Epiphany about Jealousy

1950 Pontiac Chieftain De Luxe Sedan Coupe

From Wikipedia

What’s happened since I first posted about epiphanies is that I keep remembering others that have changed the course of my thinking or my life. Here’s an important one I’d like to share with you.

It took place during the summer after my sophomore year of high school. I’d had a best friend—let’s call her Julie—since second grade when I first enrolled at St. Mary’s High School in Independence, Missouri. She and I had giggled our way through years of schooling. We’d shared our secrets and done our share of gossiping.

However, during sophomore year, Julie became good friends with another classmate. We’ll call her Gloria. A brilliant student, she could she be both witty and sardonic and made Julie laugh a lot. Her birthday was in February, and when she turned sixteen that year, her father bought her a used Pontiac.

Soon she and Julie began to get in that car after school let out and zoom away to adventure—roaming the stores around the uptown Square, driving in the countryside, visiting the ice cream parlor where Harry Truman had worked as a young man.

I felt left out. Actually, I felt as if my friend of many years had deserted me.

That summer, I worked with the two of them at a local Montgomery Ward’s order fulfillment store. Between the arrival of customers, the two of them talked about their adventures and laughed a lot. I felt even more left out. Actually I thought, What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t Julie like me anymore? Why am I not enough?

Jealousy seeped through me.

When the two of them invited me to get into the car for a drive around town, I turned them down. “I have to catch the bus home,” I’d say and turn away.

Gloria would offer to drive me home, but imprisoned in my resentment, I always declined. Julie’s response to my recalcitrance was simply, “It’s your choice.” Then she’d get in Gloria’s car; they’d pull away from the curb, leaving me behind. I clutched desertion to my heart, nurturing it.

Late one summer afternoon, I sat moping by the creek that meandered through our farm on its way to the Missouri River. I felt sorry for myself. Friendless.  A loser. I lacked whatever would make Julie happy.

Suddenly and irrevocably came the epiphany. The realization: If I wanted to keep Julie’s friendship, I had to appear content with the status quo. I had to welcome Gloria into our lives. I had to seek out and appreciate what Julie found so intriguing about her.

I knew I was deeply jealous, and I did not think I could become non-jealous. But I realized that I didn’t have to show that jealousy. That I didn’t have to act on it. I’d been offered friendship by Gloria and I’d dismissed it. Shoved it away. Ungraciously.

So while the sun began its descent and the creek burbled and the hoot owls welcomed the night, I resolved to become friends with Gloria and to embrace a new friendship with Julie. A friendship that included Gloria.

I resolved to walk with the pain within me that I wasn’t enough for my friend. She needed more friends than just me. It was a hard awakening to what friendship really means. To inclusiveness. To generosity of spirit.

For the next two years of high school, Gloria and Julie and myself were inseparable. Moreover, we welcomed a fourth person—Carole—to our group. That epiphany helped me, forever after, to deal with any jealous feelings I discovered within myself. It brought me peace, and that’s what I wish you.