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At some point admiration turned into jealousy. I mean, how perfect could she be? She made me feel average. It became a problem.

There was something magnetic about her. I wanted to be her friend, maybe. Or imitate her. Sometimes I wanted to diminish her, poke holes in her mystique, see her act ugly. I couldn’t figure it out. But I felt compelled to see her – what she was wearing, what she was doing and how she went about it. Everything about her seemed organic and effortless. No fair. My feelings puzzled me as I watched them take form and shape shift in response to her – respect, wonder, resentment, jealousy – she inspired me then put me in a bad mood.

I’m so weird. I would think this to myself after I lost track of time daydreaming about how awesome it must be to be her. So bold. So creative. Oh, how I wished! I wanted to be so bold and so creative too. She made everything look like art and sound like a poem. I watched her and I watched everyone else watch her. And I was jealous.

Carried away, I would romanticize her life and feel unspecial. I convinced myself that because of her, the person I wanted to be was already taken. I saw my ideal self in her, stolen before I could claim it. Such a wretched feeling, but everything has a deeper perspective.

With Scorpio intensity and introvert withdrawal, I sat there with my jealousy and my fixation and my pain and I dug it all up. Doubt. Denial. Insecurity. Guilt. I would never be content if I continued to think that someone else’s light could diminish mine. I would never bloom if I continued to feel unnecessary, just another flower reaching for the sun, afraid of being overshadowed. I would never be so bold, so creative, so free, if I continued to think that anyone could take what inherently belonged to me.

Until I acknowledged and claimed my light as my own, I felt overpowered by the brilliance of others and I didn’t understand why. I built them up and broke myself down.

What is more wretched, more scary than believing that your highest vision of yourself has been stolen and given to someone else?The realization that your highest vision is suffocating, strangled by your own disregard, and yet still fighting for life inside of you where it’s been all along.

At some point jealousy turned into admiration. No one is perfect. No one came make me feel average. Next problem.

GG,
author of The Beautiful Disruption