Abolishing a Victim

I spent my undergraduate years insatiably devouring mystical and sacred texts from world religions, desperately hoping to find answers to the inexhaustible questions of life. Among the most important of these questions to me was the nature and meaning of suffering. Buddhist teaching frustrated and repelled me because it advocated eliminating attachment as a way to free yourself from suffering. I could never quite reconcile this philosophy with my fundamental suspicion that the human person was created out of love and destined for love, which required relationship . . . which required attachment.

Sometimes I ask myself why I am Catholic and ponder what a ludicrous coincidence it seems to be that after my long and exhausting search through philosophy and religion, I should somehow settle on that one specific faith with which I was raised. However, the faith of my childhood is not the faith of my graduate education, nor is it the faith that guides and informs who I am today. I rather suspect that the central reason why I am a Catholic is because of the doctrine of redemptive suffering.

It would seem that suffering and victim-hood go hand in hand. It is pathetically easy, after all, to feel like a victim in the midst of personal suffering. It is, moreover, understandable that when you are faced with the finite dimensions of your own being, you must naturally experience some degree of helplessness in the face of infinity. But the role, nature, and experience of the victim has been on my mind a good deal lately, perhaps because of the books on trauma that I have read, or perhaps because I’ve begun to see in myself and those around me an inextricable connection between suffering and feeling victimized.

Peter Levine is a well-known authority on trauma, and he theorizes that trauma is inherent not just to the human condition but to the living world as such. He gives the example of the gazelle attacked by a lion to demonstrate this. The response of the mammal is either to run or to freeze, and upon the freezing, perhaps to play dead. All of the tension within the mammal is frozen in time when this freezing occurs, and either results in the chemical cascade that numbs the brain to the approach of death, or becomes trapped if the animal somehow manages to survive. The only way to release this tension is through physical tremors, or shaking, that can eventually resolve in the ability to once again control the nervous system and use it to actualize and effect an escape, i.e. standing and running away.

A large portion of the practice of psychotherapy is dedicated to trying to recreate the traumatic event so as to instigate this actualization of autonomy, or saving oneself. For Levine, his practice has led him to believe that trauma cannot be effectively healed without the shaking component, which releases this psycho-physical tension that has been trapped since the original trauma occurred.

When I read these words, I cannot help but remember laying in my little sister’s arms on the cold linoleum floor of the waiting room in Children’s Hospital, shaking uncontrollably, trying only to breathe. I remember the panic attack I had when I first faced the reality of needing to lie down with Lizzy while they turned off the ECMO machine. I remember the trembling that seized my body, remorseless and ungovernable. And I remember the countless panic attacks I had in that endless month spanning the ragged wasteland between when Lizzy died and Cecilia was born.

How does one stop being a victim? My best guess is the sort of alchemy I have tried to describe before. You must find a way to effect not only an escape, but a transformation of who you were into who you have to become. You have to find that place inside of you that is inexorably alive, with all of the potential and promise inherent to living things. And then you use the raw matter of your suffering to effect a biochemical change in yourself, almost as though you were cooking. The seemingly random parts and pieces of your trauma or your grief get thrown into a fire of deliberate psychological immolation, and what comes out on the other side is forever changed from what it was before, capable now of serving to nourish and preserve the life of something else.

This, I suspect, is what is involved in changing yourself from a victim into an agent that can effect change on yourself and the world around you. But it does not address the heart of the suffering itself.

Is suffering meaningful? Is it anything more than profound wastefulness? Is there any hidden truth to be found in the sick or the dying person?

Many philosophies teach that suffering is inherent to the structure of reality and the conscious experience of the human person. Teachings tend to differ more in the way one is supposed to approach the problem of suffering. I have never, however, encountered a faith system that embraces suffering more deeply than Christianity. After all, our God is a suffering God and a dying God. A God that returns to the living not with perfect flesh, but with the open wounds remaining in his hands, feet, and side.

The transformation of the crucified body of Christ to the resurrected body of Christ is the supreme transformation of victim to hero, victim to king, victim to God. For Catholics, kingship, heroism, and divinity looks like Christ hanging on the Cross. For Catholics, suffering holds the key to redemption; in fact, redemption is fundamentally impossible without suffering.

I think I am clinging on to this idea with everything that I am worth. I think that I need to believe that suffering matters, that Lizzy’s suffering matters, that Cecilia’s suffering matters, and yes, that my own matters too. But, more than that, I need to believe that I can use suffering as a literal kind of fuel to stoke a fire that can give light, life, and nourishment to those that I love.

I don’t think I can live in a world where suffering is just something that happens to you, and you have no choice but to wait for it to pass. You always have a choice. It’s pretty much the only thing you have. You get to choose to be a victim or a hero, and your heroism may not look or feel or taste as pleasant as you think it should. More often than not, it will probably taste like sweat, tears, and blood. These things, after all, are the currency of nature. And your participation in the primordial nature of life as death and resurrection is just about the most natural thing you can do.

I don’t think I’m a hero. I’m not sure I would even consider myself to be a survivor. I think, at this point, the only thing I feel for certain is that I refuse to be a victim. I feel a clawing compulsion to use my pain to accomplish something. I can no longer simply sit or lie with my suffering, waiting to be saved. If I have been the gazelle, lying wounded and throbbing for these many months, I need to find a way to shake, stand, and run.

And maybe it is only once I have done this that I can learn to sprout wings.