Hey, Jealousy

Every once in a while, I toy with the idea of titling each post with a song title, but then I remember that I know nothing about music and never really have, so that would probably lead to even more protracted silences than usual. I do love the song Hey, Jealousy by the Gin Blossoms, though. It was popular during my brief foray into popular music during college, and it still reminds me of that time whenever I hear it.

Lately, I've found myself consumed with jealousy, and it really is a consuming and pointless emotion. Not relationship jealousy, but ugly middle-aged jealousy of youth. I see pretty teenagers in pretty summer dresses, thin and glowing, chattering like mindless birds, and I feel my eyes turn green. Of course I'd like to be thin, and not need makeup to remove the night-of-the-living-dead undereye circles, and wear mere suggestions of clothes without looking ridiculous, but what churns my stomach is the blank-slateness of their existence. I remember being that age myself and can't quite figure out the path that took me from there to here. I really missed the point of that whole Thoreau thing about living deliberately until it was far too late, and most of my choices had been made for me by chance or impulse or the path of least resistance. Is this the appeal of religion, the idea that you might get some celestial do-over? I want to be a different person, I want to have a different life, but the mirror is very clear on this subject - I'm calcified into who and what and where I am.