There’s this girl I know, and I secretly hate her, but only part of the time.

There’s no way to escape her; she’s a permanent fixture in my life right now and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It took me a while to realize that I secretly hate her, because she was very covert in her expressions of animosity towards me. Plus, other times she’s really normal to me, so that’s why I only hate her part of the time.

It wasn’t until she started saying things like, “So, do you like that hair color on you?” that I realized she was doing her very best to make me feel small.

Prior to that, we would have discussions ranging from Prince’s home state to the appropriate names for yoga poses, and each time, she would come back to me hours later, sometimes days, and say something like, “I looked it up, and I was right.” And I would always have to be reminded what the hell she was right about, and then I would think, “Huh. I didn’t realize it mattered.”

That’s when I realized that I bother her.

My therapist pointed out to me that I bother her because she’s jealous of me. For whatever reasons she has deemed to be deserving of jealousy. Hence, there is the constant need to prove me wrong and insult my appearance and my accomplishments.

Ooooooo. Someone’s jealous of me.

How empowering.

I have power over her. I can make her feel bad by just walking in the room. The angel on my right hand whispered to me that this was not a compliment. The devil on my left hand agreed, yet still felt disgustingly smug about the whole thing. The hybrid in my head went, “Really? What the hell is she jealous for?”

The question answered itself.

“I wear bigger earrings when I’m around her now,” I told my therapist. “I laugh a little more and tell all my stories, even the ones that are only borderline interesting. I make myself sound really exciting, I do my best imitation of a ‘40s movie star.”

Because those are the things that bother her. So I embrace them, and exaggerate them, and pin all the things that make me Me onto my sleeve.

That topic segued nicely into a discussion about my niece.

“Everyone says my niece is so much like me,” I said. “They say she’s taking after her Auntie Mel, because she dances whenever she hears music, and she’s always singing; she just does that little baby jibberish talk, but she sings all the words. And every time they say that, I think, ‘Please little girl, don’t turn out like me. I hope you turn out to be a shy, conservative little girl with a stable office job and a lovely husband. Whatever you do, don’t turn out like me.’”

My therapist did that thing where she just stares at me, so I kept talking.

“When she turns 30, who do you think they want her to be like?” I asked. “Her Auntie Mel, who is loud and boisterous and a crazy artist, or her mom, who is happy and creative and lovely and refined and has a happy, stable life. Nobody in their right mind would choose me. They would be so sad if she turned out like me.”

My therapist kept staring, but I know how to stare her down when I want an answer, so she finally said, “When you talk about those traits in reference to the Jealous Girl, you talk about them with such pride, but with your neice, you talk about them with such shame.”

Well, yes. I suppose I do.

There’s this girl I know, and I secretly hate her, but only part of the time.