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It was when I considered slashing the tires of an old manager’s car that happened to be parked in front of me on the empty street that I realized I should actually start working on my fourth step.
I had been putting it off for weeks — partly at my sponsor’s suggestion — by doing anything and everything else I could: organizing my bookshelf, making big meals, catching up on my business’s bookkeeping, writing album rankings, and even rotating my mattress. And then it was the day of a full moon in Aries and I was feeling hot-headed before I even saw that manager come into the coffee shop I was at. Seeing him though, and then seeing his car in front of mine after I left, really set me off. I stood on the sidewalk by our cars for a few moments, looking around to see there was no one else on the street, and wondered if my pocketknife was still in my bag. Then I took a deep breath, got in my car, and sped off before I could let myself check for it.
The fourth step: “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The way people in AA talk about this step made me feel like I didn’t do it right the first time — or the second time, now that I’ve done it again. Likewise with the way the step is written about in the Big Book and the 12 & 12. I’ve gotten the impression you're supposed to list every bad thing you’ve ever done and every mistake you’ve made. Then you share the list with your sponsor and feel weight lifted off of you, like you’ve just gone through a Catholic confession. (I’m speaking from experience — I always floated out of those confessions as a kid, feeling renewed and ready to sin some more.)
All that my sponsors had me do though was write lists of all of my resentments, which felt like the opposite of accountability. You mean all I have to do is make a list of all the ways people have hurt me, not the other way around? My current sponsor told me it helps you be able to let some things go. The first sponsor I worked this step with told me it’s partly so you can take a look at some of the things you drank about, some of the reasons you might drink or use again. They said it’s also because there is an accountability portion — you think through each of the individual resentments and consider the part you played in them. The fact that there were very few situations where I actually contributed anything though did not help my sneaking suspicion that I’m an innocent sweetie pie.
Even just writing a list of other people’s wrongdoings was still difficult, and I really dragged it out both times. It’s uncomfortable and often triggering to think about all the ways people and institutions have fucked you up and fucked you over. The uncle’s father who told me that gays are all going to hell; the tattoo artist that made up a story about our session that embarrassed me and hurt my reputation; the realty company that soft-evicted me because I was receiving state rent assistance money; the doctor who blamed premarital sex for what was actually a life-threatening MRSA infection that he didn’t treat; the friends who cut me out and wrongly took my ex’s side of the breakup; the colleague who randomly gave my business a one-star review. It’s a painful exercise to dredge up things I would rather forget, things I don’t tell people; each time when I got deep into it, I was resenting my sponsor a little for making me write the inventory.
What do we mean when we say resentments? A resentment is a reason you’re angry with someone or something. It’s a specific cause for your grudge. We list them because, as the saying goes, resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get hurt. It can hurt you to hold onto so much anger, and to hold onto it for such a long time. The Big Book says all forms of spiritual disease stem from resentment. It offers this explanation on how to complete the inventory:
In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry. In most cases it was found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened. So we were sore. We were “burned up.”
I found that looking at the specific reasons I’m burned up helped me pick apart the feeling of resentment so I could see what was actually causing it. It allowed me to put things in perspective too. With many of the people on my list, I saw there was only one incident and when it was written down — or in my case, entered into a spreadsheet — I was able to say that’s why I’m mad at them? That’s it? In some cases, seeing the reason or reasons you’re angry with someone laid out in front of you can help you see it might not be that big of a deal, especially compared with other resentments. In other cases, you might still feel very justified for holding that grudge. I found both of these to be true as I made my lists.
To write the inventories themselves, I first jotted down the names of everyone I could think of whom I was mad at. Each time, I easily came up with more than twenty names. Then I went through my phone contacts and Instagram followers to add to that list. It’s kind of a funny exercise doing that to jog your memory — you’re thinking about how you feel toward each of these people and being like Oh, fuck them, they were a bitch to me that one time, then adding their name. Listing all of the individual reasons I was angry with these people was going to take a while, so both times I just worked through a few people a day. It’s honestly pretty satisfying at times writing a resentment inventory. I had to remind myself that the point wasn’t to just let it all boil over though — that I was doing it to try to let go.
There’s a reference to the fourth step that I remember from the Netflix adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House. One of the main characters, Luke, is an addict. There’s a scene in the show’s fourth episode where he’s talking to Joey, a friend who’s in rehab with him, about that step. Luke says, “I must be allergic to the fourth step — every time I do one I break out in track marks.” She replies, “Good. If you liked it, you’d be doing it wrong.”
Luke’s joking about relapsing when working the fourth step is a sentiment I’ve heard expressed in meetings before. That’s part of what has made me question whether I worked the step the right way. He shares a list of a few ways he’s hurt and taken advantage of his family members; I haven’t yet taken inventory of the hurt I’ve caused and the ways I’ve taken advantage of people. Even just writing a resentments inventory though has made me wonder why I’m doing all of this hard, boring self-improvement shit when I could be out drinking instead.
In that scene, Joey goes on to say, “We’re only as sick as our secrets.” People in recovery throw this saying around and I’ve wondered about it a lot. How true is it? What is it about secrets that keep us sick? Which kinds of secrets do? And how does that sickness affect us?
Neither sponsor asked me to share all — or even any — secrets I’ve been keeping. I want to share a few here and see how it feels.