Written by Renee W.
The grass really was that green
Seven years ago, sobriety felt almost magical to me.
The grass seemed impossibly green. Had it always been that green? Where had that greenness come from? I would stand outside and stare at the sky as if I had just arrived on Earth. The clouds! Don’t get me started about the sunsets. I probably have over 500 sunset pictures on my phone from the past seven years. I remember driving around during early sobriety with my windows down, thinking, How did I miss all of this before?
I was finally living in the world instead of trying to escape it.
I remember constantly thinking: I get to do this sober?
I get to make it through a whole day without drinking?
Without shame? Without panic? Without replaying the night before, trying to figure out what I said or who I hurt?
Everything felt fresh and startling and new.
I loved my life. I loved the people in it. I loved waking up without dread. Even ordinary things felt holy somehow. Coffee in the morning. Folding laundry while listening to music. The sound of rain at night.
Early sobriety felt like being handed my life back.
Then life happened
Then year two passed.
Then three.
Then four, five, six.
Now I’m approaching seven years sober at the end of this month, and while I am still deeply grateful for this life, sobriety eventually stopped feeling magical every second of the day and started feeling…well, human.
Somewhere along the way, people stop asking how you’re doing. Seven years sounds stable. People assume long-term sobriety means the hard parts are over. I wish that were true. Mostly, I think recovery just keeps handing you deeper versions of the same lesson until you finally stop trying to run away.
Life happened. It happens. It continues to happen.
There has been grief. Stress. Triggers. Family problems. Old wounds are bursting back open at inconvenient times. Disappointment. Exhaustion. Times when I have felt emotionally drained and have nothing to give.
I kept finding myself asking: Why do I feel so miserable sometimes?
The answer kept leading me back to one thing.
Resentment. Yes. Those.
I think I got complacent about them. Maybe even a little arrogant. I thought I had already dealt with most of mine years ago.
People who hurt me. People who didn’t support my sobriety the way I needed them to. Situations I had already “processed.” Conflict I thought I had made peace with.
Resentments are sneaky.
People think dealing with resentment means understanding it intellectually.
I know I did.
I could explain my pain beautifully. I could trace it back to trauma, fear, relationships, abandonment, and insecurity. I could analyze it from every possible angle. I could make charts and diagrams. Color-coded ones, probably. I could connect all the dots like a detective in a crime documentary. But none of that actually removed the resentment; it just made me highly educated about it.
Understanding resentment and releasing resentment are not the same thing. Sometimes resentment feels productive at first. Like I’m “processing.” Then three hours later I realize I’ve just emotionally chain-smoked the same thought in different outfits.
That’s what I’ve been learning lately.
Historians of pain
Resentment is a stored emotion. Sometimes it wraps itself around identity so tightly that we don’t even realize how much of ourselves has attached to the hurt.
You can forgive someone and still feel anger when something reminds you of them. Sometimes things go dormant. Sometimes life brushes against an old bruise, and suddenly, you realize it still hurts.
And once the substances are gone, you are left with yourself. That’s the uncomfortable part nobody really escapes forever.
The mind starts searching for old emotional fuel sources: anger, fantasy, comparison, and hurt. Old conversations replay in the background like reruns. Sometimes we even rewrite parts of them to make ourselves feel more justified. The brain says, Ah, yes. This familiar thing again. Let’s chew on it for six straight hours while trying to fold towels.
I had obvious resentments toward people who harmed me.
I also had resentments toward people who probably never intended to hurt me at all. Maybe they were careless. Maybe emotionally unavailable. Maybe ignorant. Maybe they simply could not give me what I needed.
But the biggest resentment I found underneath all of it surprised me.
It was toward myself.
For years, I thought my anger was mostly about what others had done to me. What I slowly realized was that some of my resentment was grief.
Grief for years lost to abusing alcohol.
Grief for the version of me who tolerated things she should never have had to tolerate.
Grief for the ways I abandoned myself trying to be loved.
Grief for how hard I was on myself after getting sober.
Grief for how badly I wanted people to understand me.
Because underneath resentment is usually one or all of these sentences:
I wanted to be seen.
I wanted to be protected.
I wanted someone to understand how hard this was.
I wanted to matter enough for someone to handle me with kindness.
