Inadequate

she read it.
with each word she read, her confidence fell down a notch. she looked up from those wonderful soulful thoughts and evaluated herself. separated herself from her body and considered who she was. looked at herself through the eyes of someone else, the eyes of the ultimate observer.
and she realized something: she would never be like that. she could never express the truth with such uninhibited abandonment. She couldn’t. maybe because she didn’t see it like he did. he somehow managed to see so deeply into the farthest recesses of the human consciousness and extract bits from it that were hidden from view, buried in the cave of the mind. he could see the twitch of an eye expressing sadness. and he could know what that sadness was. he could go to the deepest roots of sadness – or any emotion for that matter – and extract its meaning. define it. see it. feel it.
and more importantly, make her feel it. he had an uncanny ability to explain who she was without her knowing it herself. she could only recognize that what he was saying was exactly how she was feeling deep in her subconscious. her soul, independently from her mind, responded to it. "yes!" it screamed at every word. "that is precisely it!"
he knew, somehow, what it meant to be a human being.
and everyone else saw this in him too. "heck," she though as she read, "I see it. that's why i love it so much." it was like a car wreck. it made her feel shitty, but she couldn’t stop staring. she couldn’t stop turning the pages. even as each page crushed her soul a little bit more than the last.
she knew somehow instinctively that she would never be as good. she would never reach the level he had. she felt – she was – inadequate.
the worst part of it all was that this made her not be happy for him. as much as she wanted to be, as much as she longed to feel just a self-less pure admiration of him, she couldn’t separate her own feelings of jealousy from it all.
deep down, right around the part of herself that felt so inadequate, she also felt this horrible feeling of – well, she didn’t know what to call it. (hatred?? fear??) (see?! she just wasn’t good enough. she couldn’t even think of a word for her own feelings!) all she could think was that it was evil. it was – oh God – a secret wish, buried deep deep down (but there nonetheless), for him to fail. there it was. out in the open. she had finally admitted it to herself.
oh God oh God oh God.
she didn’t want him to be this good. it wasn’t that she wanted herself to be better. she just didn’t want him to be any good.
yes.
that was it.
she knew it was a horrible way to feel, to be.
but the truth – now that she was being honest with herself for once – was that for as long as he was around, she couldn’t stop comparing herself to him (not when she was trying to do the same thing he was already doing so well). and for as long as he was so good, she would always feel not good enough. so she hoped he would...sigh...fail.
inadequate.
yes.
that was it.