Resentment, Assertiveness, and the Tree

A common trope with “coming-of-age” stories and the adolescent period of our lives is ‘standing up for yourself’. It’s taken to mean pushing for your own views, beliefs, and cementing your own space as worthy and belonging.

And I agree with it: fighting for what you believe in and calling out unfair treatment is extremely important. Without it, justice is just an idea, and many people go unhappy for much of their own lives. You’ve also heard about the “doormat” trope, the person who lets everybody else’s interest take precedence over their own feelings and needs. I’m here to talk about something entirely different.

To me, there’s two points at each end of the assertiveness scale, one being the “doormat” and the other signaling over-aggressiveness and being pushy. In my own life, there are times I’ve wondered which end of the scale I should place myself (for each specific situation).

Recently, I’ve had a realization, and it’s that sometimes you can skip the scale altogether.

In my 9th grade year of high school, I was partnered with two other kids to effectively write and present a business plan. I knew both of them, and we were on good terms- until we progressed later into the project. One of my partners started making little comments here and there, giving the occasional passive-aggressive tone or remark, and eventually things escalated; I felt like he wouldn’t give me a break.

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When I finally did snap, and let out an “Oh, my God”, the response was to chill. My other partner, in this case, did nothing to help, circumvent, or acknowledge the treatment I was receiving.

However, this wasn’t his job.

It was mine.

The mistake in this scenario may seem glaringly obvious to you, the reader, or somebody who’s used to dealing with these types of people. It may seem astounding that I continued to put myself at risk for unfair and downright mean treatment, but this whole story signals a crucially important lesson: you can’t do what you don’t know.

A past history of remaining in unhappy situations and unfulfilling relationships had chipped away at my understanding of, well, “standing up” for myself. When I tried to break through the hard shell that my partner had created around himself, I was met with more punishment and felt increasingly like a failure.

I created narratives inside of my head to justify his treatment of me, and even though every cell in my body was screaming out for me to do something about the situation, I had no idea what to do.

I didn’t even know there was another option.

Eventually, I opted out of our group field trip (we had progressed in the school’s competition and were eligible to compete in the state level). It felt as though a weight had been lifted off my back, but a revelation broke through my mind. There was no reason for me to prove myself to someone so mean. My partner clearly had his own issues, and I realized it’s not my job to solve ANY of them; it’s actually better for us both if I stop trying to push my own ways of life onto somebody else.

The underlying motive behind all of our interactions was, on my part, to try and force him to be “nice”. I had already labelled myself as good and others- people like my subordinate- as not nice, or mean, or insufferable.

In reality, this was completely false. The person I had been working with may have been miserable, but by giving his actions credibility and power over my own internal state, I created misery for me and those around me.

It was an excruciatingly difficult and strange experience, but I learned a lot. This scale of being a doormat, of beating yourself or others up, of not reacting and pretending you’re okay with whatever’s going on, is worthless.

Absolutely worthless.

I could have gone to the teacher, is what I’m saying.

It’s not that far-fetched, right?

When somebody is clearly suffering in their own narrow perspective and world, you don’t have to expose yourself to that. Go around the scale of assertiveness, in these cases, and resolve the situation with someone else. There is absolutely nothing wrong with going “over somebody’s head”, because if you don’t, your head will explode… instead.

People love to create stories and complaints about other people, and for a while, that’s what I did. It took some time, but I realized that allowing yourself to waste your own breath and life force on somebody else’s trauma is silly, to say the least. It’s downright ridiculous, and it helps nobody.

I didn’t grow while I was dealing with this individual’s issues, projected onto me; he didn’t grow, either.

It helped nobody.

However, I’m actually glad that it happened. If you think that you can fix anybody, or solve their problem, or if you theorize that people’s actions have anything to do with you, you’re wrong.

I don’t want to label things as wrong or right, but I had to conclude that my treatment and role in the entire dynamic wasn’t just.

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But the next time anything like this happens, I now have the knowledge. I have the power to break the cycle that plagued my family and myself for so long. Honestly, it sucks to have old beliefs preventing growth in certain areas, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have gotten the fuck up and gotten out of the entire situation.

Am I resentful? Am I a little bitter? Yes. Absolutely. But I don’t want to hold onto this resentment. It’s not something that I have the time or the effort to maintain, and if you’ve read “A Poison Tree” by William Blake, you’ll know that it breeds more hatred and chaos.

I’m still working on myself. But the only way I’m ever going to have the space and clarity to do that is if I stop wasting time with other people’s problems.

I hope this article helped you and opened your eyes, because articles like this one have done the same for me. That’s why I wrote this, and maybe that’s why I had to go through that situation in the first place. Everything happens for you, not to you, so you can learn and grow and change and not be stuck in stagnation, like so many people are.

That’s the whole goal.