A Letter to Jealousy
Dear Jealousy,
I hope this will be the first and only time I address you. They say do not talk to your enemies, destroy them. But what if they live inside your head? Therefore I sit here, in this shabby motel room with its gaudy painted walls, and write to you. The wobbly desk with three legs stands at the open window. The cold October breeze blows through the burgundy greasy curtains, making them move like the sleeping child’s chest. I lean over the torn-out piece of notebook paper scarcely visible in the lemon light of the lamp. The clock on the bedside table shows 2.47 a.m. I have not held a pen in a while. It feels as if I try to move the amputated fingers of the paralyzed hand. I have not written a letter in a while. Much less a letter to my enemy.
I always thought that just a small portion of you, my dear jealousy, could sugar one’s love life. My farfetched behaviour was supposed to make my husband a jealous man: a light touch of his friend’s hand, a beaming smile to his colleagues, an animated conversation with his boss, a deafening laughter after the ridiculous remark of some halfway good-looking man in the queue. I believed that you were equal to the love itself. As it turned out, you quickly got out of control and possessed my entire mind.
You appeared one day on the doorstep of my loving heart and would not leave it for the world. You leaked like poisonous gas into my throat suffocating me with toxic tears of fear and anger. Your virus infected my blood with incurable disease. You got stronger with my every breath and every thought. You ascended the throne of my mind and ruled there unconsciously, making me consciously say these words to the man I truly loved: „I do not trust you.“
It all began not so long ago. I can still remember the heat of the candles on the table, his gentle smile and tender attempt to warm my icicles of fingers bringing them to his clean-shaven cheeks. We were on the same page right from the onset and tried to write a new story where we would leave our past behind us and see into the future full of passion, joy, discoveries, trips to ourselves and to unseen places. From day to day the seed of love grew stronger until it blossomed into a dazzling flower. It seemed that we were made for each other and there existed no force in the whole universe that could stand in our way to happiness. Our love was a roller coaster ride with all its ups and downs: the euphoria before the rise, the dizziness after the fall.
It all ended when the two of us became three. When the wedding bells rang for us, I could not even imagine that the brightly coloured confetti which fell from above on our merry heads would turn all black. Thanks to you. Or rather: because of you.
As far back as I can remember, you always warned me of your appearance. At first I could barely feel your presence. Every time I felt a prickling in my chest you ran away like a naughty child who hid in the depth of the playground after committing a heinous crime of throwing sand into the eyes of his peers. You waited. You watched. Day by day you grew stronger and more dangerous. You reached slowly your long slimy tentacles to my heart and stung me with your venom. You tormented me and made me sick until one day I could not stop myself from destroying everything and everyone around me.
One evening I could not suppress my anger and smashed whatever came to hand right against the wall. I wished it was his phone which beeped during our conversations, which held his attention away from us and transported him to other people, to other women. I was losing him, I thought. I was losing my mind, as it turned out.
A brief or long interaction with any woman made me suspicious: be it his usual late-night conversations with his sister, an innocent flirtation with a waitress, some business emails with female colleagues, eating ice-cream with his married friends, or even weekend trips to his easy-going ex-girlfriend with whom he still remained in close contact out of pure sentimentality. I was enraged, insecure, humiliated, devastated, wounded, mad and helpless but most of all I was afraid. The ghosts of the past and the present pervaded my dreams. They roared in my head and got louder and louder as if a fully loaded train was going by my bedroom. Every night I woke up startled and with a racing heart. My hand automatically went to the other side of the bed to prove if he was still there. I felt the fear that somebody could steal him away under the veil of night or that he could leave me for someone who would make him happier. I knew we were married which meant we belonged together. I also knew that the wedding ring could not keep a soul from betrayal.
In the last few weeks I noticed that he spent more time at work, or so did he say to me. Sometimes I did not see him for days. Usually he visited his parents once a month and now he had an urge to see them every weekend, alone, without me. One morning in April he left his phone on the kitchen table while taking shower. I was making myself a cup of coffee when I heard the phone ringing. A name with a picture showed up on the display. She was pretty, this Tracy. She had blond curly hair, bright smile, blue vivid eyes. I did not know her, but I hated her. The phone kept ringing. I started seeing them together in my mind’s eye. The legion of the pictures attacked me ruthlessly, every one of them feeling like an arrow aimed at my heart. I saw them kissing, dancing, going to bed, laughing together, laughing at me. „Are you alright?“ he asked. „You look as if you just went through an earhtquake“. He approached me, kissed me gently, took his phone and went to work. My morning gown stained with coffee, I took my car keys and followed him.
You kept me company wherever I went. I parked my car outside his office and watched the entrance. I did not know what I hoped to see. What we hoped to see. Him? Him with Tracy? He spent the entire day at work and then went straight home that day. You smothered me so that I could not breathe anymore. I had to do whatever you whispered in my ear if I wanted to live. You made me follow him for days and weeks on end. And I did.
My life turned into an even worse nightmare in which I walked over the frozen lake of my tears. With every step, ice got thinner and cracked loudly beneath my feet as if my porcelain heart exploded in the firm hands of sorrow and insecurity. I saw his silhouette on the horizon and quickened the pace. I tried to call his name but my voice got blown away by the wind. As I approached him close enough so that he could see me and help me out, I saw her. She was smiling at him and touching his hair the way I used to do. The tears of rage burned my cheeks falling down and melting ice underneath until there was nothing left…
Something happened yesterday which I should have noticed much earlier. I went blindfolded through my life because I completely put my trust in you. I searched for traces of his affair as you told me but there was none. One evening I came back home after another fruitless attempt to catch him in the act. I had spent the whole day near his office and did not see him leaving the building. I must have lost him in a crowd of equally dressed co-workers. When I opened the door to the living room, I saw him standing beside her. It was undoubtedly Tracy.
