When I was 12, I got published in this weird little anthology called Yahara River Writers. It’s sponsored by the county, and has come out every year since at least 1990. Back in the day, two kids from my grade made it in - me and one of my close friends who we’ll call Anna, because that’s her name.
Anna was about as cool as any six grader could get. She was gorgeous even in the Ugly Years, with this caramel-kissed skin, dark gleaming hair, and very cool beat-up baggy grey cords. She was extraordinarily smart, had a small following of boys who were desperately in love with her, and a cool older brother in high school. To top off that little ice cream sundae of awesome, she was genuinely nice. She deserved to be so revered. Really.
I didn’t know she was a writer until the winners of this anthology contest were announced, and she and I had both won. I had slaved for weeks on an insipid tear-jerker about a boy whose girl friend had been killed in a car accident (I think - the tragedy bit is a dim memory. I only know there was drama and ominous swelling music on the level of All My Children, perhaps more). The weepy two-pager ended with the boy meeting another girl down by the river, becoming new BFFs with her through his weepy re-telling of the dead girl’s tale.
BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
Anna? Anna wrote a gorgeous true story about her house burning down a few years previously. It was brilliant. She was fucking Tolstoy.
Last fall, when I first starting writing for money, I was at the local library procrastinating, wandering the aisles. I stumbled upon the section on writing, and almost knocked my jaw on the shelf in front of me, so quickly and deeply did it drop. There at eye level was a single volume of the Yahara River Writers anthology…(drumroll)…from the very year I was published.
I went a little beserk. I called my mom and whisper-squealed into the phone about signs and messages from the Universe and on and on. I was giddy over finding this, what I believed wholeheartedly was the closest thing I was going to get to a blessing regarding my decision to become a “real” writer.
It took me awhile to remember Anna, but lately I’ve been thinking of her a lot. How it tortured me not only that she was so good but that she was recognized for her goodness - everyone knew she was a great writer, while I hid my writing like a smelly festering wound.
My feelings toward Anna in this regard took up a lot of angst-space in my journals during that time. I go back and read over my pitiful little ideas of how to get rid of the ickiness on the inside. Most often repeated was the desire to go over to her house one day and just tell her, just say those words I was keeping locked echo-deep inside me, away from the air and light: I’m jealous of you.
I never did, and oh how I am grateful for that now. But sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had. I think of what response she might have had, even what she could have said that would have made me feel better, what would have healed me. But I don’t have the answer.
And now it seems I’m back there these days, reliving those moments, scribbling away in secret, brainsick, documenting my ridiculous, unhealthy pain.
And I’m no better than I was. The answer, the solution still eludes me.
Anna’s not a writer, today. At least not that I’ve heard. I know very little about her besides where she lives and her relationship status (and please let me take a moment to cuss Facebook - I still hate you, bitch). I feel relatively safe in saying that I would not be jealous of her now.
As we change, what we covet in others changes with us. I have continued to hope, as I’ve grown up a little, that the uglier parts of me would change for the better (less obsession with things that have passed for a reason, less absenteeism from my job, less keeping quiet in public when someone just deserves to be dealt with), but the jury’s still out on a great number of things.
And it’s a hideous, gut-clutching feeling realizing I haven’t traveled very far - when it comes to jealousy, not even a little, not at all.
