On envy as a generative companion
featuring a crazy dog, mac and cheese, and cartoon pregnancy bumps
This morning, I chased Macaroni around the yard barefoot in my robe while she tried to go after a moose that had wandered over the ridge. I ran after her, yelling her name and ringing a bell, to no avail. Somehow in the midst of the chaos, I noticed the loamy smell of spring and the light on the mountains, all while watching the poor moose trot off past the invisible fence. Thank god for this technology. Moose gone, she sprinted dizzyingly around the yard until I caught her and lifted her into my arms. Indoors, she resumed sounding her alarm, naturally. This is the third time this has happened in a month, the fourth time since arriving here post-fire, and I’m sure won’t be the last.
Having Macaroni in our lives has given me a literal understanding of the word dogged. She is passionate to the point of insanity, voicing her desire with a high-pitched nose whistle that mounts into throaty barks. To her, a moose outside is a constant threat, which means she now approaches the door like a mad town crier, yelping until we let her out to patrol. Once outside, she sprints in circles barking until she realizes (most of the time) there is no moose there at all.
Afterward, I thought of catching up with a friend earlier this week who’d recently gotten a puppy. I asked him how it had been going, remembering the terror of introducing Macaroni to our lives just over a year ago that hasn’t entirely abated. “He’s a perfect baby angel and it’s been incredible,” he said, or something like that.
When I shared this with my husband he said, “Is it bad that I wish they were having an experience more like ours?” No, I said, I got it. Though what I really wanted is that we could have had an experience more like theirs.
One of the most common questions I have been asked while being pregnant is if I have any cravings. Until recently, the answer was a disappointing no. This had always seemed like one of the cool perks of pregnancy, finding out about a desire that needed to be satiated or else. Then, a few days ago, I felt it come on: I NEEDED mac and cheese. It had to be homemade and topped with a thick layer of buttery breadcrumbs. After choosing a recipe, I set about whisking a casual 1.5 pounds of grated cheese into the béchamel and folding a pound of macaroni (no relation) into its creamy depths. After I pulled the dish out of the oven, it continued to bubble and I thought of the unseen action happening inside my belly. I posted a video of it to my Instagram stories, mentioning the satisfaction of a second trimester craving.
This morning, ever the dopamine junkie, I logged on to the app. An acquaintance posted a picture of her 8-month baby bump. She shared that she was wearing an old dress that nonetheless fit, her bump neatly pushing out like a movie belly. The chasm between my circumstance and hers gaped: she was still thin with a pert bump and I was planning a second round of forking creamy pasta into my mouth despite being well past the early pregnancy vegetable-aversion. Again, my envy came, in waves this time. I wanted to be able to wear old clothes and look cute in them. But, by the time I found out I was pregnant, my body was already far different than its “normal” state after years of deprioritizing self-care due to overwork and life chaos. Also, any clothes I’d come back to the US with had burned, so there were no old clothes to fit into. At least I had mac and cheese. It took until writing this to remember how much I know about how this person came to be pregnant and that it was a long, harrowing road. When she shared with me that she was pregnant again and well on her way into what was then her own second trimester, I was overjoyed. How easily that generosity fell away in the face of my feelings of inadequacy.
Lately, I’ve felt attuned to these jags of envy because I’ve been thinking a lot about the role it plays in my life. Gretchen Rubin says that envy is a useful tool for directing one’s life, as it usually told us something about what we want. I appreciate this recognition of the quotidian nature of longing for what someone else has. What does “compare and despair” do for me other than make me feel bad? In other words, I want to recognize envy and jealousy as generative.
It seems so obvious to me that what I want is a calm dog who doesn’t try to terrorize the local moose population and—body positivity movement notwithstanding—a thin body with a cartoon bump that conforms to cultural standards. I can’t imagine sharing a picture of myself pregnant now let alone in months to come because I feel like a monstrous version of myself: my nose stretched out, my face putty, and my legs decidedly not as thin as they once were.
This sounds like I spend a lot of time mourning my body’s changes, which isn’t exactly true. I am so grateful to be healthy and pregnant and am no longer interested in the kind of self-hate-derived exercise and dieting that was habitual to me in my twenties. I feel grateful to eat food without guilt and to have a dog whose passion also manifests in full body snuggles. I know, too, that one photo does not tell the whole story of someone’s pregnancy, nor does one offhand remark tell the whole story of getting a new puppy.
It’s not exactly right to say that I want to invite envy and jealousy in, because—as I am sure is clear already—it is already my frequent companion. In these two ways, and many more, it is clear to me that I simply wish I had what someone else does. Other times, that’s not so easy to parse out. It took me some time, for instance, to realize that I felt a cocktail of jealousy and envy around a popular Substacker, when what I thought I felt was a feeling of pity and dislike. Only after days of writing a different essay about it did I realize that it was envy I felt, and that it could direct me to where I wanted to go with Othertongue.
More on that next time, as I continue to explore envy and jealousy. How do you interact with feelings of envy and/or jealousy? Do you experience them as generative or more shame-inducing? I’m paying attention to these questions more as I move through the world.
Such a great read and love the photo of you and Macaroni!