On Being a Victim

One thing about working on Step 1, is you realize that being a victim doesn't work to help you heal and find the peace that we crave. Step 1 helped me realize I can't wait for things to get better to be happy. It might not ever get better. I needed to be responsible for my own problems and work on fixing them and create my own happiness. I can't wait around for my husband to change.

Now that I have worked through the steps once, I can see how far I have come. I still have a long ways to go, but at least its not as far as it used to be. I am feeling peace and happiness.

My husband is still in the victim role. Not as deep as he used to be so there is progress. But he won't make real progress until he moves out of it. I know its comforting to play the victim. We like to feel justified for what we do, right or wrong or how we feel. I deserve to feel angry or I deserve not to do anything now because he hurt me. Well I realized that it wasn't hurting him that I was mad at him, he was hardly ever home. It was hurting me and my kids so I decided to stop. Plus I saw how the anger was eating him up and I didn't want to be like that. Just letting that go made me feel so much better. It is really hard to work on healing when you are holding all those victim feelings inside. I needed to let it go, admit I wasn't perfect, and get to work on me.

I had to accept the facts. Yes I am married to an addict. Yes I made many mistakes. So what was I going to do about it? Work on me and let him figure his own problems out. Just doing that made me not feel so hopeless. I started to feel better. Just that one decision of accepting responsibility for my own actions and feelings, opened the door for Christ to come in and start helping me.