Jelly Bean Jealousy

Dragon guarding jelly beans (Meta AI)

I like the slang word "jelly" for jealousy. It's softer, lighter, not so murderous. Look at that dragon in the pic: would he set you on fire if you touched his candy stash? Maybe he would, or maybe he'd be only a little bit jelly. Jealousy is more about wanting to keep what you have rather than simply desiring what someone else has (envy). A jealous husband doesn't want men to flirt with his wife; an envious husband wishes he made enough money to afford a fancy car like the guy next door. But we often use the two words interchangeably, and so be it. Everyone knows what we mean, which is the important thing.

Back when I was interested in romantic relationships, I wasn't really a jealous type, as far as worrying about who might be talking to "my" person. I guess I never thought of anyone as "mine" in that way, and it still seems weird to me to claim ownership of someone. I mean, if "my" person would rather go off and be with someone else, then good riddance. Why would you want to be with someone who is no longer interested in you? Ick. That doesn't mean I was into polyamory (not that there's anything wrong with that) ~ it just means that out of all my OCD behaviors, jealousy wasn't among them.

Sometimes people want you to pretend to be jelly (in the romantic sense), so I would go along with that, and vice versa. It all seems so ridiculous now. So much wasted time. But it's easy to feel above it all when I have no interest or desire; back in the day, I definitely wanted to find someone. Now though, I'm too jelly of my free time, my me-time, to squander it on a date. I hoard my non-working hours like precious treasures because every week there are fewer of them left, and at some point, not too far into the future, they'll all be gone. A human lifespan is such a blip, a blink, in the evolution of the universe.

~*~

Written for Linda's Stream of Consciousness Saturday (jelly).