It's Not Fair

I don’t like to think of myself as a jealous person. I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about what other people get that I do not. But it happens from time to time. It doesn’t stay, but it does hurt. Since I no longer have a religious paradigm, I don’t find myself self-shaming for having jealous feelings or the grief around the losses I’ve suffered in my own life. I don’t know if that helps or doesn’t help. I think it’s mostly neutral, but I think I am more aware of my feelings. I mostly just notice them and work on accepting that they are real, whether it feels “fair” or not. It is what it is, even if I hate it.

These feelings come up sometimes when another person talks about a family member they are grieving. I used to feel that I was a bad person because it made me angry that other people had a father so different than mine, that they didn’t feel relief when he was finally FINALLY gone and no longer able to hurt them and that they didn’t have to fake things around other people to pretend that they had a normal relationship. I feel less shame about this now. I try instead to remind myself that I am right, that it isn’t fair. I try to tell my child self that she deserved better, and I try to watch for depression that may hit a few days after something like this happens. I also make sure that I never bring this up with the other person because it isn’t their fault that they had a good father and I didn’t and it also isn’t their fault that their less complicated grief brought up my much more complicated grief.

It happens when I see people who left Mormonism who didn’t also lose their marriages. I feel angry and jealous. Why didn’t I get a spouse who loved me more than dogma? Why didn’t I deserve that? Yes, I know I made mistakes. I catalog my long list of mistakes frequently. Maybe even constantly. It’s not helpful. It doesn’t make me able to make fewer mistakes in the future. It just makes me afraid that I will keep making the same mistakes or perhaps different mistakes. But there’s never going to be a time when I make no mistakes. Or even fewer mistakes. New mistakes don’t seem particularly something to look forward to, either.

Yes, I’m aware I have a problem with perfectionism. Being aware of that doesn’t make it go away. I’m dealing with the anxiety in myself about my future and my grief about my past. My anger and frustration are stupid and annoying and not helpful.

But since I no longer am religiously wedded to the idea that “good people” don’t experience these feelings, I can be more curious about them, watch them rise and fall and simply remind myself—I am human. I am not going to become a god. I’m going to die and then it will be my turn to be simply finished and that feels like a relief to me in many ways, though not all ways.

I had a very vivid spiritual view of my future many years ago, when my children were very small and I was still an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University. A minor local hero had just died and I had listened to part of the eulogy and had been overcome with grief and a little bit of that weird jealousy that comes up for me sometimes/often. And I’d had this weird vision of myself in ghost form, looking down at my own funeral, and hearing many loved ones talking about me as a pillar of virtue and courage. At the time, I had the sense that it would be a very Mormon community of people who thought of me as theirs and were proud I belonged to their heritage.

As time has passed and I’ve felt forced to step away from that community I loved/love, and also I’ve let go of the idea of spiritual premonitions like this meaning anything more than a wish for my future, I don’t know what to say about this vision. I don’t know what it means. I spent several decades aiming for this future. And now it feels like that will never happen. When I die, I can’t imagine very many Mormons will be there to say kind things about me. I don’t imagine the church will claim me as one of its own. I don’t even want that. I don’t know what I want.

I guess that’s OK. That’s the space I’m in right now. I don’t need to make it any different. It just is.