Very bad things happen to very good people all the time. Very bad things happen to only marginally good people all the time. Good things happen to bad people.
And so on. Things happen to people. What we tend to retain the best, however, is the bad things that happen; sure there’s your favourite Christmas memory tucked away safely in the back of your mind, and the first kiss, and watching a meteorite showers with someone you love, and camping, and boats, and the mountains (though not for 1me). But it was the lion in the bush a million years ago that freaked the shit out of grandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrand (x 100) Grandpa, who ruined it for all of us—our ancestor got so scared he unwittingly coded a bunch of genes, which later predetermined that from now on we will remember the bad because it’s evolutionarily advantageous.
From that moment on, we were DNAed (a verb and it stays) to pay more attention to bad things (lions ready to pounce on you in the bushes) rather than nice things (lion cubs you pet at Joe Exotic’s farm).
Maybe it was that. Maybe something else, like the fact that bad memories are just easier to remember.
When I ask people—friends and experts alike—about shame, I learn that shame has a powerful grip on us because what’s usually associated with him is something traumatic. Something that has made us feel unsafe, vulnerable, deeply upset, and, like a victim. If you follow some of my writing, you know that I frequently talk about traumatic events that happened to me, this was something I did to use as conversation-starters when writing my column on mental health for The Toronto Star. I started that column, not because I wanted to chronicle All the Bad Things, but because I noticed there was very little written about mental health and I didn’t get why we couldn’t have a regular discussion (can I please have 2my column back?).
I wanted to do something a little different, where yes, I engaged in certain Victim Narrative but it was also important to talk about solutions and how not to stay in that victim mode, how to draw strength from pain even.
As for victim narratives, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about that one. It’s a popular one. First of all, I think there’s even a bit of what I call Trauma Olympics happening out there where we tend to compete with each other about all those Bad Things that befell us. It’s kinda nice to sit in that too, get all that sympathy, ride that train forever. When I talk about writing about our vulnerabilities and using them as strength, I am talking about taking part in those Olympics. So I guess you could say I’m a bit of a hypocrite but at the same time, no, I am just wary of staying in this narrative for too long.
I tried to avoid being a victim in my memoir; I didn’t get too much into what traumas occurred during and after my pregnancy, I didn’t try to even scores. I’m sure I still did that to some extent but my aim was to give an honest account and also to take responsibility for the things that I did. That’s because I think it’s a bad thing to be stuck in this narrative (of things being done to me). This is not to say that whatever bad thing happened to you, you should ignore it. On the other hand, ew, the word “victim” is such a weird, wet, sticky term; I see snot and tears whenever I read it. So the opposite should be to be tough, right? Be strong, be resilient, be responsible! A superhero(ine)! Now you’ve got your Strong Narrative.
How exhausting.
And it doesn’t work either, that is a lot of pressure, and it just makes things worse (women tend to take anger out on themselves too—rather than on the external world; that’s where eating disorders come from, for example). So here’s a different idea: how about acknowledging that yes, we were a victim of one thing or another because bad things happened to us and it’s okay to be vulnerable? Give that space. Be vulnerable. Give it some snot and tears. And then from that point, from the point of acknowledging it, try to embrace that and then accept it and then maybe you can move on. Maybe you can recover because recovery lies in evolution; you can’t get evolve much if you’re stuck (whether in your Victim Narrative or your Strong Narrative).