The public pool.

I’ve heard that spending just a few minutes looking into a fashion magazine can significantly lower a woman’s self image.

Bright colored bikinis.  That perfect shade of hot-pink-almost-peach that makes her look perfectly tan.

In person.

Seeing the kiddie pool section.

Screams of joy, splashes, sunscreen, the sounds of tiny pool shoes flip flopping on hot concrete.

Here they are.

Women, mothers, in perfect roundness and fullness.

Maternity swim suits showcasing the newest little people who are swimming within.

I was here.

I was here, remembering that the last time I wore a bikini, I looked good.  Real good.

My breasts were full of milk, I felt motherly, I felt, sexy.

I was here, remembering that the time before last, my belly was full, too.

I was in a different swimsuit then.  You know, one of those maternity ones.

The ones that cost a fortune and you wonder why in the world they do.

The ones that you hope your friend will pass down to you because she indulged to get a super cute one.

I was here, this time, wearing a different suit than before.

One that I didn’t feel very good in.

Feeling flat.

Feeling small.

Crying into the water, wondering how many here would even guess I’m wondering these things.

Pushing the water, gently, with my hands.

It felt good, the water between my fingers.

Pushing again, stretching my arms out around me.

Walking deeper still, bobbing on toes now.

Twirling, swirling.

Feeling lighter.

Dancing in the waters,

Sharing these waters with life.

Doing a handstand, slapping the bottom of the pool with my flat hand, determining right then and there –

My love for my child goes this deep, and deeper still.

I will share this love.

I will dance in the waters with life.

Each baby swimming with me, may you be blessed.

May you swim with joy.

Each flat mother at the public pool this season,

May you dance with me,

May you swim with life.

{photo source}

It comes on fast, and it comes on strong.

Jealousy.

Hurt.

Rejection.

Disappointment.

Fear.

And, anger.

These are all parts of jealousy.

I cannot define jealousy without including each of these feelings.

I’ve carried these feelings my whole life, and to be honest, they make me weary.

But, there’s something else.

A strange feeling in jealousy.

In a lineup, you’d quickly pick it out as the one that does not belong.  But, it does.

I know, because jealousy is a feeling that has been there with me, my whole life.

It was there when I was a little girl, in yet another foster home, starting yet another school.

When I was locked in the dark room with the dark person, with the dark marking pooling onto his shirt.

I know, because it was there as I was unpacking strangers’ Christmas ornaments, studying them for the first time, yet again.

It was there when I was hiding in a battered women’s shelter.

It was there as I looked upon the ultrasound monitor, as I looked upon my lifeless baby, bobbing gently in his waters of my love.

It was there when I sat, crutching my broken womb in the shadow of my car waiting for my husband and his  father to come to the hospital to pick me up after I learned that our baby was not alive.

It is here, as I meet with jealousy today, my lifelong teacher, my invisible twin.

Jealous, I am, for husbands who have not received the phone call my husband did that day.

Jealous, I am, for children, who do not have to share their mother with bereavement.

Jealous, I am, for women who bask in naivety in pregnancy and birth.

For people who do not know what I carry in my heart.

For people who feel simplicity.

What a rich sorrow when I allow this jealousy a place to manifest in full emotion.

When I heave, when I crumble, when I sob and cry loudly and weep unabashedly.

When I slip to my knees, collapse in tears, when I moan, when I groan,

“What is this supposed to mean?”

What is the purpose of this jealousy?  What is it for?  What good will it do?  Bring?  Grow?

I do not yearn for others to have this pain – quite the opposite, I instead simply want their simplicity.

In shame, I try to push this jealousy away with logic that there is no room for jealousy in gratefulness and humility.

Oh, gratefulness and humility, my weaknesses.  How I desire to have poise and grace and humility!

But, I allow myself this meeting with jealousy.  Not all the time, but, sometimes.

On a day, such as today.

I encounter it, and I invite it in.

For a time, the wailing and the crying fill and float and linger.

And then, on the floor, soaked in tears, throat and soul raw, something happens.

A stillness creeps.

The sixth feeling, it quietly appears.

It’s presence, a whisper.

It doesn’t answer the questions – at least, not immediately.

And, I’ll tell you, it often brings with it, even more questions!

It’s a part of jealousy that is as real as the others.

What is it for?  What will it do?  Bring? Grow?

I don’t know.

But this part of jealousy is as real as the others, and so I sit with it, this stillness, this whisper.

Strangely, it draws me into community, simply by it’s feeling, without answers, without solutions, without reason.

Community, that I felt abandoned from, forgotten from, neglected from.

Community, that I so, very, achingly, desperately, wearily, need.

By it’s own simple merit and by it’s own intrinsic goodness, it soothes and heals, this often unaccounted for, sixth part of jealousy.  It is:

Hope.

May you listen for the whisper.