Envy

[ehowton]

Mythologies often list the seven deadly sins as unique and disparate anthropomorphic manifestations, but in my experience they've often been tied closely - bound to one another; not their portrayals wrapped together with strong rope, rather a single, deadly heptahedron - a polyhedron with seven lethal protrusions. For it is nigh impossible to be assaulted by a single, lone assailant without being collaterally impacted by, or due to, one or more of the others.

I believe we each carry with us our own personalized heptahedron with a highly specialized version of the seven deadly sins in their own unique proximity to one another. My own, it would appear, places pride adjacent envy, for surely some combination of the two will be my eventual downfall. I assume envy is much less painful without first having pride as its accelerant. This missive marks both the first time I've experienced envy (to my recollection) and also the first time I've been betrayed by pride, my otherwise stalwart companion these many years.

Let me explain. Having fallen in love with my wife's BFF has been a singular experience. It's allowed me to roam the existential with tools at my disposal which were not accessible to me in my youth. The initial flood of hormones in my bloodstream was visceral, causing me to question everything - I thought I would finally be free of her when they subsided, but she is an unstoppable force in my psyche which puts to rest the idea that it was only a temporary, imagined event. In point of fact, it's only evolved; grown in ways I could not anticipate or imagine, subsequently disarming and permeating me, becoming as much a part of my life as my wife, who I also could not live without. Two sides of a coin I never dared to desire.

My overactive imagination coupled with mind-altering intellectual and carnal stimulation with my wife has provided fertile ground in which to tend to this fanciful garden, and daily interaction with her BFF has generously laid the rich soil in which I've sown again and again - ever cautious with the understanding that early-days and circumstances beyond our control cast any perceived declarations into the harsh light of suspicion. Not that emotions pay any mind whatsoever to the logical, or apparently, id to the ego under duress. My wife's only caution was to ensure I protect my heart.

I departed my imagined relationship temporarily to ask if she had a, "hot date" over text and was suddenly vexed with a sharp incursion somewhere deep inside me. Unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it traversed my body into my very soul and I panicked that I might be experiencing some mix of envy and jealousy. As this normally falls well outside my wheelhouse, I was once again embarrassed at having seemingly succumbed once again to emotion, wishing nothing more than a sign - any sign - to be freed from this purgatory in which I perpetually reside, and if that is proven to be unobtainable, at a minimum a temporary reprieve perhaps to allow a single breath back into my lungs lest I perish. At long last, it passed.

Entirely with my consent and the consent of my wife, I cheerfully vacillate between long-shot potential lover and gay best friend to fill whichever role she needs most at any moment in time, subsuming most everything else to be the absolute best husband I can be to my wife, and the best human I can be to her BFF for as long as is required, because I am consumed by her, and give freely of myself to them both.