Biggest Resentment of Them All

In group on Tuesday, there was a lady there that talked about pride. She said she didn't think she was prideful until she went and looked up the exact definition. Being the curious sort that I am, I decided to look it up too.

pride
noun \ˈprīd\
: a feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by other people
: a feeling that you are more important or better than other people
: a feeling of happiness that you get when you or someone you know does something good, difficult, etc.

After looking at that, I realized that, in regards to pride, I'm okay. I don't have any of those feelings. Then I got curious about resentment; you know, my topic of choice of late. Here's the definition of that:

re·sent·ment
noun \ri-ˈzent-mənt\
: a feeling of anger or displeasure about someone or something unfair

I know my big issue has been resentment and dealing with it. About a month ago, I'd not have believed you if you told me I was carrying around resentment. I am just not an angry person… or so I thought.

This is very disjointed, so I hope you'll bear with me and hopefully this will go somewhere. :) When I was younger, I had some kind of event in my life that caused me to start gaining weight. I always thought it was between 2nd and 3rd grade, so I'd have been 7-8 years old. Last night I went over to my parents' house to look through old pictures to see if we could narrow it down a bit. My school pictures were all lined up together and I was surprised! My weight gain appeared after 4th grade! My 4th grade picture I looked fine, then my 5th grade picture I looked fat. The only thing that happened was in February of 1989 my mom got a job. In April I'd have been 10.

As we talked about this, she said that she just hadn't been home to monitor what we ate, but I think it was more. I think maybe that started me eating, having no one to tell me no, but it was after that that the comments about my weight started and I think the summer of 1989 cinched it for me. I think that was the year I let resentment get the better of me. It was that summer that Grandma told me to come stay with her because SHE could get the weight off me. It was the summer that my uncle told me my fat body was in the way. It was the summer my sister told me for every Dorito I ate, I had to lose one pound. It was the summer my mom put exercise on my chore list. It was the summer my best friend moved away to live with her dad. It was the summer I stopped being important for who I was and my fat became the only thing people could see.

I'd stored up a lot of resentment from that year… and I think I put it all at my mom's feet for not being there to take care of me. I didn't even know this stuff 24 hours ago, so it's not like I've been conscience of purposefully holding onto this stuff. I do know though, through conversations with my mom, that after that I started giving her what she called, "Love Tests." I started doing things to see if she really loved me or not. The thing I'm wondering now is, did I test her even if she "passed" the last one? Or did I only test her when she "failed" the last one? I can't see testing someone for 20+ years if she'd passed each and every test… so does that mean she failed all of them?

I remember one test when I was 18. I was working at a local Arby's restaurant and my house was quite literally across the street. I had hard contacts at the time and they were really making it difficult for me to work, there was something wrong with them and I just could not see. I remember calling home to see if my mom could come across the street with my contact stuff so I could take them out and wear my glasses the rest of the night. I remember her being a bit exasperated with me and telling me that no, she couldn't do that. I asked her what I was supposed to do and she told me to try putting drops of water in my eyes. After we hung up, I remember going into the bathroom and trying the water thing, which just made them sting so much worse and I basically cried the rest of the night because tears would not stop running down my face… but they weren't sad tears. By that time, I'd mastered the art of being numb.

I think I remember this night so well because a co-worker of mine had called his mother for something and even though they lived 15 minutes from work, she dropped everything and came to help him. I do remember feeling devastated. It killed me that I wasn't important to her at all. Granted I never tried to find out why she couldn't come, maybe she had plans or maybe she just wanted to relax after work. Either way, I think that was the beginning of the end for us.

A year later my mom and dad sat down with me because I owed them some money and apparently I wasn't being as responsible as they wanted me to be. I know I was paying them, so I don't remember what brought this on. I just remember them saying they were going to sign me up for the army. I must of have said something in a parting remark that my dad didn't like because before I'd made it outside, I was shoved up against the wall and my head slammed back against the wall repeatedly while my dad made his point, which I don't remember. I do remember my mom just standing back and watching my dad doing this to me, then when he was done, she said, "You have made me lose all the love I ever had for you." I think after that point… well, I'd always thought I was worthless and unlovable and what not, but I think part of me hoped that I was worth something to my mom, hence all the tests. This sealed it though. After this I started down my road of bad choices. I picked people that I knew would hurt me as a kind of constant reminder that I wasn't worth anything anyway.

I wonder sometimes how my mom feels deep down. Now, we get along great, we talk and share and spend time together. If I'm being honest though, I think I have a pretty heavy guard up. How could she possibly like who I am now if it took who I was to become who I am? Once in a while I find myself throwing little tests at my mom, not so much now, but within the last couple of years. She's passed them. I don't think I've given her any tests in quite a while, actually… but I've never really let anyone in all the way. I don't even think I've let my husband in.

Wow, what an interesting turn this has taken. After writing all that down though, I feel quite at peace. I'm not sure where to go from here, how to progress, or how to heal, but at least I've admitted to it. And as we all know, admitting we have a problem is the first step to healing. :)

B

Resentment – Done.

First, sorry I haven't written in a while. I was off camping and enjoying this beautiful Earth!

Second, just now, this very moment, I have finished my resentment list. When I finished, I closed it with a prayer. I am feeling the strangest sensation though. I feel light, free, like a heavy load has been lifted from my chest. But I also feel empty and anxious that the empty will just fill up with new resentments.

One day at a time.

I wonder what affect this will have on me going forward. I wonder if I'll feel this weird empty for long or if it'll slowly disappear as I realize I don't need to hold on to these silly things. I also know there's one more thing in me. One more thing lurking, but I don't know what it is. I feel that something happened to me when I was 7 years old. For some reason I keep thinking Christmas time – that would have been the winter of 1986-1987. Whatever it is, it's just out of my mind's eye.

