The Tangent Series
Episode 7
The Victim Tax - Victim is NOT the Debt
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Before We Begin
This tangent is different. It is more personal. It is direct. It names sexual harm, cultural
gaslighting, and the cost of being believed too late. It will not be tidy. Read accordingly.
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The Bill You Didn’t Sign For
Every Spring, I open my property tax bill. The brown envelope arrives like clockwork and always
manages to be both punctual and mildly insulting. You know the one. The paper cut of
adulthood. You pull it from the mailbox, your eyes roll back so far you can almost see your own
childhood, and then you stare at the number and mutter something unholy about paying taxes
on land you already bought, already paid for, and already maintain yourself.
It strikes me as deeply unfair and strangely normalised. I purchased the property. I care for the
property. I manage every crisis that pops up on the property. If a tree from “city land” falls onto
my yard, nobody arrives like a pit crew with a clipboard and a chainsaw. What I get instead is a
process. Photos. Paperwork. Phone calls. Meetings. Time I do not have. And after all that, the
answer is usually the same: Case denied. Not eligible for reimbursement. Their tree. My
problem. Hmmm…
I sort of own it, but only as long as nothing goes wrong. If damage comes from the outside,
whether by storm, negligence, or sheer bad luck, it’s tough luck for me. Ownership means full
responsibility. The annual “renewal” taxes are simply a reminder that someone else still holds
the leverage. Every year, I owe money for what is already mine. Refuse to pay, and the property
can be foreclosed. Property tax is not optional.
It is permanent. You never outgrow it. You never pay it off. You simply keep paying.
As long as you own the property, you pay the cost of it. Are you getting my point?
And before someone rushes in with a well-meaning nuance, yes, I understand sewage taxes. I
understand water taxes. Let’s not throw a red herring into the pond to derail the metaphor. I am
not talking about services rendered or maintenance of ownership. I am talking about the kind of
bill that shows up whether you like it or not, the kind that does not care if you are tired, tapped
out, or already drowning.
Interpretation Always Wins
It’s the bill insurance should cover. That is the entire point of insurance. We pay in advance so
we are not crushed later. That is what the brochure implied and what the monthly withdrawals
confirmed. But the fine print often functions as a legal loophole factory. It is drafted to remove
obligation, not reinforce it. It protects the institution from loss while leaving the individual
exposed. Words like “reasonable,” “pre-existing,” “not deemed necessary,” and “outside scope”
become shields. You are required to pay in full and on time. They are permitted to interpret. And
interpretation rarely favours the one who is bleeding.
Then there’s medical tax. Oh boy, I could write an entire book on this, and honestly, I suspect
my oldest daughter will one day do exactly that. I’ll gladly help her. We pay into a system that
promises care when we are vulnerable, and yet many of us cannot access care when we need it
most. Is that not a breach of trust? Arguably, a breach of democracy? Is access to care not
supposed to be one of our rights as citizens?
Yes, there are nuances. There are always nuances. But here is the part no one wants to say out
loud: there are few clear boundaries, responsibilities, or guarantees on the provider side, while
the obligation to pay remains absolute on ours. We pay whether it works or not. We pay whether
it delivers or not. We pay whether we are helped or not.
Two taxes. Both promised protection.
And one day, as I stared at that bill, something shifted.
It hit me.
There is another tax we never signed up for but are still expected to pay.
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The Victim Tax
There are some things in life that are not optional, whether we like them or not. Taxes are one of
them. Gravity is another. And then there are the costs that arrive after harm. The ones no one
warned you about and you never consented to. The ones that show up long after the event,
stamped with the expectation that you will quietly absorb them.
There is a bill that arrives after harm. I am not talking about inconvenience or a bruised ego.
I am referencing injury. Real injury.
This tax does not follow you because you are weak or unwilling to “move on.” It follows you
because something real happened. Something that altered the wiring. Something that marked
the nervous system. Something that does not politely evaporate simply because others grow
tired of hearing about it.
And I do not mean slamming your finger in a car door. I mean violated. Betrayed. Harmed in a
way that rearranges the architecture of your life.
