Becoming aware of my reflexive instinct to resent has been one of the greatest revelations of my sobriety. When I first heard people in recovery talking about resentments, I didn’t really understand what they meant. I thought they were just a bunch of pathetic, unhappy people who liked to complain about things. It took me a while to realize that I was just like them - the only difference being that they had become aware of their tendencies and actively worked to change them, and I was still mired so deeply in my indignation that I was completely oblivious to it.
The first time I made a deliberate effort to enumerate my resentments, I did it more to check the box than to really examine myself. I thought it would only take me a few minutes to catalog all of them, and then we could move on to the real issue - all those other people who resented me for no reason. I like to think through things while I walk, so I set out on a walk around the lake one morning to try to list off the things I was resentful of. It took a while to get started, which wasn’t surprising considering that I generally felt myself to be a balanced, optimistic, and well meaning person (which is hilarious, from my current perspective).
I saw some people bicycling on the path ahead of me and thought about how annoying bicyclists are. Why do they act like they own the whole path? This path is for pedestrians anyway, it’s not even a biking path. I remembered the time a cyclist yelled at me to get out of the way because I was walking on the path that has signs clearly explaining bikers are meant to yield to pedestrians. I thought of how all cyclists must be like that jerk - who do they think they are? As I kept walking, I came up behind a small group of friends who were walking side by side. They looked like they were enjoying one another’s company, talking loudly, gesturing, laughing. They were also going annoyingly slow. I’m a fast walker and it was irritating to come up behind people who insisted on walking three abreast, essentially blocking the path to anyone else. Who are these people to take up the whole path? I thought of the time I spent living in New York, where taking up a whole sidewalk in this manner would be an obvious and well understood social transgression that would be swiftly corrected by at least one good citizen.
It was a beautiful, sunny, early summer day. These friends were enjoying the morning, and I was focused on my frustration with having to slow my pace. It took a while, but eventually it hit me. I’m resentful of these people! I suddenly began to have more memories. That time in Heathrow airport when I was coming off a red eye, hopelessly exhausted, insanely hungry, and trying to order some breakfast from Pret a Manger. The woman behind the counter kept ignoring me and waiting on other people (I didn’t realize there was actually a line that I had circumvented). Finally I shouted, “I’m next! I’ve been waiting!” Everyone stopped and stared, shocked at the grumpy American who thought he was the most important person in the cafe. I resented all of them.
I kept walking, and thinking, and realized there were so many examples. Countless times I had been resentful of people I didn’t even know for the smallest, most innocuous offenses. I am so steeped in resentment, that sometimes I’ll make things up to be resentful about. I imagine, for example, that at work when I finish an assignment that I’ve been working on, my boss will give me some critical feedback. I’ll try to talk through it with her, but she’ll be obstinate and angry, and tell me my work is unacceptable. I’ll decide that if my boss has this kind of attitude I’ll just quit - I don’t need this! As this scenario plays out in my head, I can feel my heart beating faster, the sinking feeling in my stomach, the nervous energy coursing through me. Then I have to remind myself - it didn’t happen. And it would never happen. My boss is great. If she didn’t like my work we’d have a reasonable discussion about it.
I imagine negative scenarios playing out all the time - it’s some kind of reflex or instinct that I have. Like an evolutionary protection mechanism that doesn’t make any sense in the modern world. Perhaps I developed this habit because it prepares me for the worst case scenario. In a weird way, it makes me feel better to imagine all the bad things that might happen so that I am not surprised if anything bad ever does happen. But whatever minor and misguided reassurance it provides me comes at a steep cost. I have trained myself to look at the world as if everyone and everything is there to inflict wrongs upon me. And so I treat people accordingly. Instead of just saying “excuse me” and walking past the friends on the path, I glare at them, letting them know I am upset. Instead of just stepping aside and letting the cyclists pass by, I stew at the fact that they’re biking on the walking path, and when they pass I mutter, “no bikes!” as if that admonishment will pang their conscience, cause them to apologize for disturbing my walk, dismount from their bikes, and continue their journey on foot.
All these examples, though ever present and damaging, are minor compared to the resentments I have harbored against those closest to me. I may not talk to a friend for years because I insist on waiting until they call me, having grown resentful of the fact that I felt as though it was always I who called them. I may justify wrongs toward my family members by stewing in the resentment of the wrongs I feel they have inflicted on me. I may greet my wife grumpy and frustrated that she is late, instead of happy to see her and sorry that she got stuck in traffic. My life is full of examples of relationships I have ruined, or deeply scarred, because I felt justified by my resentments.
For so many years I was oblivious not only to the fact that I lived in and reacted to the world in this way, but that it was a negative spiral that made me more unhappy and made others unhappy to be around me. The more resentful I was, the more reasons I had to be resentful. The gift of recovery has been the self awareness to see it, to recognize my tendencies, and to work consciously to change them. Now, I can see when I’m holding a resentment and work through it so that I can accept the circumstances and move on. I can stop myself (most of the time) from acting on the intuitive urges that prompt me to be an asshole. I haven’t quashed the reflex completely - I still have the flash of annoyance and frustration in response to many stimuli - but I am getting better at calling myself out before I act on my reflex, and in those moments reminding myself how grateful I am for the people in my life and for the opportunity to try to do better.