the shadow of victimhood

It's been reinforced to me recently that most people are victims at some point in their life. They are victims of hate, of violence, and of betrayal. It is a rare thing to get through this life unscathed. I'm pretty sure everyone has had hurtful words directed at them, has been let down by the people they love or trust. When we are victims we feel hurt, alone, afraid. It often rocks us to the core, making us question who we are, how we behave, and what on Earth happened. It's natural to feel anger and fear, to be very wary about who we trust or love from now on, and to build up defences around ourselves to try and prevent this kind of pain again.

And then you have two choices. To move on as a stronger and more empowered person, or to remain a victim, wrapped in the familiar blanket of fear and anger. It seems like a logical choice, I mean, who wouldn't want to get on with their life, but of course it's not as easy as that. Partly because it's not clear that you are choosing one of these two options, it kind of just happens naturally. Your subconscious chooses which is most suitable or beneficial for it, without you really knowing why you're feeling the way you feel.

But if you don't, at some point, choose to move on with your life then you are stuck with those walls that you built to keep people out so they can't hurt you again (even though we all know they still can anyway). You're stuck pushing people away, blaming others for your issues, and living with fear every day. Fear of being hurt or betrayed again. And fear is a funny thing, because it can manifest in other emotions and behaviours such as jealousy, anger, escape and avoidance, anxiety, distrust and hyper-vigilance.

Of course dealing with what happened and moving on doesn't mean you'll no longer feel fear or those other associated emotions and behaviours. But it does mean that they will stop defining who you are, how you behave and how you think. We're all familiar with the pop-psychology talk of letting go, moving on, and of concepts of baggage and trauma. Pick your favourite lexicon, it all boils down to confronting your demons and choosing how you react to them. I feel strongly that you can't give yourself fully to any relationship, be it family, friend or sexual partner, if you are still stuck in the mode of victimhood. Because you're still trying to protect yourself, you're still holding back. And you can't participate fully in life if you're holding yourself back.

Everyone deals with being a victim in a different way, not only because of what happened but the kind of person they are. Bear with me while I use a medical analogy. Emotional wounds are always deep, they hurt, and they can take a long time to heal. But we can choose to let the wounds fester and stay open and painful, leaving us eventually with deep and potentially disfiguring scars, or we can be proactive and choose to attend to the wound, work on it and let it heal over time. There will always be a scar there, a reminder of what happened, but it won't get in the way of a bigger and brighter future.

In my own experience, it has taken me a very long time to get over being a victim of some very deep wounds. But I made a decision to move on with my life, and not let the shadow of what happened keep me an eternal victim. I could have easily remained angry, fearful, resentful, generalising my feelings to others, shutting people out. But then I would have missed out on so much in life including rewarding friendships and a wonderful relationship with the person I love most in the world. I still bear the scars, they still cause me a bit of pain every now and then, but over time I have slowly confronted my demons and let them go.

We are all, to varying degrees, victims at some point in our lives. We all deal with it differently, but living without the shadow of victimhood is the best way to live.

the dress mess

Last weekend I was asked by a friend in the wedding industry to help out at a bridal expo. Given that I was free, am always happy to help out a friend if I can, and it involved wedding stuff, I was more than happy to say yes!

Luckily for me it involved getting my hair and makeup done and being a bit of a 'model' for a day handing out pamphlets. It also involved going to a bridal shop and them putting me in a frock! joy of joys! But it turned out that it was to be a bridesmaid dress, not the full white catastrophe. I have to admit I was slightly disappointed, I had had dreams of putting something comlpetely not 'me' on, just for fun! No matter, I was still happy to be involved and play dress ups for the day.

So we got an hour or two into the day and I was merrily handing out pamphlets to brides-to-be and complaining about how much my heels were killing me, when the fashion parade started. And out swanned these gorgeous girls in some of the most AMAZING wedding dresses I've ever seen! *sigh* And I had a little pang of sadness because it brought to the surface all my unresolved wedding dress issues.

Despite the fact that I had an amazing wedding day and felt fine in my dress, it's the only thing I regret about the day. Not picking the right bloody dress in the first place. It's like I have a little empty spot in my heart where my wedding dress was supposed to go. So now I tell my story to brides-to-be as a cautionary tale, because I made the classic mistake of doubting myself.

