Jealousy

Jealousy is defined, in one definition, in the Oxfored dictionary as being envious of someone else's possessions, achievements or advantages. You can be also the perceived as a rival,  someone thought to be sexually more attractive. Anyone, having lived for a goodly period of years, has been at one time or another become an object of jealousy. I hazard a guess, and proclaim that without jealous intervention, my carrier would have been much brighter, more prominent than it is now.

I encountered the ugliness of jealousy for the first time in third grade. There, in an all-girl school, my rival for a literary prize was so put out of he sphere of comfort, that, sitting behind me, she took my long braids and immersed them in the inkpots which we still used at that time. That act, in itself, did not disconcert me, but the fact that it totally ruined my dress, one of two I owned to go to school, brought my mother to tears. In those days there was no way to procure another dress for me. So, my jealous rival destroyed me twofold. With the dress gone, it was the better of two, I dropped out of the competition and she got the coveted prize. Fifty years later, some literary women I counted as friends, refused to read my books,  refused to discuss them, refused to critique them. I only gave two examples of many, for these were poignant reminders of the pitfalls of life. I hope you have chosen better friends.