Perpetual Victimhood
VICTIMHOOD
Bad things happen in life, that’s for sure. I grew up in a difficult house. I say that a lot in the talks I do. The best way to describe it is, it wasn’t an easy place to be a kid. My parents probably shouldn’t have had any kids, and they wound up having seven. My mother drank, a lot. My father gambled and drank, a lot. They weren’t happy people. They were funny and smart, but they weren’t happy. They were able to infect most of their children (I can only speak for me and simply judge the others) with their cynicism and melancholy. My father killed himself when I was eighteen, there were four children still living at home. My mother would eventually smoke and drink herself to death, dying at age seventy-three looking like she was a hundred and ten. She was a bitter woman who despised success or happiness in any other human-being. She would go out of her way to spread her reality-based rain cloud on anyone’s good fortune parade. This woman could spot a cloud in any silver-lining from a million miles away.
My first wife wasn’t really the “marrying” type. She was more the “have indiscriminate sex with a wide variety of men despite my relationship status” type. Even after branding her my possession, I mean my wife. Not branding, but, well…. She still wouldn’t adhere to my insane commands. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with her.
My second wife was different. She didn’t have sex with every guy she met. In fact, she got to a point where she just didn’t have sex at all. She was a cold fish to be sure. She was crazy and hated everyone in my family or circle of friends. She was insanely jealous and eventually cut me off from any outside relationship I would have away from her, her mother or her sister. We had a beautiful child together and were expecting another when we got into an automobile accident. My son passed away that evening, the baby she was carrying passed away six weeks later.
I had a horrible heroin habit to combat all this misery, you would have too, don’t you think? It was very difficult as none of this was my fault. You see, I was a victim. Do you know what the best thing about being a victim is? Well, I’m going to tell you. A victim is NEVER at fault. It doesn’t matter how often or for how many reasons you’re a victim (today your victim status can list in the hundreds if not thousands) it simply isn’t your fault. All you need to do is learn the mantra- “what was I supposed to do?” As in, “my parents were horrible. I didn’t ask to be born, what was I supposed to do?” Or, “I treated my wife so well, I didn’t cheat on her. It’s not my fault she was a whore, what was I supposed to do?” How about, “do you think I wanted my children to die? I love them. Of course, I used heroin, what was I supposed to do?”
I often used that refrain. What I refused to do is listen to the answers. The only thing I wanted to hear was, “you poor misunderstood fellow. Of course, it wasn’t your fault. All those mean nasty people wronged you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sit here in the pity chair and let us heap our sorrow upon you. You have no control over your life or making it better.” The thing about being a victim is this- if you are never at fault there is nothing for you to fix. You are at the mercy of your victimizers to fix it for you.
I didn’t ask to be born, that is true. I didn’t ask to be this gender, race or sexual orientation either. I can change none of these things. What I can change is my reaction to these things. I can also not use any of them to justify the horrible life choices I’ve made for myself along the way. While my upbringing had a direct effect on my decisions, I can’t blame my parents because I convinced myself I loved a woman I knew couldn’t be faithful to me. I can’t blame them for the coldness of my second wife. Using that ultimate cop-out “you can’t help who you fall in love with (which by the way is another victimhood mantra- I know he beats me, but I love him).” Turns out, you actually can choose who you fall in love with. You can-not, however choose who you become addicted and obsessed with in some psycho-fantasy of forcing your changes on them to make them the perfect partner you’ve envisioned being with since you were four.
The first thing I needed to do to get out of that victim mentality was to take accountability for my life. I am where I am due to the decisions I’ve made. Once I can do that, I can begin working on how to get myself out of it. I had to realize that the only two things in life I have any control over are 1.) MY ATTITUDE and 2.) MY EFFORT. By changing the first I can change the second.
If you sit around waiting for the person who wronged you to apologize and suddenly want to make it all better, you will grow old and bitter. There’s a story, I think attributed to the Buddha. It says that if you walk through a forest and are suddenly bitten by a snake you don’t sit and demand the snake explain itself. If you do, you will surely die of the poison. It is best to tend to the wound and, in the future, be more aware of the snake. It’s a great life lesson.