. Anxiety happily finds room to nest in my presumptions about how, eventually, things will be better but the path towards that inevitable perfection is murky. It also breeds incredible self-deprecation. Future Me has finally taken the professional risks I feel incapable of pursuing. Future Me is able to quell her internal dialogue enough to establish a concise, stable voice. Future Me probably has a dope ass haircut too.
Current Me falls behind, every single time, when I implement this measure of success. Yet this behavior persist. In spite of knowing how hurtful it is, I continually find myself pining for the future version of myself and jealous of how together my life will feel, one day.
