She is no longer my step daughter legally but it was never of her fault…

Recently there has been a discussion about jealousy and whether it is a valid feeling. My stance is that it is a valid feeling.

Going through life I never considered myself a jealous person. I didn’t feel I had a reason to be. I wasn’t rich and for the window I was viewed through, grew up in poverty. My mother received assistance, a father was not present, I am the oldest of a large family-a secondary parent, and a latchkey kid. Though jealousy was not an option.

If I wanted something as a child, I saved for it, I asked for it if allowed - like my mother showed the means to provide it and I asked well in advance. I would ask could she save for me to have it. I asked strategically. I didn’t covet the most expensive sneakers or the most expensive clothes because I understood I couldn’t. I looked in magazines and planned for the future - my future. I watched TV and imagined what could be had for me.

I didn’t want someone else’s friends but I wanted friends. My life didn’t allow for me to have friends as often or hang out with groups. I learned to live in solitude. I wasn’t popular but people knew me and I knew people. I don’t remember boys having a crush on me. I remember a few here and there that showed interest towards me in my high school years, but didn’t go to my high school, with nothing coming of it.

I carried this lack of jealousy with me through college and through my different places of employment. Did I have wants? Yes, I wasn’t a person seeking this stripped enlightenment, just a normal day to day person with goals and dreams. I was just oblivious to anyone else except what I wanted.

Fast forward and I found myself married and an instant stepmother(it wasn’t a major issue). It is what festered within the relationship. I wasn’t in competition with a child though I would find myself asking a question that set off an alarm in myself that felt like jealousy.

“Why can’t you have the same patience with us as you do with her?”

This question came at the tail end of what seemed like the seventh argument that precluded the end of our marriage. I was speaking of me and our boys. The ones he had little patience or understanding for. It had been almost seven long years and now that question came up as one of the hard ones. Almost on the same rhythm of the question leaving my mouth, the realization that I was jealous of a 12 year old. I had whispered it under my breath and I was shocked by the revelation.

My memory was instantly flooded of times when I asked to hold her hand to walk into this building but felt a block. It was how I was excited to buy things for her but couldn’t feel anything at the time of presenting the items. There was a block that both of us felt and while I had expressed my disdain with her father’s actions on some instances, I didn’t realize how deep this unknown feeling had seeped inside. It seemed like I was only needed to cook for her and do her hair.

I didn’t recognize this feeling that was growing slowly and surely.

It wasn’t something I could address because I only saw this as temporary; as she was only here for the summers. I wanted so much to bond but it was hard and I felt at that moment why it was. Where that and another question sealed the fate of our marriage (I won’t go into detail).

I will say…

Jealousy isn’t unnatural it just doesn’t show up how you think it would.

Mookie💜

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