Choice and Victimhood

$5 directions Portland December 2010

Dylan had the following written on our wipe-off board in our room for awhile. This is a place at the foot of our bed where we keep important reminders. This one was given to her by her therapist.

The Choice: Where there's conflict, I can go either way. 
A. Pragmatism - DOING
"Hey, it's cool. I'll do this other thing to try and make it better."
This is: dynamic, active, decisive, assertive. I am not a victim/Agency.
VS.
B. Self-Pity - BEING
"I am a disappointment and I suck."
This is: static, passive, relinquishing control. Victim hood.

I've been exploring victim hood a lot lately, since it became clear this last summer that the victim/rescuer/perpetrator triangle is really the main theme underneath my Bermuda Triangles memoir. It's painful stuff - especially because of course I'd love to say I am all over that now, but I am not. These are deeply embedded habits and they pop up every-fucking-where - in my marriage, and intimate relationships the most, but even at the grocery store, waiting in line to ring up.


I've been writing about how to look back with love on elephant journal, and working a lot in therapy with my incessant need to "do" all the time - not just rest and be. And yet, the default mode of "be" here shows a false being - it is not simply being, it is resigning. They are not exactly the same thing. And love, especially in the form of self-acceptance, needs to be active. It is empowering, and power does not come through passivity.

There are so many things I am thinking about this - too many to say here - but mainly to point to where this model helps me to see where my victimizing part wants to say "I am sick of doing, enough, let's just be." That kind of being never helps - it involves zoning out, dissociating. It's subtle, but finding a doing that helps me to stay with a raw state - meditating, for instance, takes initiative, is something I have to choose to do, and yet it helps me stay raw, get even closer to how I really am in that moment, so I can accept it.

I hope to keep exploring this more here in inside space. As I have been writing more for elephant journal, it's sometimes hard for me to tell what goes here and what goes there - however, I still count on you, my readers, to find the more intimate writings here. So I will commit to that - no matter how scary it feels to *do* that, to act and share how I am "just being."