Escaping Victimhood

I think it’s impossible to live a life where you don’t find yourself in a victim role at least once. That said, I’m beginning to confront the idea that I don’t have to stay a victim. Victimhood can be a challenging scar to bear. It often becomes an overwhelming role. Some people can fall into a victim mentality, feeling they are always the victim in every negative interaction. Victimhood is a slippery slope. I often question if I’m giving myself grace or making excuses for myself. It’s far from one size fits all. Everyone’s experience is wildly different, but I think I may have become too comfortable in my victim role.

Bad things happen, and some of us get dealt shitty cards. While everyone is entitled to their feelings, and I think it’s important to acknowledge and feel those feelings, the world keeps moving. Those of us stuck in the victimhood of our trauma get frozen in time while everyone else passes us by. I struggle with how easy it is for everyone around me to move on and forget while I’m still stuck in the trenches. The question I always have is, am I stuck because it’s easier to be a victim and not move on, or am I stuck because I truly can’t get out yet?

My fellow ‘see the world in black and white’ friends will hate the answer I’ve come to as much as I do, but I think the answer is I’m stuck for both reasons. Trauma recovery is a complex and fluid process. There are good and bad days, but the goal is to keep moving in the right direction toward feeling better. I have very minimal control over the bad days. I can put in place healthy coping mechanisms and take care of myself as best I can, but I may not be able to do much more than that. On the flip side, that isn’t every day, far from it. I’ve made it far enough into my recovery to be confident that I'm doing at least okay most days. That means most days, I cannot let myself be a victim.

What do I mean by that? I mean that I need to take responsibility for my feelings and my actions. Triggers are everywhere. That is a particularly difficult piece of dealing with trauma, but that is not an excuse to allow myself to behave wildly or treat people poorly regardless of how I’m feeling. Again, we all have bad days, but they aren’t all bad days. Most days, I owe it to myself and the people around me to step outside of my victimhood and abandon the excuses it provides me. I have been a victim, but I am not a victim. The world is not going to coddle me. It will almost always push and challenge me. I can’t keep expecting people to handle me with care. I need to step up, take responsibility for myself, and slowly pull myself out of the trenches. No one is coming to get me, and I’ll never get out if I sit in my victimhood and accept that I'm stuck.