When people ask me how I got into Celebrate Recovery, I tell them that I got so “sick of my life and sick of myself” that I was willing to do ANYTHING to change the direction of my life. For a long time, I saw that moment as “Rock Bottom,” and really, it was. More importantly, I see it was the moment I took off my victim crown and flung it like a Frisbee out of my life.
Merriam-Webster defines Victim as:
- A person who has been attacked, injured, robbed, or killed by someone else.
- A person who is cheated or fooled by someone else
- Someone or something that is harmed by an unpleasant event (such as an illness or accident)
One thing that always comes to my mind when I think of a victim is powerlessness. Victims don’t have a say in being victimized. I’m going to go out on a limb and tick somebody off here, but… there are times when we do have a say. Now obviously, when we are the victim of an automobile accident, robbery, medical malpractice… we had no say. When we’re an adult in an abusive relationship and we know it and we choose to stay… we had a say and we said it. When we understand that the coping mechanisms we learned as children are counterproductive and we keep using them… we’ve said it. At that point, we’re not powerless, we’ve got martyr syndrome. Why do we do that? Great question. I can’t tell you why everyone does it, but I can tell you why I did it for so long… to feel moral superiority over my perceived victimizers and for sympathy.
I wasted a lot of years polishing my victim crown, acting like I had no other options and trying to gain the sympathy of, well… anyone who would listen to my whining. I acted as if my happiness, my success or failure, my health… was other people’s responsibility, not mine. A crazy thing happened on the way to the zoo… when I realized that the people I’d been blaming for the lack in my life had no power to supply me with happiness, success, etc… I also realized those same people had no power to prevent me from getting it for myself.
I have worked for years to come to a place to forgiveness for myself for wearing that victim crown for so stinking long. It’s embarrassing to think of how many times I’ve tried to make other people look bad in an attempt to feel better about myself. I trashed the reputations of people I love in an attempt to hate myself a little less. I hated myself for being a victim, even when I thought I had no choice but to be a victim. I heard a quote that brought me a long way in that process of forgiving myself.
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
-Maya Angelou
(for the record, there are variations of this quote floating around and I’m not sure if anyone knows what the original really was, but to me they all make the same point)
I truly believe that the journey of shedding the baggage began at the exact moment I decided that I wasn’t going to spend one more minute as anyone’s victim. It was frightening and liberating in the same breath.
For the record, the person who victimized me the most was me.
