i. Jealousies pop in my mind like popcorn, specific and sudden.
Z’s flat stomach (golden, too), R’s middle part (stunning), M’s eyelashes and smile, S’s bold outfits / perfect makeup, E’s perfect tilt of head and soft-smile-framed-by-soft-hair, C’s clothes and how they fall on her littler-than-mine waist, how perfectly N photographs, as if blossoming.
And already, I can hear more popping: all women younger than me (so much time to change and become and be), all women who have told me they look up to me (why, it is I that looks up to them and wishes I had the boldness they have at such a young age, what do I show them besides how to be loud and excited in a room of people who are neither of those things?). The woman I talked with yesterday who is reading a book I had never heard of that is making her think about sexuality (my mind shaming me for not knowing this book, for not diving into the same issues). All women with a boyfriend, all women with a girlfriend. Everyone who has already explored polyamory, all women and men with a septum piercing. Androgynous people who have perfectly constructed monotone outfits. I’m jealous of me when I was younger, when I was thinner, when I was happier. I’m jealous of you, probably.
What is this looking back and away? In both memory and jealousy and their entanglement the other day when: it was fine, with moments both beautiful and easy, and then I remembered a photo of her, or her makeup the last time we hung out, and my body and face and day were suddenly: grayer, less, not.
And then the rushing-ahead-of, my anxiety stepping in even though I didn’t invite her (did I?)— “I need to figure out how to do that thing, I should look up workouts” or “I should watch makeup tutorials.” “I need to change this part about me now.” It’s a seeing, a fixating away, and therefore a denying / disapproving / lessening of the present.
ii. If what the mind sees is a projection of what’s inside, and I see the beauty of the woman’s hair, and the strength of that man’s legs, does that mean I am beautiful and strong? In fact, is jealousy some sort of reminder—if only we could see it as such? Is it a reflection of that which is inside of yourself, which is difficult for you to see in yourself because we think (are convinced) that we cannot be beautiful or strong?
Because if we are not inferior in some way, then how can we explain why we don’t have what we want? Why can’t I be as beautiful as the woman with the long hair outside the window of this cafe? And yet, it seems it is not a question of “I,” but a question of my thinking and seeing. Why can’t my thinking about myself be as generous and beauty-seeing / seeking as it is when directed at that woman? I doubt she sees herself with the same beauty as I see her with / perhaps because she is not outside herself. We can only see others as approaching perfect / while we ourselves must be much farther from it.
I think we automatically imbue the world with a beauty that we don’t often see ourselves with. As if that lens doesn’t work when we look inside.
We are so wedded to our thoughts, we are so with our stories and our disappointments and wounds (those both seen and unseen / healed and unhealed). We tell ourselves a narrative where we are wrong / outside of / without / not her / not loved by them / not as ____ as they are. And this is our self-story that we read to ourselves as we navigate each day: a list of not’s, of wrong paths, of ways in which we were not as good as we could have been.
iii. If only, when we saw people that are different than us, we would shout “fuck yeah” like I just whispered at the woman running down the street pushing a double stroller with two young children in it. There was no judgement, no dismissal, no fear or jealousy, only a yes yes yes! / similar to:
iv. This fall, during a pre-service at my restaurant, my manager said he had something to read to us and it was weird and it wasn’t going to really make sense but to bear with him.
It was from Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titans, which I had never read. He started reading about this creature that was found on a planet far away. Vonnegut’s narrator explained their looks, their culture, their habits, how they “flaked” in order to procreate. And then he came to the end of the section and everything clicked into place and I started to cry. He read aloud:
The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous
as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic
response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first.
The first is, "Here I am, here I am, here I am."
The second is, "So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.”
Here’s to transitioning my mind space to be more of that refrain.
Thoughts / prompts:
I haven’t read a Vonnegut book yet, which one do you think I should start with?
What’s a feeling to feel so often / one that has so many layers, that you could write it in four parts?
Have you ever written about real people but using random letters? Does it feel empowering or dehumanizing?
How can we teach ourselves to adopt our generous, beauty-seeking lenses towards ourselves?