all the ways i'm not better than you
a deep dive into jealousy
I recently found out that Nathan, an ex of mine, is funding someone, let’s call her Jane, thousands of dollars. This is in line with Nathan’s character: when we were dating, he covered a flight of mine and many meals, although I turned him down for anything pricier. Hearing about Jane and the amount of funding she’s receiving makes me feel pretty triggered. Rationally, I know I shouldn’t have such a strong reaction — we’re broken up now, I like Jane a lot, and what Nathan does has nothing to do with me — but thinking about him funding her stirs up the parts of myself that I try to hide from the most.
Whenever I think about Nathan funding Jane, I start thinking about how Nathan is financially done with his life, and Jane, by benefitting financially from Nathan, is inching closer to being done too. I feel jealous and a bit empty inside whenever I think about that. I want so badly to be done, and I see other people who get to be done, and it’s impossible to feel secure in myself.
Often when I see people who have more money or status than me, it’s hard for me to feel happy for them. I wish I did. For instance, I don’t know how to feel happy for Jane when my mind keeps telling me she is getting what I no longer have access to, even though I chose to end that access to Nathan.
During high school and college, whenever I came across someone I felt jealous of, I’d sooth myself by telling myself that I’d catch up to them — you’ll get that finance job one day if you keep practicing, you’ll get published in an acclaimed journal next year. Or I’d try to thrust calm upon myself through fixating on a perceived injustice or on what I had that they didn’t — well, her dad drives a Lamborghini, so it was a rigged game to begin with. Sure, she might be working at that hedge fund, but she’s not as pretty as you, Valerie! Don’t worry, that means you’ll have a better boyfriend than she does one day.
I can see myself falling into the same tendencies these days too. I hear about Jane and imagine all these golden tickets that Nathan will give her, and my mind immediately tries to come up with reasons for why I am still better in some way. Or I see all these female Substack writers in their twenties on Twitter who have more followers than me, whose tweets promoting their posts get magnitudes more likes and retweets, and feel pangs of pain. I tell myself that my writing is more alive and that I’ll be as successful as them too, but it’s also extremely tiring to always need to prop myself up with examples of my supposed superiority.
The first time I felt jealous for an extended period of time was in high school. Susan was this girl in my grade who was insanely talented and competent at competition math, which I also pursued. I was always used to being the best girl in my grade for math, if not the best across the entire grade, so this was a big blow to me. She was just much better than I was, and I would never catch up. I had this feeling throughout all of high school: she’d win big at national competition after national competition, and I’d feel jealous each time, until I just couldn’t look at math without feeling insecure. Eventually, I’d feel so horrible every time I tried to do math that I didn’t want to try at all.
My parents are Asian immigrants, so they obviously freaked the fuck out. My dad kept berating me whenever I picked up the phone (he worked out of the state, so I didn’t often see him), so I just stopped wanting to pick up at all. Then he called my teachers and complained that I wasn’t picking up the phone, so my teachers made me answer in the future. (Thinking about my teachers leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I obviously didn’t want to call my dad, and they never bothered to ask why, even though they knew how much pressure my parents put on me. I never want my kids to feel forced to call me if I’m going to scream at them.)
I remember one evening in tenth or eleventh grade when I was hanging out with a friend. My dad called, and I picked up. After all, there was no point in prolonging the inevitable: if I didn’t pick up, he’d just call my teachers, and they’d be coercing me in one way or another.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to do math anymore? You know if you’d actually tried, you’d be just as good as Susan, but instead your ego is so fragile that you won’t even try! You’re always just giving up!
“HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU THIS STUPID? And you say you’re going to write instead. You haven’t even won any awards yet. You just feel so bad at math that you’re going to hop onto something else, but that’s not going to work. And then what? You won’t amount to anything without any national awards.”
