The Word That Kept Me Stuck (And Why I Stopped Using It)

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There is a huge difference between being a victim, and being victimized. I wish I had figured this out years ago. I wish everyone in the criminal justice world would figure it out, too. 

My husband was a homicide victim. I am his surviving spouse. I was not then, have never been, (and here’s hoping, never will be ) a homicide victim. I was and am, in fact, his surviving spouse. 

A survivor.

And yet, for years, I let the word “victim” settle over me. It’s what so many people called our families. And it gave me permission to wrap myself up in that identity, like a warm blanket on a bitter cold day. 

Strength was critical- not just for me, but to be the leader and mother my four little boys needed me to be. But strength was hard. The pain, the fear, the exhaustion, the anger… all of it paved the road I had to navigate if I was to reach that strength. The word “victim” gave me an offramp to coast on. A rest stop in the dark of night. And I took it every time. 

Years later, when I was in an abusive relationship with an addict who used me as his ATM, his whipping post, and his own off ramp, I fell back into that “victim” mindset. It wasn’t my fault my life was a constant disaster. I had this “dark cloud” that followed me, after all. I just had to accept that I had one of those lives where I’d never get anything right - where nothing I tried would ever work. I was a victim of that person. A victim of life - right?

That’s how it was always framed for me. It was only when I hit that spot somewhere so far beneath “rock bottom” that rock bottom felt like an aspiration, that I realized I’d never been a victim, after all.

I was a survivor the whole time.

Yes, in the latter experience I’d been victimized. And I’d been pulverized by it - physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually pulverized by the cumulative effect of that relationship. 

But I was still standing. I still woke up each day and I still had choices to make - I’d just been so buried in trauma that I hadn’t made the right choices. The hard choices. 

As brutal as my situation was, as hopeless and depressing and damaging as it felt, it was still easier to believe it was beyond my control than that I alone held the power to change it.

I’d been walking in those ruby red shoes the whole time. 

I don’t blame anyone else for all the years of learned helplessness I lived through. Plenty of people have navigated trauma far more gracefully than I did even with that “V” word directed their way. And no one who called me that word, or bent over backwards to help me through hard times had anyone but the best of intentions. It wasn’t their fault that I’d programmed myself to receive those kindnesses as excuses to blame life for my misery, rather than take accountability for my own happiness. 

It’s this experience and this hindsight that play into my reasoning for how I now respond to people who are navigating their own struggles and trauma. I understand the initial wave of “Why me,” and “Poor Me.” I get that those waves are not a one-time thing, but will indeed wash up on them periodically - perhaps for the rest of their lives. Pretending those feelings don’t exist, that the pain and despair are faults instead of natural feelings, does more harm than good. So I am initially supportive as they first express those sentiments to me. And when those same waves crash back from time to time, I recognize the power of swimming with that riptide, rather than struggling against it - but only as a means of making it back to shore. Not as an excuse to drown. 

At some point it is time to stop enabling that powerless, “woe-is-me” mindset in a person. At some point, it is time to acknowledge that hard times do not write a blank check for all behaviors. At some point, it is time to help a person see a Survivor in the mirror instead of a Victim. 

I respect you too much to treat you like a victim. And I will tell you so. And some people have slammed the door in my face for that. But I always crack it back open, ready for them to walk back through.