Victim

A personal story

I’m going to tell you a personal story. Something that happened to me about five years ago. Something that had a huge effect on my life. Something I haven’t written about before now.

Most of my life I have worked professionally as a Graphic Designer. After having two kids in two years, I sought a change that would align with my new reality — which was being totally immersed in young children. I decide that I wanted to start my own kids fashion label. My graphic design skills certainly helped, but everything else was completely new. I taught myself how to create a pattern, work out sizing and how to talk to manufacturers about what I wanted through a ‘tech pack’. I created the styles, the fabric prints, designed the website, the brand name, had it trademarked and so on. I regularly flew to India to liaise with my team, and I quickly learnt the ins and outs of running a business.

A photo from my previous life as a children’s fashion designer and business owner.

Within three and half years, my business had accumulated sixty stockists both in Australia and overseas, as well as a successful online retail store. I was so busy in the ‘every-day’ of running the business, I barely had time to acknowledge the success I had achieved. But I knew that the daily demands were becoming more than I could handle.

It was at this time, during a ‘trade-show’ that I was approached by another business couple who ran a successful up-market children’s retail store. They wanted to buy-in to my business. They came to me armed with spreadsheets showing huge growth projections, as well as degrees in both Marketing and Accounting. It seemed like a match made in heaven. After consultation with my financial advisors (my Dad and my Brother), and a few grand in lawyers fees, we all signed the legal document handing over 50 per cent of my business to my new partners.

Liaising with my Production Manager in Noida, India.

The first few years of a small business rarely make any money. And any profit goes straight back in to growing the business. By the time I took on my new partners, the business was finally self-sustaining and paying me a modest wage.

Within six months of working with my new partners, the bank accounts were empty, we didn’t even have the money to pay for the coming range, yet they were jet-setting to New York and Paris on the business expense account, and my own legitimate expenses remained unpaid. Within weeks of challenging them, they had locked me out of bank accounts and other business systems. I was in a state of shock.

Of course I engaged lawyers, and racked up about 15 thousand dollars in legal fees, but as it was Commercial Law, to progress beyond legal letters, I would have to go to Court to prove my case, which is expensive, and they knew it. My heart wanted to take them to court, but with the cost of representation, a barrister and the associated court costs, it was never going to happen.

To make matters worse, I was also going through a marriage separation. So at the ripe old age of 46 I found myself single with two children, and basically unemployed. My business had been stolen from me, and without the money to take the thieves to court, there was nothing I could do about it.

I had a decision to make. I could fall apart, wallow in the injustice of what had happened to me, or I could put it behind me and move on. It wasn’t an easy decision. There is something hedonistically attractive about being the victim. Why put in the work when I could feel sorry for myself and take zero responsibility for digging myself out of a hole that I hadn’t created. But I had two beautiful children that needed me. So I started digging.

I can’t remember much about those first few years. I was in survival mode, and the only way I could cope was to take one day at a time, sometimes one hour, or one minute at a time. But those days, hours and minutes add up. And slowly things got better.

Five years down the track and a few years of therapy, and we are doing ok. I have now been working fulltime for close to five years in a completely new industry which has been good to me. The kids and I have purchased our own small townhouse, and we live simply. We don’t have a lot, but we have food on the table, a safe roof over our heads, and we have a home full of love. We have all that we need.

For a time I struggled to understand how people could be so callous. I don’t know whether it was their plan all along, or something that they couldn’t resist once the opportunity arose, but either way, I spent many nights trying to make sense of what had happened to me, and how humans could do such horrible things to other humans. And this is what I learnt.

There will be helpers that come into your life, and there will be people that will hurt you. There will be people that have good intentions and those that have bad intentions. If you let the bad ones have free rent in your head for too long, they become squatters, and they will start to destroy you from the foundations up. But it is a destruction of your own making. The perpetrators are probably off somewhere in the Bahamas not giving you a second thought while you are grumbling away drinking the poison called resentment. Playing the victim creates a state of helplessness, an absolution of responsibility, a plausible but untrue justification for not pushing forward.

I can’t help but see the parallels of victimhood in the Israel / Gaza conflict. The region was divided up into two parts, two groups of people that had an indigenous claim to the land. One side accepted the Statehood they were offered and got on with it. The other side refused, they wanted all the land, and they still do. One side has thrived, creating a vibrant, educated, life-loving society. The other side has barely progressed in over seven decades, and remains under oppressive Islamic rule. I am in no way comparing what happened to me to the complex history of the Middle East, but rather sharing a real life example of how playing the victim never leads to accountability or progress — no matter the circumstance. Without accountability we can’t take responsibility. I am not responsible for what other do, but I am responsible for how I react.

I refuse to allow victimisation to become a central part of my identity. I took a chance, the decision was mine, and it didn’t work out — time to move forward. Nobody is coming to save me. Life is a gift, and we only get one. I will not waste a second more of my life with regret. I am grateful for all that I have, and I appreciate the insight that I have been blessed with as a result of the difficult times I have been through. I am stronger than I ever knew I could be.

Thank you for reading.
Kelli