I’m Tired of the Victims

In my life as a student we have to contribute to a private class-only blog about documentary films, including ones we have seen and our own documentary film proposals. As there is another girl in my class who is doing a treatment on suicide, she posted her thoughts about the way our memories are unreliable, and how we all remember things differently.

As a comment to her post, another classmate responded with her own thoughts on suicide (somewhat off topic). Her cousin had committed suicide and she blamed it on the way he was treated by his friends and family.

Of course, I was unable to help myself, responding that people who choose to die make their own decisions and that no-one can be responsible for the death of another.

She disagreed, citing the fact that she herself has felt suicidal because of the pressure of “society” in not accepting her for becoming a lesbian after being a wife and mother, and that some other guy she knew killed himself (rightly so according to her) because he was diagnosed with cancer, again not his fault.

This may be a little harsh but I’m sick of everyone blaming everyone else for their problems. Life is shit, bad things happen to good people but there is ALWAYS a choice. You can add up all the circumstances in your life that prevent you from being happy and remain miserable. I can make a fairly substantial list to prove I have had the worst life imaginable but I choose to see those experiences as opportunities for healing, growth and learning. There are also unimaginable joys. It just depends on whether you focus on the good or the bad.

Cause and Effect — I’ve written about it before. I am responsible for everything I create, even my responses to what other people do. I am not a victim of my past, society, my family, my gender or the media. I can live what ever life I choose. I am empowered.

And if you want to push the blame for how you are to everything outside of yourself, then please go and be miserable somewhere else. It is not intelligent or inspiring to bemoan the injustices of the world in flowery academic language hoping to persuade us that your superior education makes you an expert on life.

I stand for what is beautiful, good and miraculous about life. I may not be as smart as other people, but I will fight against the insidious contagion of blame.

It is somehow ironic that the words of another person have made me so angry. I am reacting to something outside of my control (I can’t control how she thinks) but this is my path to letting it go. I have stated my position here rather than by responding to her comment and now I shall walk away.

Breath … and … relax.