In my recollection, my dad kept screaming for a while, maybe forty to fifty minutes about how stupid and irrational I was being. Why didn’t I just keep doing math like all the other kids in my grade? They clearly kept going even if they weren’t as good as Susan. I was being a heartless bitch by not picking up his calls or listening to what he or my mom had to say about my lackluster dedication to competition math.
I didn’t bother to interrupt his calls. Clearly he wasn’t going to actually listen.
“You know, we really messed up in raising you. You could be trying to learn from all these people who are better than you, but instead you just wall yourself off. You could be just as good as all your competitors, and now you’re not.
“I hope you shape up. I really don’t know what’s wrong with you if you don’t.”
I won’t be able write anything that cuts at how dead inside I felt taking that call or other calls over the years. I’ve blocked most of my dad’s extreme anger across the years out from my memory.
After writing that call scene yesterday, I got up from my laptop and ran to the bathroom in tears. That was simply from noting the portions I remembered (which of course, my memory has probably altered). At some point, I asked my crying self, who reliably has deeper thoughts than my normal self does, what she had to say about Nathan, Jane, and my jealousy as a whole.
This is what she had to say: You don’t need to force yourself to feel happy for Nathan and Jane, especially because that’s a solution that addresses the wrong level of the problem. Your jealousy of Nathan and Jane has almost nothing to do with them. When you actually investigate the roots of your jealousy, as you did with Susan, you’ll see how intertwined your jealousy is to your relationship with your parents.
I started bawling pretty hard after thinking those thoughts. My whole life, I’d been fixated on my jealousy, but it turns out that jealousy doesn’t even begin to describe what’s actually been going on for me. I didn’t have to shame myself for my jealousy and try to suppress that part of myself. I could’ve tried to connect to it and try ACTUALLY relive and remember the times I felt jealous.
Much of what my parents have said at me over the years is true: sometimes it’s incredibly hard for me to stomach the reality that there are many people who are better than me at the things I care about. So I did whatever I could to get to a reality my conscious mind can accept: sometimes I ghosted people when good things happened to them, or I’ve gave up on myself completely rather than try to “compete.” But I wish they would’ve actually tried to see the pain that I’ve experienced, rather than make me wrong for it at every turn.
Better yet, I wish that I would’ve actually tried to see the pain that I’ve experienced, rather than make myself wrong for it at every turn. Then I’d actually be able to feel less jealous, as I’d see glimpses of what composes the roots of the emotion, rather than needing to take it at face value.
Right now, when I think about Nathan and Jane, there’s a lot more space for them to exist without my feeling triggered. Same goes for all the other female Substack writers. When I actually give myself the space to be with my jealousy, I can also connect more deeply with this unshakeable faith that my time to pop off will happen as well. Realistically, I’m going to be triggered by them and by other people in the future, but I also believe that I don’t need to be consumed by my triggers in the way I used to be.
One of my core theses for 2023 is that writing and acting from as deep and as vulnerable place as possible is what matters in the long run. This is my first essay in that direction. If this mission resonates with you, I’d appreciate a like, comment, or a share. Thank you for reading and supporting my work.
A deep thank you to Alex for being my rubber duck for this essay.
thank you so much for this vulnerable post! love the introspection here about how perhaps your feelings of jealousy aren't so much about Nathan and Jane - or aren't entirely about Nathan and Jane - and more to do with messages you received yourself about your self-worth from your father. I hope you can process/treat your past and present self with compassion when reflecting on your father's anger (which sounds awful) and be curious about if the grasp toward externals was a consequence of that anger. also, I'm curious about when you say that "my parents are Asian immigrants, so they obviously freaked the fuck out." my mother sounds perhaps similar to your parents though my father, who was also an Asian immigrant, was very chill about academics and my life choices in general - so I think it's interesting when people (not saying you exclusively or specifically in this case) make assumptions about how Asian immigrants/Asian immigrant parents behave. such a great post! thanks for sharing
This was amazing! I've been following your writing for a few weeks and I really enjoy the way you write and tell your story . This has inspired me to be more vulnerable in my own writing 😊😊