Many times in my life I’ve heard the word victim, used to describe me. I’ve had many times where I could have believed that’s all I was.
Believed that’s all I would ever be.
Life sucked.
Many moments that I never want to remember, even a little bit.
Things out of my control, happened.
For the better part of a decade and a half, that was all there was, one after another. Situations where I was “the victim”.
I got tired of being the victim. I got tired of the pity, the self-wallowing, the pats on the shoulder and empty encouragements, from those that began to see me as nothing but “the victim”, because that’s what I felt I was, that’s what I acted like, and that’s how life treated me.
Instead of viewing myself as the victim, I started to look at myself as a survivor.
I was talking to someone the other day who was having a hard time with what life was handing to them. They had been having their own personal pity party for awhile and making everyone else around them miserable. I sat down and told them in similar words to “suck it up”.
Their response was “what, you’re going to tell me I’m not allowed a pity party?”
I replied with, “sure, but you’ve moved into a permanent residence with your pity party and you need to move on.. do you see me throwing myself a pity party”.
“No, but I never told you that you couldn’t” they responded.
It took me a minute before I realized, I hadn’t given myself permission to be a victim in a long time. And I was completely ok with that. Then I realized I won’t because I’m not a victim of my situations any longer, I’m a survivor. Victims have no control over anything. They let life happen to them, kicking them wherever they end up. Survivors take control. If you can’t control the situation, you can absolutely control how you react… and that will ultimately alter the course.
You can control how it makes you feel. You can control what you hold onto. You can control how you process and pass along the experiences you have suffered through to everyone you come in contact with.
So instead of feeling like a victim, I choose to feel like a survivor. This situation and all the hard parts that come with it are only going to make whatever is next easier. So I can handle the next thing with more grace, with more class, with more positivity and strength… that honestly, if I hadn’t gone through all those things that tried to make me a victim over the last 20 years… I wouldn’t be nearly as close to being able to handle this crappy, unfair, short straw as I am.
Im not perfect, I still have bad days… but as soon as I feel hopeless, I remember, I survived all those years when things looked just as bad, different kind of bad, but just as bad. And without them, I wouldn’t have learned to take this kind of bad with the laughter and humor I find in every dark moment.
So tomorrow, when you think your world is ending, that “everything bad” happens to you… smile, wonder to yourself what amazing adventures your future holds that this moment is trying to make you tough enough to handle. Wonder who you may be able to help through their victim moments because you will survive this, stronger and untouchable like you never believed you could be.