The Agonizing Jealousy

the pain and jealousy of a world unattainable

I would like to express an emotion I struggle with, an emotion that distresses me more than depression, more than any worldly or fictional horror, more than any other existential dread that grows from within, excluding what pours from around. It is the jealousy of fantasy.

To be jealous of something in real life is to suffer a sharp knife. It resides in the realm of reality- as tangible as you. This is a fruit perched on a bough within reach. The wound eventually seals and closes as you achieve the scenario which was once the object of your desire and jealousy, and even if you currently cannot, the wound is soothed by the buttermilk of the scenario's certain possibility.

However, to be jealous of fantasy is to suffer, the bruises, wounds, and lingering pain of a dull knife. It resides in the realm of fantasy- intangible. What makes this fruit above the tree beyond all reach even more tempting is that the fantasy hosts many similarities and themes within real life and idealizes them, while also hosting that one or two fantastic aspects that make this temptation not only dazzling and enviable but also casts the illusion that this altarpiece of surreal idealism is possible.

The weak-willed chase it as if the carapace of this illusion, surrounded by the spires and spikes of prismatic sunlight, could ever be possible. but the carapace is empty, and those who've foolishly chased it downed and pried it open find nothing within other than their own madness pouring into the reservoir of the half-shell as it bleeds out of the fresh wound imparted on them by the puncture of the spires and spikes. This sudden realization of both the pain and illusion is as painful to watch as it is to experience. It would certainly be if that was how it indeed permeated as described. But that is not so!

One does not suddenly realize that they have been pierced by the spires and spikes of fantastic glimmering illusion. The spikes and spires are long and reaching, having already struck and pierced the carapace's pursuants. They feel it, they bear it as it inches and cuts into their flesh because the spires and the spikes are made of light and glowing mysticality. They know the carapace is empty, they know that their fantasy, their fantastic world can never be reality- but they chase it none the less, for they only ever experienced the fantasy world through vision and the pain of the disappointment drawn from the want to live it and feel it as fantastically as it is drawn, animated and written is as close to any physical stimulus they can achieve from this their precious fantasy world.

This another pernicious trial of the mortal world as imposed on us by God. If not the trials from around that drive their saber's into our flesh, then the trials that coil like a thorny vine that embraces and pushes its pricks into the heart, bleeding ever slowly, the pain both dull and sharp. Such is the joy and sadness when we experience the fantasy. Unfortunately, some of us feel more isolation, pain, and jealousy when the effect of fantasy leaves us as the credits roll.

This is why we must find our love and fantastic ecstasy in Christ. He is real and he is fantastic. He is the glistening carapace, with no spire and spike other than the ones he wears as a crown. And within you shall find His love. unlike the empty carapace of fantasy, Christ is overflowing with love, and such love flows unto you. your chase and pursuit of Christ will reward you with the center of His carapace- a love eternal, a love that shall fuse your soul unto the Godhead forevermore!

As Anselm of Canterbury once posited that God was better than anything we could ever imagine, Christ's love and the mortal attempts in pursuit of it is better than any fantasy that can ever be afforded to us by our own.

Author's Note

highly stylized, bellatristic writing style. formal essay in aid of this soon