Does it bother you to see your peers with certain things?

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OP you asked: does it bother you to see your peers with certain things?.

Occasionally, when I am at a social function in my neighbourhood, where there are happily married couples my own age, I feel a renewed ache of loss in my heart, as the love of my life died tragically and suddenly 30 years ago. I knew then, as I know now, that there would never be another person with whom I would have such a deep bond, though I am grateful that I did have that bond before disaster befell us, and I was disinclined to marry or seriously partner up again in a fully committed way.

There is much about solitude I find congenial to my nature, and it may well be that some of those couples envy me (though probably not many). I don't really envy them - I don't resent others being happy, and sometimes feel glad for them.

I know that we never really know the secret heartache of other people, that everyone hides to some extent behind a social persona, and some of those couples may have suffered equally terrible losses.

Measuring our lives against the lives of others seems to me a flawed practice, as no two lives are ever the same, and the full story of any one life is never, ever known to others.

I do look back sometimes at the peaks and the valleys of my life, the entirety of the journey, and marvel that I lived it, as I did, always curious to find out what might lie around the next bend in the road of my life. If experience has taught me anything, it is that the wellspring of hope is the most precious commodity a human being can possess, at any age.

Sometimes I think about a taxi I hailed one day in New Orleans, driven by a wise elderly black man who had just recovered from serious illness. He spoke more wise words to me in 20 minutes than I had heard in the previous 20 years, about terrible adversity and the endurance of hope. I have sometimes thought since that he was some kind of angel in human disguise I hope he survived Katrina. He taught me new things about how to refresh the battered and hungry heart.

No, not at all.

Yes

Jealousy is my middle name

The thig is, there are so many things that I can't do. That "normal people" easily do daily

Work, drive, friends, even eat new foods, read a book when it's loud in the building

Jealousy fatigue

Things just don't come naturally for me

Ghetto lil riffraff had the nerve to tell me that I "walk funny"

They were not wrong