Flood of jealousy

Do you ever observe couples on the street? Some hold hands, others walk separately, exchange a word or two, or have a lively conversation about everyday things. But some couples walk grimly. It is visible to anyone who can see from a kilometer away that something has happened or a storm is coming. They often yell at each other out of sheer jealousy. I've listened to this in my neighborhood since I was a kid. It usually ended with a cockfight and screaming at a partner over the phone. Women also knew how to hurl insults just under my apartment building to their partner. Usually, they were under the influence of alcohol and felt a lot of resentment because he was checking her friend at the party.  

When I reread the first paragraph, it sounded foolish and funny, but at the same time, I felt horrible because it was not true that jealousy had never touched me in one way or another. If nothing else, those of us watching telenovelas with o after school saw much of it. The main heroine, confident and with an inexhaustible faith in love, never really showed it, only cried in the room for hours, while her evil opponent was jealous 24/7, even with her eyes closed. And in the end, she was punished for it.  

This mixture of anger, fear, humiliation, and suspicion was already considered pure poison at the time, and none of the girls wanted to feel it, but only a few did not experience it on their own skin to this day. I have been known to have a sudden drop in self-confidence and trust. It is my constant companion. On the days when I feel bad and find it difficult to control myself, jealousy is also there, like the tip of the iceberg. Over the years, there has been less and less of it, but in my 20s, I thought I would go crazy.  

At the time, I was a girl with a lot of bad experiences from past relationships. In every way, I clung to what I had. This does not mean that I was suffocating the boy like a booger, but I would be lying if I said that I did not think about what he does when he is alone or with friends. Interestingly, I never felt jealous of all the girls, but some particularly triggered me, although they may not have done anything wrong. In retrospect, I was like a pressure cooker.  

I write about jealousy because, in the past week, I found that it has come out again after years of a stable state of mind. It was not a classic form of jealousy and madness around a girl, but a mixture of conflict, detachment, and being the smart-arse. We were colleagues until she completely cut off the entire group of friends. Before she did so, she, smart-arse, threw me into a mixture of guilt and moralizing. For two years, I had peace, sent her a birthday message, and received a dull 'thank you'. I seemed in peace with it, until last week, when she reached out to a guy for whom I had listened to her reproaches. The moment he innocently told me about the invite to a coffee, an avalanche was triggered in my body. I felt my pounding heart in my neck and heard it in my ears. My mouth became dry. I was on my way to a panic attack.  

My head refused to think clearly; my breath was far from calm. I had a past in front of me that I didn't want to have, but to avoid showing the situation as strange and pathetic, I poured all my anger on the innocent man on the other side of the phone. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't stop. I was screaming for so long that I was eventually diagnosed with "jealousy", although not in the most classic form. When I think about it today, I am ashamed because I know I could have handled the situation differently so that I would not have hurt everyone around me.  

But something about this girl, reminding me of our past, still echoes horribly and unpleasantly inside me and comes back in waves. What if this girl is good to others and people want to hang out with her, but I'm the one who's the problem here? Then the wave passes, self-confidence returns, and the head returns to thinking straight.  

But this is just one of the stories. Too often, I have been guilty of someone else's jealousy, and if I have learned something, but not consistently well enough, it is that women can be real bitches to each other. Some defend their territory so wildly that they prefer to end their friendship with someone because they know it will turn against them sooner or later. Men do this directly and quickly, at least in my experience. They also fight but do not let themselves be disturbed anymore, while women prefer to play, twirl, and overthink; just like in Spanish telenovelas. Sooner or later, we will face reality like the evil woman from Esmeralda.