You see, I fell in love with a dress, which was only slightly over my budget. I even paid a small deposit on it (goodbye money lost forever). Then I got home and had a freak out. It seemed so much money for one day. And after all, I was a pragmatic person, I didn't believe in all the white fluff, I wanted something simple and elegant because at the end of the day I would have worn a hessian sack if it meant I could marry my wonderful partner. So I talked myself out of it, I told myself it was obscene to spend it on one dress, on one day, that I couldn't justify being so ostentatious when so many in the world are struggling to even get clean water (I know, I know...). I chose another dress that was a third of the price. Then I got it home, looked in the mirror and my heart sank. This wasn't the dress I wanted to wear on my wedding day, it didn't make me feel like a bride. The kicker was now that I had paid all this money for a dress I didn't want, I couldn't get the expensive one I loved on top of that!

So I had a dress made, and I admit that it was a beautiful dress. The dressmaker did an amazing job, it fit like a glove, and she followed my instructions perfectly. And ironically, the cost of the two dresses combined was the same as the original dress! I don't look at my wedding photos and hate my dress or anything, far from it, but I do have regrets. I wish I had just bitten the bullet and got the dress I loved. So what if it was a little more than I had wanted to spend, I know it's just for one day, but I would have felt right about it rather than sighing to myself on my wedding day as I put the dress on.

So I look at other wedding dresses with envy. I imagine the possibilities. I watched that parade, and wondered what it would have been like to wear the dream dress. Would I have these feeling of unfulfillment? Would I be as obssessed with weddings, knowing everything about mine was just as I wanted it? I dream of one day having enough money to go and buy the dress anyway and renew my vows with my wonderful husband. Or something. Anything to silence the inner dress obssession!

the pink and blue blues

I went for a quick shopping trip the other day in my lunch break to find two baby-related gifts. One for a newborn to our wonderful friends, and one for a nephew's first birthday. I'm not very good with children in general, probably partly because I never really grew up with kids around, of any age from babies to teenagers. It's all a bit new and strange to me. Exciting but daunting. So subjecting myself to departments full of baby-ness is not exactly my worst nightmare, but I'm certainly neither comfortable or know much about what I'm doing.

Leafing through the many racks of baby blankets in the requisite baby pink and baby blue, dummies, bottles and rattles, I started to despair. Is this all there is??? Am I mad in thinking this is boring??? Then I spied the toddler/young child section over the aisle. This seemed infinitely more interesting! It was full of colour, interesting shapes and patterns, and awesome looking toys and clothes. I actually started getting excited, thinking I might actually be able to find something cool and fun! But almost every thing I picked up and looked at said ages 2+. All those funky toys with bright colours, flashing lights, bits and pieces to put together and pull apart... turns out they're all for toddlers who have started to toddle and figured out that they have opposable thumbs.

Which left me back at square one. I had to choose between simpering pink and wishy washy blue. I tried in vain to make myself believe that these things were pretty, that they would be useful, that they would make great gifts. But who was I kidding. They were hideous. From the get go, gender demarcation was high on the agenda, and there was almost nothing I could do about it. It was a sea of pink for girls and blue for boys, and I was drowning in it and had to get out. On my way out, I stopped and looked at the greeting cards hoping to find something neutral and fun and supportive and loving. But lo and behold, yep you guessed it, blue cards declaring loudly 'It's a BOY' with pictures of cars, and pink cards proclaiming 'It's a GIRL' with butterflies.

Am I the only one who finds this all a little disturbing?!?! There were no cards proudly but simply communicating 'congratulations on your new baby'. Ok, so perhaps the range may have been limited, but is it really so much to ask for something a little less... well... gendered???

It seems like the first thing we all want to know about a baby is whether it's a boy or a girl. I'd like to think it doesn't really matter, but of course it does because it dictates how the new human being will be treated, educated and socially constructed. This is where the pink and blue comes in, and why it remains in perpetuity. So that we can easily identify the different genders, demarcate them, so that we can treat them differently. As I was looking through all those funky looking toys it dawned on me that all the 'girls' toys were various shades of pink and purple and consisted of dolls, fluffy animals, and sparkly hula hoops (ok, so a sparkly hula hoop is actually kinda cool) and the boys things were all bold blues and greens and reds, and consisted of cars, lego and footballs. The gender stratification starts before birth and continues until after death (honestly, how many blokes end up with pink roses on their coffins...).

