That Should Have Been Me.
On envy, bitterness, and the only antidote that actually works
If you’ve ever watched someone else stand in the light you wanted and felt something ugly bloom in your chest, this one’s for you.
Yesterday I felt that all-too-familiar but still unsettling pang of envy.
My defenses were down. Winter, grey, holiday season, husband without a job. All the ingredients for a full-blown pity party. I was fully catering it.
There I was watching PBS Great Performances, a Broadway tribute. And then on the screen two of my friends appeared. Sparkly dress, top hat, tails. The whole dazzling package.
Things got bitter. Real fast.
The Envy Chapter
The timing was almost poetic. I’d just finished reading the chapter on envy in Elise Loehnen’s On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good. I read the whole book but the envy chapter?
That chapter made my ears perk up.
Because envy carries its own shame.
When I feel it I feel shame about feeling it.
When I sense someone is envious of me I feel shame about that too.
My job is to stand in the spotlight. That choice, to stop dimming my light to make others comfortable, has gotten easier with age. But it doesn’t erase the sting when envy comes calling anyway.
Last night my envy wasn’t just about the spotlight my friends were standing in. It was about the choices they’d made to get there.
Childless. Singularly focused. Willing to leap into the grit and chaos of New York City and sacrifice entire swaths of their lives for that moment on stage.
I’m quick to assure myself I could have done that.
This isn’t false humility. I know my talent. I know what I’m capable of.
But I didn’t do it. That wasn’t my path.
Why It Wasn’t My Path
We make these choices for a million nuanced reasons, some conscious, some not. For me it was several things at once. My father was dying in my early twenties and I wanted to be home for him. And also, honestly, the grit of New York was too much for my nervous system. My chronic illness keeps me tethered to my bed, my heat pack, my ice pack. The idea of trekking from 103rd and Broadway to a downtown audition, daunting. Downright impossible. Even at 22 some part of me knew that life would kill me much faster.
Still. Sitting on that couch watching my friends, I felt the bitterness bloom.
I said something snarky to my husband. Something like that should have been me. And bless him, he didn’t try to cheer me up with platitudes about the great life I already have. Because honestly? How annoying would that be.
Sometimes you just want someone to say yeah it could have. Forget those people. Not because they mean it and not because those people deserve it, they didn’t do anything wrong. But because you need to wallow for exactly one minute before you peel yourself off the couch and do something about it.
He knows this. He let me wallow.
The Only Antidote
The antidote to envy isn’t sulking. I mean sulking is fine for a minute. Sulk away. But it’s not the antidote.
The antidote is creation.
The path forward isn’t theirs. It’s yours. The work to be done is the work you’re actually called to do. Your path doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.
In fact it’s better if it doesn’t.
The antidote to envy is taking one bold step. Your step. The one only you can take, toward a life that is yours and yours alone.
So that’s what I did.
Eventually.
After the wallowing.
My Current Obsessions A little treat for making it to the end.
📖 Reading: On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehnen. The envy chapter alone is worth the price of admission. Read the whole thing though.
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