Victim or Victor?

Have you ever thought about your relationship to chronic pain?  Are you a victim of it or a victor over it?  When you are suffering with unrelenting pain day after day, it's very easy to slip into a victim mentality. 

Below are two descriptions of life with chronic pain, each given by a fibromyalgia patient.  See if you can tell what makes one patient a victim and the other a victor.

Patient #1 – “My life was great before I got sick.  I worked ten to twelve-hour days, but my job was challenging and rewarding.  I had a wide variety of interests and took an active part in my community, teaching aerobics classes and working with the local theater group.  I even went back to school and took a couple of classes each semester.  Thanks to fibromyalgia, that's all gone now.  I had to give up the job I loved to take something with shorter hours and less stress.  Even with that, it takes everything I have to get out of bed and drag myself to work every morning.  Then when I get home, all I can do is collapse.  I spend my weekends resting and trying to build up enough strength to face another week.  As for a social life – what's that?  I'm too tired and in too much pain to even think about going out or doing anything that's not absolutely essential.  I feel so useless – like my life doesn't have a purpose anymore.  Sometimes I wonder why God is keeping me here.  I can't face the thought of feeling like this for the rest of my life.”

Patient #2 – “My life is certainly different than I thought it would be, and very different than it was before I developed fibromyalgia.  It may sound crazy, but even though I miss some of the things I used to be able to do, some aspects of my life are actually better.  Of course, I went through a period of feeling sorry for myself and mourning my old life.  But then I decided it was time to take a good hard look at my life and figure out what I could do to make it better.  The first thing I realized I needed to do was to move back to my hometown so I could be closer to my children and grandchildren.  They are the most important people in my life and traveling to see them was getting more and more difficult.  Next, I realized I had to make a career change.  Trying to work a regular eight-to-five job was not helping me get any better.  It wasn't easy, but eventually I was able to figure out a way to work from home.  Now I can work when I'm feeling my best and take a break when I need to rest.  Best of all, I'm making a living doing what I had always dreamed of – writing.”

It's fairly obvious that the first patient is the victim and the second is the victor.  What you may not realize, though, is that both patients are the same person – and that person is me.  A dozen or so years ago, I was Patient #1.  Today, I am Patient #2.

What made such a difference?  How did I manage to go from being a victim to being a victor?  I took control.  Victims are at the mercy of someone or something else.  Victors take control of the situation and come out on top.  I decided it was up to me to take control of my life and make it into what I wanted it to be.