I’m jealous of your salary.
I got some names, and you got some money.
I’m jealous of your salary.
I got some network, and you got some stability.
I’m jealous of your salary.
I got a real taste of the harshness in the game, and you got to enjoy the comfort you made.
My shoulder is stiff and achey.
I’ve worked ten times harder.
Why is life so unfair?
My perfect life tasted sour, knowing that after three years, I’d only reached your starting salary.
I felt ashamed for having such a shallow thought.
Equating salary to my self-worth, equating salary to the yield of my blood, sweat, and tears.
But it’s never about the salary.
And it’s not even about you at all.
It’s about me, and my story of the past.
The heartbreak of pouring all my heart into stories I called failure after failure.
The anger of stretching myself so thin that I disrespected my body, my friendships, my health.
The confirmation bias of digging, intentionally, into wherever and whenever I wasn’t good enough.
Last night, I had a conversation with jealousy, and asked her what she really wants.
And I learned:
There is confidence in my jealousy of your salary — a book on self-trust written from every decision I made to create my own stories, reminding me I’d forgotten that I did believe in all the failures I chose.
There is care in my jealousy of your salary — a mandatory healing curriculum, a lesson from the hard work of my own body, whispering that this is a season of rest after the sprint.
There is sweetness in jealousy — a professor of self-love yelling at my ego that the blame I cast on myself is a distorted angle, familiar but far from reality.
Salary is the angle society sees, and I used it without processing.
Failure is the angle I chose to see. Undervalued, but my preferred way of seeing myself.
Jealousy is yelling at me to wake up.
To own my work.
To take pride in my effort.
To trust my own vision for the future.
“Why did you dare fucking think your past is a failure, instead of shouting at the world how courageous you are to swim against the wave you believe in, a strategy that will compound over the next ten years?” Jealousy asked, paired with anger. “
Shut up talking like a loser! You know what you’re trading your salary for. You know what you’re fucking doing. You know what you believe in. Why couldn’t you just be proud of yourself, by yourself, for once?”
I’m stunned in front of my jealousy of your salary.
Thank you,
Thank you,
Thank you,
My jealousy of your salary.
