Posted by Dinah on December 8, 2008, at 18:02:41
In reply to Envy, posted by Toph on December 8, 2008, at 14:58:57
You know it's funny. I've met you, and I've talked with you, and the two parts of that list I know you well enough to judge, I'd say you have. I remember you as attractive, and your intelligence seems evident to me. I guess interior and exterior views don't always match.
Do you mean envy like in the dictionary definition?
1: painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage
That sounds so painful. I'm sorry that you carry that pain, if I'm not projecting my own experience of emotions onto you.
I'm trying to decide if I feel envy. Surely I must. There are areas where I'm very unhappy, and plenty of areas where I hate myself. I wish I were more attractive. I hate my looks. But I don't think I associate other people's attractiveness with my lack of attractiveness. Their looks have nothing more to do with me than a sunset or a painting.
I had a couple of friends growing up who had families like Leave it to Beaver. I wished my family was like that, but I enjoyed visiting their life like I enjoyed watching The Brady Bunch. It was no more real than that.
Sometimes I wish I were as optimistic and sanguine as my therapist. But lots of times I don't. Good grief, can you imagine?
Maybe I'm way too detached from others and maybe from myself to actually feel envy. What others have seems so remote that it doesn't have any relationship to what I don't have.
It doesn't mean I don't feel self loathing. It just doesn't seem to have anything to do with anyone else.
Now I feel a bit weird.
Although maybe I'm just blocking those feelings. I really don't like strong negative feelings. They make my head hurt.
I do feel guilty though, when I think of all I do have. I feel like I have no reason at all to be unhappy. Like I'm an unhappiness fraud.
poster:Dinah
thread:867523
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081205/msgs/867572.html