Old envy

(1997)

New envy

(2000)

Envy is ugly. It looks like the clotted autopsy of a 90-year-old woman or teeth worn down to bloody gums from grinding. It looks like plotting. It looks like me.

But it's not all bad. Envy fuels personal progress. If you can recognize it, you can manipulate it. The problem is that you can't always recognize it. It usually manifests itself in self-pity.

Envy between friends is the ugliest kind. I've been battling that particular brand since I was a kid. My first memory of envy was in 5th grade, for my best friend Cherie. Cherie was cute and skinny and got to take ballet lessons. Her mom was kind of pushy & mine wasn't. I used to want a pushy mom, the kind that would force me take ballet or piano lessons. (My mother had pushy father who forced her to take piano lessons, which she loathed—Mom's tone-deaf—and her revenge was not to be a pushy mom.) Her parents belonged to the country club and boys liked her and she got along with the popular kids, the ones that would make fun of me. I remember getting in a big fight with her about the piano lessons, both of us crying.

But Cherie was the best kind of friend and, although my jealousy wavered on and off for years, she always forgave me. Maybe she had some envy of her own. We eventually chose different paths: different friends, different boys, different hobbies. So there was no more competition, and the envy eventually evolved into empathy.

Cherie and I are still friends. She's about to start her internship at some lucky hospital. I still have bouts of envy with my girlfriends now. Tanya's style and finesse in social situations, Rebekah's smarts and her new, weird long-distance love affair (a bout with envy over that inspired this section), Suzanne's ability to make clear distinctions between right and wrong and to tell it like it is, sister! Lil's effervescent confidence, Amy's obsessively positive attitude, Angele's ingenuousness, Rachel's magnetism. It's a constant battle to keep my envy in check and the chip off my shoulder. But I'm doing a pretty good job at channeling it towards admiration. I think.

Envy towards strangers and acquaintances is harder to control. It's pettier, and there's no concrete motivation for controlling it. You have no investment in them, they're just there, stealing the world's share of whatever it is you think you should have. So you just let it eat away at you. And you end up channeling your spite, stewing over imagined wrongs and letting them embitter you. This random envy, because it's petty, one-sided, and unchecked, is the most dangerous kind.

New envy