I have an extremely good friend. This person has just recently undergone bariatric surgery. The results for this person have been remarkable, in only two short months, from major reductions in clothing size to no longer being a type-II diabetic. I care about this friend very much and want very much to be kept informed about their progress (so if you’re reading this, friend, please don’t stop telling me your progress, it’s important and I want to know), but I have to admit to being extremely jealous. I feel like the things I have to achieve before the doctors will touch me are so insurmountable … there’s just no hope to latch onto. I’m getting weighed next month, and I am beyond terrified that there will have been no progress, still no light at the end of the tunnel. No, it’s not jealousy, I’m truly thrilled for my friend, no ands, ifs or buts about it; jealousy implies I begrudge them what they’ve achieved, and I do not, not in the least. No, it’s not jealousy, it’s … it’s longing. I want something tangible, not just two fewer pounds on a chart, not just numbers, but something tangible. I don’t feel better for eating better, I don’t feel healthier, I don’t feel any smaller, where’s the tangible? I’m going to keep at it, but right now I feel doomed to keeping at it because I’ll never achieve this goal I have to reach before the rela noticeable stuff can begin. Sometimes I just feel like success is for other people, that my job in life is to cry myself to sleep longing for something I’ll never have.Is it covetousness to wnat the same thing as what another preson has? Am I bad for longing for the same kind of dramatic results? Why am I being punished, not by my friend, but by the circumstances in my own life that conspire to keep me forever looking in from the outside, like a child watching his schoolfriends play but knowing he will never be among them, no matter how much the grownups in his life tell him how special he is? God, what lesson do you want me to learn from all this? How does it glorify you? Is there a point to all this? Am I condemned to a life of trying, for whatever greater purpose? Is there nothing I can hold onto to give me hope, nothing I can tangibly look forward to, nothing that allows me to say, I can count on this?
I started off by calling this post jealousy, and I’m not going to change it. But the good thing about writing all this down is that at least I know I’m not jealous, not even a little bit. I am so happy for my friend and the new lease on life that they have been granted. I want to hear about it, I want to share in their newfound joy. So whatever I’m experiencing, at least it’s not jealousy, how could I live with myself if it had been? That would have been wrong on so many fundamental levels. At least I’m not a toal low-life. But the longing, the wishing, the being a kid looking in on a life he knows will never be his, that remains.How much more of that must I take, how much more of that can I take? Above all, why, to what end?