There are too many victims lately. In the news. On television screens, flashing up on phones. And we are all deeply, deeply sorry for them – these people caught up in awful circumstances, to whom awful, awful things have happened.

Because we know that’s how to treat people who have been hurt.

Back in real life though, our day-to-day, we also meet, every now and again, Victims.

These are Victims with a capital letter – like it’s a job title.

We all know one.
They are dramatic.
They lurch from crisis to crisis.
They are over emotional in inappropriate places.
They over share.
They can talk about nothing but themselves, and what made them a victim.

They will also not do anything to help themselves escape the cycle. It becomes the sum and total of who they are – and when it comes down to it you suspect they’re enjoying the drama and attention just a LITTLE bit too much.

And it is annoying, exhausting and frustrating – especially when it impinges on you.

I have met several Victims in my time. People who thought their sh*t was always sh*ttier than everyone else’s. People always demanding sympathy and leeway. People dangerously crumbling – and liable to reach out and take you down with them if you let them latch on.

I have not had time for their shenanigans.

And I have not always been kind.

And then…

Then I became a ‘victim’.

I became a victim, I suppose, of motherhood. Because it started, really, when I first got pregnant. It was a complicated pregnancy for one reason and another, and I struggled with anxiety and dread. For perhaps the first time in my life things were happening to me that were out of my control, being done to me, my body letting me down and not doing what I wanted it to. And I didn’t know how to cope.

For the first time, I was passive, and helpless – a victim of circumstance – however much I’d wanted that circumstance in the first place.

It didn’t end.

I was a victim of a bad birth experience, again way out of my control and experience. And then the rest came. Postnatal depression, miscarriage, problems at work, relationship issues, infertility struggles, blah blah blah.

And gradually, without really noticing, I became a Victim.

Yes, my nice, ordered, controlled life had collapsed around my ears. But I think the thing that really changed – that took the v from lower to upper case – was the lack of emotional support I received.

When I really truly needed understanding, needed an outlet, I didn’t get it. And in that void I went into a tailspin. I started reaching for it in other places – sometimes the wrong ones. Seeking support. Looking for validation. Over sharing.

Essentially I started blogging as the one active thing I felt I could achieve against the barrage of stuff happening to me. I started blogging out of loneliness – the sort of solitude you can only experience inside your own head, when there is no one else to talk to about what goes on there. I started blogging because I needed to get my thoughts out, somewhere people could choose to actually listen and engage. I started blogging because I was desperate for someone to hear me, to find someone who could empathise. To find someone who could say, ‘me too’. To feel less alone.

I have been deeply touched by some of the support I have received from strangers, particularly from women and mothers who also love their children to distraction, but are lonely, and kind of traumatised by the sheer impact it has had on their bodies and minds and relationships and lives. Other victims of motherhood.

And gradually, I have become less of a victim.

It has taken me some time to look back and see how battered I have felt, how helpless. Because I have been doing the only thing I have known to do – gritted my teeth, battened down the hatches and got through each day as best I can.

But today I have decided I will no longer be trapped, ruled and assailed by external forces. I am no longer going to curl up in a corner of my life and take what’s dished out to me. I am no longer going to plead for help from passers by. I will no longer let things just happen to me or around me. I’m going to help myself. I’m going to stand up, and say ‘enough’. I am going to deal with the things I’ve been cowering from. I am going to heal.

And I am also sorrier than I can say for my past attitude to Victims.

Because having been there, I can see the other way of looking at a Victim, is to see someone who is struggling with their mental health.

Someone who has been hurt.
Someone who is adrift.
Someone struggling to cope.
Someone reaching out.
Someone who for whatever reason doesn’t doesn’t have anchor.
Someone who doesn’t have a safety net.

No – it doesn’t need to be your job to catch them as they fall.

You may not be close enough to do so, and you are certainly not obliged to sacrifice yourself by throwing yourself underneath every stranger, acquaintance or colleague. But neither do you have to help them on their way. Maybe you could just reach out and touch them, briefly, with kindness. And maybe, just maybe, that could slow their descent. Maybe – hopefully – that could mean they don’t shatter when they reach rock bottom.

Maybe, just maybe, you will save someone through a moment of fleeting kindness that will actually cost you very little.

So the next time you meet a Victim, a drama queen, someone who seems to think they’re special and that the world owes them something, look again.

Pain is not a competition.
There is no sliding scale of acceptable reactions to life events.
There is no statute of limitations on trauma, or on sympathy.
Emotion is not a failing.
Mental ill health is not a weakness, and it is most certainly not an attack on you.
And the smallest bit of empathy could go further than you would believe possible.

I am no longer going to be a victim. Of whatever case. Of whatever circumstance. Things are no longer going to just happen to me and knock me flat. In fact I am going to start happening to things.

And those things should watch out…

But not because I plan to come out fighting.

The opposite of passive is not aggressive – it’s active.

While I’m not going to let myself be bombarded and diminished by LIFE any more, neither am I going to cause any damage of my own. The things I’m going to happen to are going to be better for me happening to them.

I am going to be better.

And I want you to know that you can be better too.

 

Mumonthenetheredge

xx