My Mother - The Victim

Everyone is a victim, everybody can point to this and that and say ‘look where the universe did me wrong’. It was endemic with the primary school teachers I used to work with. ‘My mother used to throw a slipper at me’ ‘well my mother beat me with a crowbar’ (actually said to me). Everyday I watch exhaustively how each teacher would try and one up themselves in victimhood.

• Im a woman
• Well I’m a black woman
• Well I’m a black women with two kids
• Well I’m a black woman with two kids and one is disabled
• Well I’m a black women with two kids and one is disabled and my husband beats me.

And did these women feel liberated that they had won of the title of worst upbringing? Of course not they would always be the first crying in the classroom at 4pm when I’d do my daily rounds. First ones crippled by anxiety and stress.

Why do people love being the most victimised? It is the ultimate ego, the ultimate denial of responsibility, the manifestation of our spoiled child selves. It hurts nobody but themselves. Each of these statements is a legitimate reason to be a victim, add middle child, broken home anything you like, these are all valid reasons to feel like life has been cruel to you but ultimately they do nothing but continue the abuse, keep it alive and hurt nobody but the person claiming victimhood. And the small comfort you get from your child self saying ‘see it’s not my fault!’ is fleeting at best.

The Victims (Primary School teachers in this case) would distort reality by cherry picking the events that add to the narrative and forgetting anything that might confuse the simple victim story. ‘Remember this time or that time, or actually that’s not what happened’ the objective truth does not matter, only the ‘victim tradegy’.

The small shame I feel when hearing about how I was the favourite is nothing compared to the anger, betrayal and the unloved feeling my sisters get when regaling these stories. I have still have a little guilt about it, even though it was out of my control and was too young to see it for what it was and do something about it. I guess it’s natural to feel guilty, seeing people you love still tormented by demons long dead.

I remember my mother uncontrollably weeping as we pulled away from my grandmothers one Christmas. Why? Because her brother had got a £150 microwave and she got a pair of £8 gloves. This moment was another reminder of the lifelong favouritism my uncle received from my grandmother. She vowed then that she would never favour any of her children. 15 years after that event my two sisters would say her vow failed miserably, she couldn’t break the chain. Maybe it’s an impossible goal, or maybe at the root of it, it was the victimhood in general that was the chain to be broken not the manifestation. That’s what my mother and father passed on to their daughters, not favouritism but victimhood, to kill the tree you must kill the roots not the fruits.

You could take away the rotten fruits favouritism but if the roots (inclination to victimhood) is there you will find something else, life throws us plenty of shit to work with and a new rotten fruit will grow. Without the victimisation the favouritism would just be another part of your uncontrollable circumstances as a child, a historical event long dead with the movement of time.

You would remember it but you dealt with it so the abuse would end. Instead of focusing on the past, you would take steps to repair it, be at one with it, own it. You are now the master of your life unlike then, control it, you are the boss now, everything that happens from now on is your fault nobody else’s. You will control it and not let it control you, you should be more angry that this still pisses you off! What are you going to do about it?

My mother had lots of legitimate things to complain about, like all victims lots of reasons. Single mother who worked 50 hours a week, with no support finicially or otherwise from the father of her children. Single for 20 years, overbearing mother who favoured one but burdened her with her tales of her own victimhood (a widow of once high status who was forced to retire from her own company by her own favoured son). A tear away daughter, who stole her car, brought undesirables around the house and was knocked up in her teens. Then after all that her two other kids leave her high and dry and alone to deal with the chaos with only a flee riddled cat (who never lived up to his predecessor) as company?

Any wonder that now she has been saved and freed by a caring man that she holds us in contempt and has put up a guard of not caring, where were we in her time of need!? Trying to escape the insanity. She still cries even now at a point life couldn’t be going better for her. Let it go mother you don’t need to work, you live with a man who adores you in the beautiful climate of Portugal.

My father too had many legitimate reasons (in his head) to abandon us, he was in the racist backward north who wouldn’t employ him because he ‘was a foreigner’. He had no money, did you not hear the story where he was so poor he picked a cigarette up from the ground? Aren’t you aware that my maternal grandmother hated him and tried to sabotage my mother and his marriage, and the tale of when after travelling over a 1000 miles she greeted him with ‘you’re not welcome’. He’s made ámense for his younger, angrier and disgruntled self and everybody is much warmer and happier for it, regardless of the transgressions of the past.

But this is life, why do all religions and philosophy teach that suffering is the only constant? You cannot change the past, you can’t even control the present but you can control yourself, you can say no! You can say ‘I’m a victim but so what? who isn’t?’
You can say ‘this ends today’, if I don’t end it I’ll pass it on to my children...what a cruel inheritance, are you that cruel? That you will let that temporary satisfaction of knowing you were the ‘hard done by’ one, ruin the lives of your children? Ruin the relationships with your parents who one day will be dead and it will all be too late? Will you let it be the excuse for not dealing with life like an adult for the rest of your life?

Easy for you to say, you were always the favourite.