While I think gender identification and constructions are vitally important in society - males and females are quite different in many resepcts after all - I can't help but wonder if it's gone into hyper-drive a bit. It just all seems so limited, and so forced upon the individual at family, social and cultural levels, that I wonder if there is much scope for doing things a bit differently.

I reflect upon my own childhood and remember the barbies and fairy costumes that I loved so much. But I also remember dressing up as Batman (complete with utility belt of course!), digging worms out of the creek, going fishing for frogspawn and racing each other on our bikes. Maybe it's just the rose-tinted glasses phenomenon, but it feels like I had so much more freedom of choice and freedom of expression. I look at Bratz dolls and cringe in despair. Do pink blankets and romper suits turn into this? What kind of girls and boys are we creating, or has it always been this way and I'm only just now seeing it?

I ended up going to a bookstore and getting Possum Magic, Diary of a Wombat, a fluffy possum that hangs by her tail and a fluffy wombat hand puppet. Ah books, the last refuge of a babied-out shopper. Stuff the pink and blue blankies, I don't want to be a part of this constrained gender constuction just yet!

animals is animals, no matter how you cut it

I received a truly horrific email today. It contained pictures of the whaling drive in the Faroe Islands in Denmark. This email has been doing the rounds for a while, and I've seen it before. But for some reason those horrific images of bloody water, dolphins writhing in the water having thier throats slit by massive hooks, and men cheering and beating their chests, those images disturbed me so much more today.

And the reason is not about the slaughter of these animals, but the slaughter of any and all animals. I have always known deep down inside that killing animals is the same no matter what the reason or result, but today it hit home harder than before. I can in my mind replace the images of those dolphins with cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, kangaroos and all sorts of other animals. Animals that are killed for their meat or their hide (cows for leather and cows for meat are two different types, one kill doesn't result in two products). I struggle to see how a cow or sheep is any different from a dolphin, any less sentient or lacking in worth.

This is why I chose to be vegetarian over 8 years ago. And I swore then that I would never be preachy, I'd never adopt a holier than thou attitude. I will never criticise someone for eating meat. I feel very strongly that it's a very individual choice. As I've indicated in previous posts, autonomy and choice are extremely important to me (as Voltaire once said, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it). My partner eats meat and I have no problems with that because it's his choice. But I have to admit that I am partly ok with that because he grew up in the country on a sheep farm, he knows exactly where meat comes from. In his youth he helped shoot the rabbits on the farm that ended up as rabbit stew. The helped round up the sheep that went off to the abattoir and came back as chops. He catches fish and scales and guts them for the dinner table.

I think the reason the email today got to me was because so many people I know don't really understand or accept how their steak got to their plate. There seems to be a massive disconnect between the source and the result. Most people aren't stupid, they know that their steak was once a cow. But truly knowing and accepting that the cow was killed and chopped up for their consumption is a different thing.

To me the dolphins in those photos are no different to the cows at the abattoir. They are both sentient beings that are killed for our consumption (and yes those dolphins are eaten, check wikipedia for more info about dolphin drive hunting). It seems more barbaric because we can see the blood, we can see the men using their weapons, we can see the animals writhing in pain. In our modern society, we cannot. At most we see the big stock trucks go past us on the road full of animals, and come back again empty. The next time we see them, they are presented in neatly wrapped packages, looking very little like animals. We don't see them crying as they go to the gallows, we don't see them being shot or having their throats slit, and we don't see them being butchered into the cuts of meat that end up in the shops.

This is what I feel has led to the disconnect. This is what has affected me so much today. It's a very personal decision to eat meat or not. Today has reinforced for me that everyone's line in the sand is in a different place, and that that's ok, but it's better if that line is informed by knowledge and awareness. I may laugh when people say they're vegetarian then say they eat fish, chicken and sausages but not meat (yes really, I met someone who said that!), but really, everyone's got to do what's right for them. After today, I might be a little more bold if the topic comes up and remind people how their meat gets to them. But mostly, my line in the sand is reconfirmed for me. Animals is animals to me. Now hand me some tofu...