Envy (Sheck)

I think I was an envious person once. And yet, when I think now of the people outside these walls, the ones I often envied as a boy and for years after, I don't really envy them anymore. But shouldn't my envy have grown greater, not less, given what's befallen me? Shouldn't I want to be like them, want to take from them what's theirs, resent them for what they still have? Yet I watch as from a great distance, a place I'll never return from, a gap composed of space and time. A tenderness, a certain feeling of protectiveness even, comes over me—for the ones I think of and the small, vulnerable dailiness of their lives...I want them to go to the market and be all right, to laugh with each other and talk over dinner and play with their children and go to their jobs and have celebrations and longings and dreams and plans and be all right. I don't envy them or hate them. I can't say if they just seem unreal to me now, part of something I can never touch or be part of again. I don't know. But I think of their fragility, always of their fragility, even the obnoxious and the rich ones, the ones I can't stand, the ones who eat too much and wear too many rings.

Laurie Sheck, A Monster's Notes