I felt jealous of her love

These days, I’ve been noticing something in me.

Something small.

And disturbing.

Jealousy.

Not the loud kind, not the obvious kind.

The quiet, twisting kind that sneaks in when you see someone you care about —

and suddenly, your chest feels tight, your hands fidget, your heart whispers something you’ve tried to ignore.

Like the other day — a friend of mine.

Her spouse came to pick her up.

The way he looked at her — full of softness, completely present —

the way he held her hand, lingered just enough to make her feel it.

I felt a strange mix of emotions washing over me in that single moment.

Jealousy because I could never experience this tenderness.

Shame that I envied someone I loved.

Envy because their quiet joy reminded me of the care I never received.

Confusion because I have a life I built with intention, love, and contentment —

and yet, in that moment, I felt small.

Small in a way that reminded me of all the versions of me tucked away,

all the tenderness I never got to claim,

all the hopes and gestures of love I imagined but never touched.

And it didn’t make me less human.

It didn’t undo the life I’ve built or the choices I’m proud of.

It just showed me the corners of myself

where light hasn’t reached yet,

where longing still lives quietly,

where softness still waits to be acknowledged.

Jealousy is a mirror —

but a messy, uncomfortable one.

It forces you to meet the shadowed parts of yourself,

to notice what you’ve ignored,

to feel what you’ve denied,

and to stay with it, even when it burns.

And maybe that’s the point.

To notice, to sit with it, to survive it —

to become someone who can hold all the human ache inside them

without shaming themselves for it.

If you notice it in yourself — that spike of longing, that ache, that quiet envy —

don’t look away.

Sit with it. Feel it.

Because in noticing, in staying,

you begin to hold yourself the way you’ve been waiting for someone else to hold you.