It is a bill society pretends is optional, as though you could simply decline it. As though healing
were a switch you flip rather than a process that unravels and rebuilds you in slow, unglamorous
layers. As though silence were strength and endurance were proof of virtue. As though dignity
required the invisibility of your pain and the muting of its reverberations.
But the tax is not the harm itself. The harm was the crime. The tax is the silence demanded
afterward. It is the demand that you carry the aftermath without complaint, without disruption,
and without making anyone uncomfortable in the process. It is the unspoken expectation that
you manage the damage quietly so the rest of the world can remain undisturbed.
I call it The Victim Tax.
The Brief Season of Belief
And I’m writing this at a time when the world is acting shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that harm
exists. As if we have not been saying it all along. As if we were playing teahouse with imaginary
china while real damage was unfolding in real time. Every so often something so vile, so
grotesque, breaks into public view that it punctures our collective denial. For a brief moment, the
air shifts.
And in that moment, victims are believed without being interrogated. For a moment, suspicion
loosens its grip just enough for survivors everywhere to feel that quiet, almost indescribable
thing you only recognize if you have lived it yourself: a sliver of vindication.
Yes, Vindication. Not closure. Vindication.
Because being believed is not a luxury. It is the bare minimum. Yet we have lowered the bar so
far into the ground that we applaud basic decency as if it were heroism.
For a second, we are permitted to remove the “crazy” label and breathe without being
cross-examined. The vendetta pauses, the conspiracy theories hesitate, and the commentary
softens just enough for us to feel almost human again. But it never lasts. Soon enough the
familiar narrative resurfaces, the one where we are treated as children who somehow
possessed adult reasoning, adult minds, and adult reactions at the time of our harm. We are
told to respond like adults, to process like adults, to forgive like adults, all while having been
wounded as children. We are charged with adult responsibility and then judged when we
collapse into child pose. Our naïve innocence is quietly erased, and we are thrown back to the
wolves for failing to survive like seasoned warriors before we were ever given a sword.
Still, those short moments matter. When a victim is publicly acknowledged, victims everywhere
quietly register the win. Not because it fixes anything. It does not. But because it reminds us we
are not insane for naming what happened. It offers a small, fragile glimpse of peace.
Sure, it is brief, and immediately threatened by the next comment section. The next think
piece or the next whisper campaign. But for a moment, we hold it close to our chest and take a
full breath. We feel the warmth of tears trace down our cheeks and whisper a quiet, trembling
“Thank you, Jesus.” Not because justice has arrived or the damage has been reversed. But
because for one flicker of time, abandonment loosens its grip. The body releases what it has
been bracing against. The child still locked inside the adult frame feels seen instead of
dismissed.
And even if it lasts only seconds, that recognition matters.
The Word That Got Hijacked
Which brings me to the language that keeps showing up like a bad check that never bounces:
victimhood. Victim mentality. Living in victimhood. Stop living in the past. Move on.
And in my less-than-polite, thoroughly-done voice, I want to say: what a load of fuckery.
The Badge Ceremony That Never Comes
When people lecture about “victimhood” or warn against a “victim mentality,” I have a simple
procedural question:
When do I turn in my badge?
You know the one I’m talking about.
That imaginary award that apparently reads:
“Congratulations. You are no longer a victim of sexual assault. Your childhood has been
restored. Your nervous system has been reset to factory settings. Your body and your
innocence are hereby returned to you, unaltered, undamaged, and untouched.
Tell me when that arrives. Will it come in the mail? Will there be balloons and cake? A
commemorative plaque? A gold envelope? (I’d prefer gold. It complements my skin tone.) Will
my nervous system reset itself that day? Will four decades of therapy be reimbursed? I could
sure use the money. Will my body suddenly forget what it learned to survive?
Now that is a lobotomy I’d sign up for.
And while we’re at it, will my lost relationships be restored? Will my family return intact? Can my
daughters be there to see their mom fully healed? Should I set a calendar reminder for the day
the universe suddenly admits what it did, what it allowed, and hands me a receipt stamped
“Paid in Full”?
