Unfortunately, the boobache was also accompanied by slight nausea, and my face has been breaking out like it hasn't since I was a teenager. All coldly calculated to make me dwell on thoughts of diapers and rattles. Cruel, cruel nature.

This morning I'm fighting an old foe. She hasn't been around in a long, long time, and I'd almost fooled myself into believing I'd "moved beyond" her, and was quite pleased with myself. Hah! Today I am revealed for the poor person that I am.

I used to be one of the most insatiable green-eyed monsters on the planet. It's almost funny to see how jealousy ruled my childhood years; the tiny perfectionist that I was, I refused to do anything that I couldn't do perfectly from the get-go, but seeing my friends succeed where I couldn't drove me bonkers. Later, I took up the flute simply because my best friend had, and then practiced practiced PRACTICED until I was the best of the section.

Um...ask me when was the last time I even picked up that flute since then.

My best friend studied chemistry and math. I was a hopeless flop, and still am, when it comes to those left-brained matters, but I valiantly signed up for upper-level maths and sciences. To be frank, I have no idea how I even passed the classes. I struggled to not ever even ask my friend for help, so she wouldn't know that I had to work so much harder than she did; I didn't realize that it was apparent to anyone who cared to look. I stayed up into the wee hours every night, poring over those mystifying textbooks, exulting when I could make it through a simple exercise.

They were my "ridiculous" years. When I got to college, I laughed at my "old" self, wondering how I could have ever let my jealousy get so far out of hand. Naturally, I was "beyond" that. I was eighteen.

Jealousy rearose with a vengeance. Now I was studying music, and I felt her bite when I listened to the works written by my classmates. It hurt to realize that I could be so jealous of the people with whom I had just been eating and laughing. It hurt to think that when they sat in an audience for my music, they were sincerely happy for me. I was the only jealous monster.

And don't even ask about performance. I was a composer, not a performer, and yet I would sit in studio class, listening with all-consuming envy to the performance majors, making cutting remarks in my head. I was pathetic.

I finally "got over it" in grad school. Finally, I could listen to my colleagues pieces in peace! Finally, I could admit that the performance people were better at, well, performing than me! And, with a little extra effort, I got over my academic jealousies and learned to appreciate my colleagues' research. Ah, bliss!

And then, this morning, a close friend happily announced her long-awaited third pregnancy. I was crushed.

I know she's been trying much longer than me. I know she'd be thrilled for me if I was the pregnant one. I know she deserves it; heck, I prayed that she would conceive! But a little voice in my head keeps whispering, "But not before me. She wasn't supposed to get there before me."

I'm a worm. I hate feeling like this. I congratulated her, wished her a happy nine months, then crawled back into my little hole. I want to much to crush that little voice, that little devil inside of me, the little devil who is me.