How I slay the jealousy monster when my healthy friends are shining in ways I can't

I live in a fit, hip, wealthy-ass mountain town where just about everyone is hot, rich, and ready to run 25 miles at a pop.

It gets old being at the bottom of that heap.

Recently, I snapped at a service-industry-longtimer bud who got giddy about graduation and professional salaries. I shrank a little when a galpal welcomed me into her beautiful new house. I even felt a stab of jealousy when a ladyfriend rattled off the month’s worth of chores (in #feebtime) she did that day.

I love my people. I want to see them shine. It feels icky to acknowledge the “meeeeep” that wells up when they’re doing/having/getting the things I want. Because you can try not to compare, and that’s the whole sentence.

It’s crappy to go through life like this:

On a scale from Comatose to Picture o’ Health, I’d rate myself as FeebAF.

This is how I feel picked on by the universe. This is how I feel personally selected to suffer. This is how I kick off a pity party that rages for weeks.

And this is how I stop.

Method 1: Look back

My nervous system can overload fast, but usually a quick glance into any corner of human history is enough to remind me: dude, there are a lot of ways for shit to stink.

History is the Midwestern buffet of suffering—it’s got it all. Factory fires, witch burnings, wagon trains, death duels, forced marches, any war, slavery, religious persecution, environmental disasters, government cover-ups, sexism and racism and classism and ageism and ableism galore.

In all of this, there’s inspiration in daring escapes and brilliant schemes. There’s warm fuzzies in communities that pull together.

But most of all, there’s this: the simple cold comfort that humans have endured since time immemorial. Whether it turns out okay or not in the end in any historical slice, what matters to me is that someone else knows grief and pain and anguish.

Lots of someone elses.

Thousands of years of someone elses.

Kings and queens, peasants and nobles, villagers and pillagers and hunters and gatherers.

Suffering doesn’t care if you’re in velvet or rags or a skimpy fur loincloth. By virtue of being human, we just lose sometimes.

Method 2: Look around

I don’t look for stories of other people going through a shit time to feel superior. I do it to remind myself that we are ALL blessed and cursed at once.

My modelesque motorcycle-riding rockstar friend with the gorgeous boyfriend and kickass job got cancer last year. My smart, hilarious, supereducated sisterfriends with a close knit family and all the fun Hawaii trips lost their mom. Friends who I thought “had it all” told me tales of broken mother-daughter relationships, miscarriages, secret surgeries, dying parents, toxic jobs, raging anxiety, and bad breakups.

Diseases like ME/CFS are rare.
Suffering in general isn’t.

This may not be an admirable way to deal, but knowing I’m only tasting a few dishes from the suffering buffet helps. Yeah, the health hash blows. The income tea is WEAK. But family support? 4 star michelin restaurant grade. Friends are lit. Montana is home. By other measures that matter, I have a lot.

You can be on the bottom of the heap and the top of the world at the same time—just consider all the axes.

That’s not a dig if your family sucks, your hometown is under siege, or your community is cold. I’m not sharing every measure where I struggle or shine, because I honestly believe we all have places where we’ve been handed a hall pass. Yours WILL be different. That’s the point.

It’s hard to remember all my axes. The illness one pulls hard. Sometimes, all I can say is, “I’m not tubefed.” And I think, sometimes I’m guessing a tubefed person can say, “I’m not having 6 hours of diarrhea.” (Me today.) Maybe you can say, “at least I’m not airing my inane inner thoughts on the internet.” I know Brene Brown is not a fan, but “at least” can be a saving grace.

But when I can remember there are so many ways to measure a life, I’m often bowled over. By the quiet peace of my rundown building. By the sweetness of neighbors leaving flowers by my door. By friends who quietly buy my tea and pretend I treated last time, knowing I won’t remember. By “uncles” who call to say I love you and “aunts” who sneak houseplants onto my fire escape farm. By an entire mountain range, unfurling out my substandard housing window.

By this crimeless pretty town, where everyone is so young and fit and rich and beautiful.

And broken and real and struggling and suffering, all at once.

As we all do.