Because if that moment exists, I’d like to be prepared. I might even wear a dress—although that
might be pushing it.
However, for such a memorable occasion, I could pull out the fairy princess gown, wave the
wand, click my ruby slippers like Dorothy, and spin in a glitter cloud while a crystal ball reveals
what should have been, what could have been, and lets me step right into it.
I want that.
But here’s the problem: it does not exist.
The Relocation of Blame
So stop telling me I chose what happened to me. Stop pretending trauma is a mindset I can opt
out of. Stop speaking as if my body, brain, and soul were untouched. That is what your slick
language about “victimhood” actually does. It relocates blame from the perpetrator to the person
who was harmed.
And I’m calling that what it is: a moral and spiritual fraud. Actually, I take that back. It’s worse. It
is a psychological, cultural, and often religious evasion that protects abusers while disciplining
victims. It lets perpetrators remain conveniently blurry while survivours become the ones on trial.
It creates a world where harm is acknowledged in headlines but controlled in real life. It’s where
exposure is celebrated, but the people who lived it are still expected to speak softly, heal quickly,
and keep their grief aesthetically pleasing.
Haven’t we had enough of that? Have we not learned our lesson yet?
Believe me, if I could wake up tomorrow and erase what happened, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d
dance down the street in a tiara if it meant getting my childhood back. But I didn’t get to choose
what was done to me. So stop the nonsense of telling me I chose how it shaped me.
My head is not floating in the clouds, it is attached to a body that was harmed. My heart did not
remain neutral. My soul did not stay untouched.
The False Equality After Harm
There is another move that happens after harm, and it is subtle enough to sound
reasonable while doing real damage.
It is the creation of false equality.
You harmed me. I reacted to being harmed. And suddenly we are told we are standing face-to-face
as equal participants in the problem. It’s as if the original violation and the survival response
belong in the same moral category. It implies the reaction cancels the violation.
This shows up everywhere, including therapy rooms, where phrases like “hurt people hurt people”
are used as if they explain the whole story. The statement is not always wrong.
But watch what it does when used carelessly. It flattens the timeline, erases sequence, and dissolves power.
It turns injury into interaction, quietly suggesting my response is now equal to the harm itself.
That we are simply two wounded people colliding with each other. You break into my home and assault me.
My body goes into survival mode and I fight back. Now we are both guilty.
That is the logic. But that is not equality. That is distortion. And distortion has done enormous damage.
One act created harm.
The other act emerged from harm.
Those are not symmetrical realities.
Yet once they are treated as equal, responsibility becomes shared, and the original violence
loses its moral weight. The conversation shifts from accountability to mutual dysfunction.
The focus moves away from what was done and toward how the injured person behaves afterward.
And that is where “victimhood” enters the room. It does not enter as a description.
It enters as an accusation.
Do not speak too loudly. Do not react too strongly. Do not grieve too long.
Do not make others uncomfortable.
Because if you do, you are no longer a victim of harm. You are “living in victimhood.”
And that label does something profoundly dangerous. It transforms the reality of being
harmed into evidence of personal failure. It reframes injury as performance.
It disciplines the wounded for the visibility of their wounds.
This is not healing language. It is regulatory language.
It tells victims their credibility depends on how quietly they carry what was done to them.
But healing does not begin when people behave correctly. Healing begins when they are believed.
Belief is not validation theatre. It is structural recognition of reality. Without it, harm is doubled.
First the injury. Then the denial of the injury. The nervous system absorbs both.
So when someone claims the authority to judge how a person processes trauma,
what they are really doing is misreading the architecture of harm itself. They are treating survival
responses as voluntary behaviour rather than biological consequence.
So let’s make sure we are naming it correctly. That is re-victimization.
The Payoff Myth
If you think I’m exaggerating, answer me this: what do victims actually get?
Where is the payoff everyone seems to imagine?