Anyway, I feel that if I can figure that last puzzle piece out, I'll FINALLY be whole. Doesn't mean I can just coast through life though. :) I'll have to keep this stuff up forever in order to not let it build up as badly as it did.

Good luck in your recovery!

B

Resentment

Resentment has been pretty heavy on my mind this last week. The direction my thoughts have been taking it is starting to make me wonder if perhaps resentment is my core issue and not "mattering." Because if you think about it, I resent those I don't matter to. Well, I Google'd the best way to get rid of resentment and I found this thing that lists it out 12-Step style… it's like an expansion of Step 4: Make a fearless and searching inventory of ourselves.

Here is what the website said:

1.Face them
2.Feel them
3.Deal with them
4.Heal from them

Step One- Make a list of all the people you have resentments towards. If you do this honestly, then the list should be pretty long. Include ANYTHING that gives you an automatic negative feeling. You can also include places and institutions (a school you attended, an airport you had a bad experience in) nothing is too trivial or too small.

Step Two- Next to the person's name; write what they did to cause you to resent them. Again, nothing is too small. If you resent your boss, it may be because that person gives you unreasonable deadlines, or could simply be because you don't like their hair. The reason for the resentment doesn't have to "make sense"—it just has to be honest. This is where it will get hard, and you will feel worse than you did before starting. Try to have faith that the end result will be worth it—because it will be!

Step Three- Now you write what part of your life each resentment affects. If you resent an old teacher who made you feel inferior, you might say that it affects your self-esteem or confidence. The point is to become acutely aware of the specific ways that the resentment is impacting your identity, and your ability to feel safe, secure, and loved.

Step Four- Next to the reason, or cause for resentment, you are going to write down your part. This is how YOU have contributed to the problem. Back to our boss example, at this point you've established that you resent your boss, that you resent your boss because of unreasonable deadlines. Your part in this problem could be that you never spoke up and asked for less work.

When I worked on my original step 4, I listed all the "slights against me," but I didn't know what to do with them, so I just left them without the Step 4 process complete while completing all the other ones. Now I have moved my "Resentment" items into a different tab on my spreadsheet (yes, I know I'm dorky for doing this) and I've set it all up according to what the steps above say. The strange thing is this; now I find I don't really want to do it. No, that's not quite it. I want to do it, but I'm scared. And if I'm scared to do this step, that means it's the step that'll finally get me to let go… let go of this weight I've hid myself in for so long. I don't know if that'll really happen or not, but I DO know that when I am finally "healed" that I'll be able to let it go.

The strange part is that I've not been scared or worried about any of the other steps so far, even apologizing to people hasn't really been that bad. I've felt GOOD for doing it. Granted, I haven't done that much that needed corrected. :) I've done everything I can to clear the air with the people I needed to. The hard ones have been the people I don't know how to get ahold of anymore. I ended up just having to write them a letter and free myself of the feelings. There are two people that I would absolutely love to see face to face and apologize to them. I doubt they'd talk to me even if I did know how to find them.

The idea of losing my resentment feels almost like I'm losing me. I haven't really thought of it that way until right this moment, but it makes a lot of sense to me. So, here's what I've decided to do. I am going camping next week (so you may not hear from me). I've uploaded my resentment step to my cloud and have distributed it to my phone and tablet. While camping next week, I am going to go through my whole list of 90ish things and complete the above steps on these items. I am hoping, the week after next, when I return, I'll have used the nature and time alone to come to grips with all my resentment and either have it completed or moving in that direction. I plan on enlisting God's help too… to help me remember any I have left off my list so that when I clear them, I can clear them ALL once and for all.

Now that I've written this, I'm getting a little excited! I hope it goes as well as I'm planning it to go. Wish me luck!

B

*sigh*

First, I wanted to let you know that I didn't get the chance to talk with my uncle over the weekend. My mom ended up working all day Friday and we had a baptism to attend Saturday… guess it just lost importance. I have another meeting tonight though, so perhaps I'll get the strong urge to do it again.

I think I've talked before about how I feel left out in my group at work. My supervisor rarely stops to talk to me, only really stopping to talk with my one female co-worker or sometimes the male co-worker. I honestly don't think he likes me as a person, he only likes me as an employee. I guess that's okay, but where he has the deeper relationship with the other two, I wish he would with me too. Maybe it's my issue because I keep everything so close to the vest. Anyway, an incident yesterday got me thinking about this again. My female co-worker asked me if I could pick her up from a car shop nearby the next morning. I said I would, then we got talking about maybe stopping for donuts. Well, our supervisor is watching his sugar intake so our conversation went from donuts to muffins then to bagels. I decided to call him and ask him if it would be okay if she and I went and picked up some bagels for our group after we dropped off her car. He kind of hemmed and I suddenly started saying that we probably wouldn't, I just wanted to find out if it was okay and by the time he and I hung up, I was wishing I'd never called him because I felt so stupid.

So the questions I was thinking this morning are these: Why do I allow others to make me feel stupid and awkward? Then I back pedal to "save face" and act like I didn't really mean what I'd said… I just don't get it. Why do I do that? He just now walked into my female co-workers office and they're visiting. My face got all hot and I'm sure I'm blushing because I'm embarrassed over that stupid phone call. I don't know why, it's not like he's even going to check in. Usually he just waves as he walks by in the afternoon going to get a soda.

I get so tired of this. Why can't I get people to like me? Why do I even care if they do?!

B