Releasing Resentments (or, I hope that SOB gets exactly what they deserve)
As of late, I have been chewing on a resentment.
Recovery programs are very clear that a resentment is the “number one offender of relapse.”
But what I have feels different: justifiable anger. Justifiable resentment. Justifiable rage. I have been wronged. Worse than that, people I love have been wronged.
I have been chewing on this resentment because this is a person who has hurt my stepkids. And the hurts continue. Repeatedly. They’re hard to see, too, because they aren’t bruises on these kids. It’s the subtle emotional type, the hardest type to heal from, too. But it shows up in their behavior. And all we can do is love and comfort them.
I am so very far from a drink. I’ve even given up cigarettes. I’ve mostly given up candy, too. In any event, I no longer have a Party Size bag of peanut butter M&M’s that I steal a handful from every time I happened to see it when I opened the cabinet to get the kids a cup for juice.
But, still — the struggle to accept the things I cannot change.
In a meeting I hear someone say to pray for the person who you are angry with. Pray for that person for two weeks.
“But the prayer has to be authentic or it won’t work,” this cottontop says. “So if all you can muster is, I hope that goddamn son of a bitch gets exactly what they deserve, start with that. By the end of the two weeks, I can almost guarantee your prayer will have changed.”
And so I try.
Maybe if this person were happier, I think, they would cause less harm in my stepkids’ lives.
But I remember the hurt, and a flash of red, pure rage wells up in me, in my solar plexus as I feel the absolute lack of control I have over any of it.
Give that son of a bitch exactly what they deserve, I say, because at least I have humor. My number one value, forever and always.
In The Four Agreements, a book that has been popular in my recovery and shamanic circles, Don Miguel Ruez writes:
“Forgiveness is the only way to heal. We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice.
You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and no longer have an emotional reaction. You will hear the name of the person and you will have no emotional reaction. When someone can touch what used to be a wound and it no longer hurts you, then you will know you have truly forgiven.” (114-15).
The part that has made me the most angry is when I act out of character.
I shouted an unkind thing not that long ago, holding my sweet baby on my hip, yelling across a parking lot in the middle of the day. I was provoked, but still. I stepped outside my own integrity. I wasn’t able to hold my tongue as I have for so. Fucking. Long.
And I hate it more than anything when I don’t act like the person Mr. Rogers knows I can be.
To keep the forgiveness. To hold it in my hand. To not crumple it or burn it or throw it in the air just to watch it fly away, and even, to not admire it too much. To be right-sized about it. To accept it, as it is. And especially, to endure the repeated hurts is what I am struggling with.
To say deserve with neutrality. To remove any shred of vindictiveness.
Holding onto a resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies, is another oft referenced axiom in the recovery community.
All in divine timing, I think. But is there any way it could be just like, the tiniest bit faster?
I am re-focusing my time and energy in a Boundaries course that changed my life. The course is called Becoming Boundaried, led by Molly Davis, and I have re-enrolled in the graduate circle.
My husband is enrolled in this course, too. I never thought in my whole life I would have a man who would be interested in these kinds of things. But again, this is a man who showed up at my doorstep holding John Gottman’s 8 Dates the first time I met him.
In this workshop, we do an exercise called Elephant/Rider. The Rider represents the rational, analytical mind, while the Elephant is the emotional, intuitive, instinctive part of the brain.
“Who has the power in this relationship?” she asks.
We sketch our elephants and riders.
This is not the first time I have done this, but it is the first time my elephant has appeared so small. In my drawing, my rider is pacing around, frenetic, like a chicken with its head cut off : There is so much to do! she cries. In my sketch, my rider drag the elephant, who appears a fraction of the Rider’s size, around the neck on a leash. This does not bode well for either of them.
“What is one word that they want you to know?” the instructor asks.
“Patience,” my elephant and rider both tell me.
“Patience,” I scoff. “The absolute worst.”
Don Miguel Ruiz’s words echo in my head.
You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and no longer have an emotional reaction.
“What am I going to do about this blind rage,” I say to my husband while nursing our baby. It is funny, sort of.
Sometimes I think to myself: I have arrived. I no longer have an emotional reaction.
And then the next day, I’m back to I hope that son of a bitch gets exactly what they deserve.
While I don’t pray explicitly to an entity called God, the Sick Man’s prayer in AA reads:
God, when a person offends me, help me to remember this is a sick person.
It goes on: Help me show the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.
Cheerfully. With ease.
Show me how can I help them. / Save me from being angry. / Thy will be done.
It always gets me, that whole “thy will be done.” Thy will, not mine. The will of the universe. Of whatever it is that’s out there. Whatever out there that wove this web. Whatever out there that thought it would be funny to give an alcoholic 8 kids to raise, but also give me a kind, loving man to raise them with.
Soften my heart, I ask. But like, also maybe put a rush on it?
And so, because I love humor so much, the universe laughs and, not so subtly, tells me it will happen, in divine timing. Cooperating with the universe is the lesson. Learning how not to swim upstream. But here I am, some days, with that frenetic energy, furiously freestyling with all my might, cursing the rapids for being just as they are.
Excellent
I pray that I never get what I deserve. (Also I love your writing style!)