That’s the pain underneath a lot of bitterness.
And here’s something else I learned the hard way:
Recurring resentment usually does not need more analysis.
I had already analyzed mine to death.
I wrote about them. Talked about them. Dissected them. Explained them to myself and to trusted people. I understood them intellectually.
I had become a historian of my pain.
I could explain every wound in gorgeous detail while still carrying it everywhere I went.
What I needed wasn’t more analysis. I needed release.
That sounds lovely and inspirational until you actually try doing it.
“Just let it go….”
Because well-meaning people say things like:
“Just let it go.”
Okay. How?
“Just forgive and move on.”
Right. If only the nervous system worked like that.
“Everything happens for a reason.”
I’m going to be honest. Sometimes that sentence makes me want to walk directly into the ocean and not come back.
“Just focus on how far you’ve come.”
I understand the sentiment, but that doesn’t help here either.
The truth is, none of this changed overnight for me. I didn’t wake up one morning resentment-free while birds landed on my shoulders like some emotionally healed Disney princess.
But here are a few things I have learned this past year.
The secondary payoff
This one made me deeply uncomfortable.
Sometimes, resentment gave me a sense of moral superiority. Sometimes it protected me from vulnerability. Sometimes it gave me identity. If I were angry, I didn’t have to sit with sadness. If I stayed focused on what someone else did wrong, I didn’t have to look at my own fear or grief underneath it.
Letting go almost felt like losing part of my story.
Justice and fixation are different things
Some things really were unfair. Some people really did harm me. Some situations truly changed me.
Acceptance is not pretending something was okay when it wasn’t, but fixation kept me emotionally chained to moments that were already over.
Resentment has a strange way of convincing us we are protecting ourselves while actually keeping us emotionally stuck in the exact place we say we want freedom from. Oh, the irony.
Resentment interrupts peace
This one is the most disruptive and became impossible for me to ignore.
When resentment builds long enough, I stop feeling like myself. Everything starts feeling bad. I get restless, irritable, and discontent exactly the way the Big Book of AA describes.
Little inconveniences suddenly feel deeply personal. I replay conversations constantly. I mentally argue with people, and they don’t even know it! I assume motives without asking questions. I start scanning for proof and always seem to find things that resemble the proof I need.
Resentment distorts reality like that. Everyone starts becoming either a villain or a disappointment. Neutral interactions suddenly feel loaded. Tone changes and facial expressions become evidence. It’s absolutely exhausting.
Meanwhile, half the people I’m resentful toward are probably just out somewhere buying groceries while I’m holding emotional court in my head for the fourteenth time that day.
Resentment pulls me out of my actual life, and that’s the part I hate the most.
Because I really love my life now. I love my peace. I love my creativity. I love being present. I love waking up sober. I love being emotionally available for the people I care about.
Resentment interrupts all of that, and I don’t like it.
Triggers aren’t regression
Life happens. Life keeps happening.
Things trigger old memories sometimes. Certain conversations hit old wounds, and stress reopens old files in the brain. That is very human.
Triggers are signals.
Signals say:
This hurt.
This crossed a boundary.
This needs attention.
Something here still needs care.
The danger is when resentment stops being a signal and becomes a lifestyle, and I have seen that happen in myself before. I have seen it happen in others too.
Some people build entire identities around bitterness. Entire personalities around grievance, and entire lives around old pain. They defend their bitterness because, at some point, it started feeling safer.
I don’t want to live there anymore.
Not after seven years.
The grass may not look neon-green to me every second of every day now. Life feels more layered than it did during early sobriety. It’s definitely more complicated, but it’s also more honest.
But seven years later, I still wake up sober. I still get another chance at peace.
I still get mornings without shame and nights I remember. I get hard conversations and real laughter and grief that I actually feel instead of numb. I get to be present for my family, my writing, my friendships, my life. I get to keep becoming someone I can live with.
And maybe that is what long-term recovery really is.
Maybe it is learning that peace is something we return to again and again. Maybe it is catching resentment before it hardens into who we are. Maybe it is learning how to just show up and stay present. Maybe long-term recovery is less about never getting triggered again and more about how to return to ourselves faster.
Seven years ago, I was amazed that the grass looked so green.
Seven years later, I’m grateful I’m still here long enough to notice it.
