Racing Resentment
What I found waiting for me on the other side of five years of work.
I turned in my manuscript last week for the book I’ve been working on for five years.
This should be a moment of pure celebration - and it is. But it has a shadow.
I am grateful to have lived a life that allowed for me to do something like this. To have community who supported me throughout the process and are still doing so. Not just with encouragement, but legit shared with me their resources, helped me with housing, and guided me through my process. My friends kept me going when I was ready to tap out - and I was very ready to on multiple occasions.
I am grateful, mostly. I’m grateful on most days and most of each day. But there is a fraction of the time that I find I have no choice but to face my demon. To look him in the eyes, and accept that he is a part of me which I cannot whitewash, try as I might. His name is resentment.
Resentment haunts me. I don’t identify with him and I’m afraid of letting the world know he even exists. But on many days, it feels like I am in a race against him on the roadway of time. He’s trailing me - hot right on my heels. Some days he catches up and he’s right next to me, glaring at me. Taunting me. With that smirk on his face as he toys with me. He’s so confident he can beat me. Maybe because he is a part of my legacy.
My father lost that race long before I was born. I’m told by some of a time when he was not the man I knew. The man I knew had fully lost all will to keep resentment at bay. And my deepest fear is, and always has been, to end up like him. To be so deeply identified with resentment that it becomes my identity. A tumor so hidden that no one catches it till it’s too late. Which, coincidentally, was how my father’s cancer diagnosis went.
Today, as I write this, resentment is not quite right at my side. But I can see his silhouette when I look over my shoulder. He’s close enough for me to name, but not so close that I’m ashamed. When he’s right on top of me, I’m too ashamed to name him. Over the years, I’ve hidden from him and hidden him from you. But my gamble is that perhaps by telling you about him, maybe I can finally take a little break and rest.
I look back on the past five years and can point to countless examples of love and support I’ve had. But on my more resentful days, what gets magnified in my mind are memories of people who have not had my back. Memories and darker days where I felt alone and angry, where the only thing that kept me going were thoughts of “I’ll show them.”
I’ll be the first to say that there are a great many situations where things may be up for interpretation. But there also are some people in our lives who legitimately don’t have our backs.
Gaslighting ourselves into believing everyone who ever crosses our paths has only our best intentions in mind can become its own practice of spiritual bypassing. Falling into this trap is the risk we take when we choose optimism. By defaulting to assume positive intent, from time to time, some shitty people will slip through, or we may dismiss some very obvious patterns of behavior. Though I am of the thinking that it’s still worth it. Better to have loved and lost. Life isn’t about how many times we get knocked down, but how well practiced we are in getting back up.
But I gotta be honest with ya, it does feel like getting back up gets a little harder each time. After we’ve collected all these bruises and injuries and aches and pains, bouncing right back up seems to take a little longer than it used to. It feels like resentment has caught up to me and shoulder checked me right into a wall. I lie on the ground and consider staying there. He crouches next to me and taunts me and I wonder if maybe he’s right. I should just stay down.
On some days, I resent my parents’ learned helplessness, which they projected onto me, making me feel insecure and afraid of taking the risks needed to move forward in my career earlier, instead of so late in the game. But I get back up because I remember that they didn’t know better. They believed that their world was just ‘the world’ and did their best as parents within those confines. I resent colleagues and people in positions of influence who have seen how long I’ve been working on Burner Podcast and have chosen to sideline me when opportunities arose. But then I get back up when I consider that I may have simply not been a factor in how things played out. There are forces at play I’m not privy to and some relationships were more transactional. Now I know that and I thank them for teaching me discernment. I resent artists whom I supported in their earlier chapters, thinking that someday they’d return the favor and hire me when they have a budget for a music video director. But then I get back up when I remind myself that if that was why I’d supported them to begin with, then I was engaging in exactly that same type of transactional mindset which I’d detested.
Some people do suck. Some situations have no good way to flip. It’s all an interconnected eco system so complex that it would be impossible to see all the connecting points. Which part of that story we choose to hold on to is the yoga. When I’m tired, when I’m angry and broke, when I’m struggling, resentment catches right up to me and the world looks a little more grey. The only solution I’ve come up with to pick up a little more speed has been to focus on one or two small things and build from there. To go focus on some nature. Spend a little time with an easygoing friend who makes me laugh. To let go. Just a little.
Popularized by the British Cycling team’s approach, the aggregation of marginal gains is the philosophy of searching for a tiny, 1% margin of improvement in everything we do. They did it by looking at all the little things that impacted the bodies and minds of their team, ranging from the quality of their mattresses to the water pressure in their shower. I do this in my own race against resentment. To pick up a little more speed, I’ll address the smallest things I can in my mindset. I’ll journal about things I appreciated today. I’ll learn more about psychology and my own upbringing and culture. I’ll go do some yoga in the park. I’ll write a piece like this and hit publish even though I feel fear. Especially if I feel fear.
I could’ve just sat and let resentment do the typing. But then it wouldn’t have been something I could be proud of. It would’ve been a bitch fest. A vent session. Which, of course, is not to say it can’t be its own form of art and serve someone. But it’s not my style. It’s not what flows from me naturally. So I let my muse take over and set a clear intention of healing. As in, before I entered flow and began typing, I first wrote a couple of sentences in my journal very clearly stating my intention to write for the purpose of healing. Before I’d sat to write, I was playing around with some very clever plays with words in my head and fully getting off on the idea of throwing some serious shade at some very specific targets. But then, as my fingers landed on the keys, this other energy took hold, and I watched on my screen as it guided me towards a place of levity in real time.
Optimism is an act of courage. It is a risk we take, over and over. To say that we will continue to open our hearts, even after we’ve collected plenty of evidence that it can be shattered. To put on foot in front of the other, even when it seems like the race was lost a decade ago. To get back up every morning and make the decision not to succumb to yesterday’s resentment. To be present today and hopeful tomorrow.
I used to try to skip past this part. I’d see the resentment on my heels and I’d just race against him harder. Yesterday I was clever and I thought I could outrun resentment. Today I’m wiser, and I see that I first need to face him. To stop hiding him and being ashamed of him. He is a part of my journey. Maybe he’s here to help me. Maybe tomorrow I can even start to entertain the possibility that he is my teammate, this shadow that I’d labeled resentment. Maybe he is transforming into something else before my eyes. Maybe this leg up, an awareness of what I might become, was the greatest gift my father could’ve ever given me.
My forthcoming book is entitled Yesterday I Was Clever - An Accidental Memoire. It is a selection of essays about the artist identity and the Iranian-American experience, which can be read as separate pieces or as a linear philosophical memoire. Right now it is in my editor’s hands for final edits and I hope to have it available to be held in your hands before the end of this year. Stay tuned to yesterdayiwasclever.com to join the waitlist.
