On (not) being a victim

I feel like crap today. My neck hurts. I'm frustrated with a number of things in my life that are seemingly out of my control. I'm not sure whether they are actually out of my control or whether I just can't figure out how to take control of them. Murphy has been acting up this evening because I hit snooze for two hours this morning and therefore sacrificed his walk time.

Whine.

Whine, whine, whine...

So I came here to my blog for the first time in a month or so. And I re-read the posts I wrote right after I got hurt, and last fall when I was going through such a rough time with the pain, and I started to feel a little bit better. I rose just a little bit out of the crabby black hole.

I had a conversation with a good friend a few weeks ago about how different people deal with difficult times in their life, and I was reminded of it again today by an acquaintance's facebook status. This person's facebook statuses are an endless log of misery, bad fortune, perceived wrongs, and hopelessness.

It seems almost impossible that someone could have such bad luck (this is coming from the girl who broke her neck in a damn foam pit)! As a seemingly reasonable number of complaints have multiplied over the last few months into a steady stream of negativity, I began to realize that NOT ONCE - not a SINGLE TIME - did this person ever take any sort of responsibility for the things that seemed to be happening to them.

I went through a phase like that last fall. It lasted about a month and it was possibly the most miserable month of my life. I felt like a victim of the world, I acted like a victim of the world, I whined and cried and complained and manipulated like a victim of the world. And shockingly, all of that led not to massive amounts of sympathy and a significant improvement in my life, but to....

Me feeling even more miserable and like even more a victim of the world.

When I began to see the light and take some responsibility for improving my life - rather than just waiting around for the universe to stop raining shit on my head - things got a lot better. Suddenly my friends were more supportive and more interested in being around me (crazy considering what a resounding joy victim-Kira was to be around, ha).

I returned to feeling proud of myself for weathering a crappy time in my life well, and other people returned to respecting me for it.

I've been roughly in that state for the last year or so. That said, what I'm starting to realize is that it's not about whether other people think highly of me because of how I've acted in the last few years. If other people see me as strong or resilient or whatever because of how I've acted, that's sweet.

But rather than striving to be content with my life to gain the respect of others or as a point of personal pride, I'm (slowly) beginning to strive to be content with my life because that is simply the best and most enjoyable way to live. I never benefitted or gained any happiness from acting like a victim. I felt like shit.

So, at the risk of sounding like a preachy self help book, I am going to bookmark this post for the next time I feel tempted to write a vague facebook status fishing for sympathy or like just wallowing in a puddle of self pity all night.