Good evening, contest friends, here I am again participating in this initiative. This time it was hard to choose a topic because they all inspired me, but in the end I made up my mind. There was a moment when I was jealous, and why? I decided to bring up this topic because I haven't suffered from jealousy or envy for years, and anyone who knows me now can swear that I'm not at all jealous, and it's true. But I have been. Even if it was the fault of others, and I've also worked a lot with these people in therapy and on their impact on my life, and how my character has completely changed by distancing myself.
I don't think I was born jealous; I've never had that character trait, but unfortunately I grew up with a jealous person who had a terrible flaw: comparing myself to others. My grandmother often kept me with her, and it did me a lot of psychological harm. She was a perpetually dissatisfied woman, jealous of her siblings and friends who had more, with passive-aggressive, hypercritical communication styles. For her, anyone was never good enough, especially us family members. At a certain point in my growth, I myself began to feel jealous, a jealousy born of my grandmother's constant comparisons with me and other people.
The other girls and teenagers were smarter, prettier, better-mannered, prettier, kinder, richer, had better toys, etc. So at a certain point I began to feel jealous of others, a burning jealousy, and even developed low self-esteem that carried over into adulthood. I began to feel bad when I saw others doing better than me at a task or having a better toy, and every time I failed, my grandmother would add fuel to the fire by reminding me how much better everyone else was, and I became jealous. Everyone seemed better than me, and I felt this intense jealousy inside me, which made me suffer. Fortunately, by distancing myself from my grandmother's influence, I have completely overcome this feeling. I still have low self-esteem, but I practically no longer feel jealous of others. However, I remember that terrible feeling I felt as a child and teenager, but now I know it wasn't my fault, but rather a life of comparisons and demands for perfection that I couldn't meet.
First picture edited by my phone translation with deepl.