I often wonder this. Does the fact that I'm still alive mean I've survived? I just don't understand the intended compliment when someone says I'm a survivor. I would understand if someone said I was a fighter, but survivor? Survivor means you've lived regardless of struggles and dangers where others may not have. I understand surviving a plane crash or massacre or something like that. But the term is so often used in people surviving emotional ordeals or trauma as in 'you got through it'. So, there have been times that I know if someone had opened up my chest they would have seen visible damage to my heart from the emotional pain. The ordeal affected me over the years (as in PTSD). But people say to me, "You survived it". That drives me crazy - yes, I continued to live, and other than considering suicide, what option did I have. I feel like most of my life I didn't have options. Okay, yes, I could have abandoned my babies but didn't. Yes, I could have done this or that - but I don't see that as surviving and I don't really see everything as options (like keeping my kids). Or the fact that I survived my childhood. Okay, I lived through it. I survived it - what option did I have?
Even the doctor I was seeing for the autism would tell me to remind myself, when having to do something uncomfortable, of all the things I have already survived. I kind of see what he's trying to say, but at the same time, I'm like - I didn't make the effort or choice to survive those things and I certainly would not have chosen to go through those things so why say it as if it is an accomplishment? The fact that I'm here is not an accomplishment on my part. The fact that I was still alive after a terrible ordeal is not an accomplishment on my part. I didn't want to get through it, I was angry that my world continued to spin even. So how is it that I would be accredited for living through things that I had no choice in the matter?
I don't like Reba's song, "I'm a survivor" because how?
Even the doctor I was seeing for the autism would tell me to remind myself, when having to do something uncomfortable, of all the things I have already survived. I kind of see what he's trying to say, but at the same time, I'm like - I didn't make the effort or choice to survive those things and I certainly would not have chosen to go through those things so why say it as if it is an accomplishment? The fact that I'm here is not an accomplishment on my part. The fact that I was still alive after a terrible ordeal is not an accomplishment on my part. I didn't want to get through it, I was angry that my world continued to spin even. So how is it that I would be accredited for living through things that I had no choice in the matter?
I don't like Reba's song, "I'm a survivor" because how?