There is no concierge trauma team that shows up at your door. There is no guaranteed therapy,
no institutional safety net, no funded rehabilitation for the nervous system you didn’t break on
purpose. What you get is skepticism. Abandonment. Rejection. Silence. A ticking clock that tells
you when your pain has overstayed its welcome.
You get a label, and then you’re told not to live inside it.
Reputational Discipline
And that, right there, is where the tax gets collected. I was bullied as a child. This is the grown-
up version. This is adult psychological extortion, and I’m not playing anymore.
Because if we can turn “victim” into an insult, we never have to reckon with the crime. When we
turn “victim” into a character flaw, we do not free survivors. We discipline them. If we can
reframe the issue as your personality, your posture, your “mindset,” then we never have to ask
harder questions: Who harmed you? Who covered it? Who minimized it? Who benefited from
your silence? Who still is? You speak, and you are told you are dwelling. You set boundaries,
and you are labeled unforgiving. You ask for accountability, and you are called bitter. You did not
choose the harm. But you are expected to manage everyone else’s discomfort about it.
This is why language matters.
Language Is Power
Words do not merely describe reality. They shape it. They determine who is believed, who is
protected, who is supported, and who is blamed. And society is strangely gentle with
perpetrators and remarkably loud toward victims.
Prove me wrong.
Because from where I’m standing, we’ve created a culture that says, “We care about victims,”
and then quietly adds, “But not if you inconvenience us. Not if your story disrupts us. Not if your
grief lasts longer than we can tolerate. And certainly not if it changes the narrative we have
written.”
Facts do not dissolve because they make us uncomfortable. Sure, you can reframe injury as
mindset, violation as perspective and trauma as attitude. Go right ahead. Ring your bell for “smartness.”
But that is not wisdom. And it is most certainly not compassion.
Let’s separate the words properly, because they have been blurred on purpose.
The Three Words We Blurred on Purpose
There’s an Unwritten Rulebook everyone enforces. It’s like there is an invisible etiquette manual
for trauma that no one ever handed to us, but everyone seems determined to enforce. So I want
to linger here with these three words for a moment, because they’ve been blurred together in a
way that serves power far more than it serves the wounded. And to be frank, I’m kinda sick and
tired of the power play.
Victim is the simplest one. To be a victim means something was done to you that violated your
safety, dignity, or personhood. That is not a personality type. It is a factual description of an
event. A child who is assaulted is a victim of assault. Full stop. That is not therapy-speak. That
is reality. If you can’t understand that, you are not confused about the word, you are
uncomfortable with its impact.
Victimization, on the other hand, describes the process of harm. It names what happened --
the act, the pattern, the abuse, the betrayal, the violation. It points toward the perpetrator or the
system that caused the damage. In other words, victimization is about what was done to you,
not who you are.
Then there’s Victimhood, as weaponized in culture. Somewhere along the way, “victimhood”
stopped meaning having been harmed and started meaning being morally defective. It became
shorthand for weakness, bitterness, entitlement, or refusal to move on. In this frame, if you are
“living in victimhood,” it is treated as a choice you made, and a choice you keep making. We are
often told, “Being victimized is an event. Remaining a victim is a mindset.” That assumes
healing is simply a decision.
It is not. Trauma is not a mindset. It is an injury.
Think about what that logic actually implies.
But let’s move on.
What I want to say is: That shift is not neutral. It is political, cultural, and deeply theological. And
yes, it has been cultivated — slowly, persistently, and often through propaganda that normalizes
the silencing of the harmed while centering the comfort of the powerful.
The Nervous System Doesn’t Vote
When a child is harmed, their nervous system rewires before their will ever gets a vote. It learns
hypervigilance. And the hypervigilance dominates and presents as fear that you cannot place.
People-pleasing. Shame. Dissociation.
None of that is chosen.
All of it is survival.
I was living in “victimhood” long before I knew what any of those words meant. Long before I
understood my response, my grief, my loss… My child-self hid away in my adult body,
introverted and bleeding on cue. And it bled out on those I loved, and the ones who stood close
enough to get hit by the shrapnel.
When Do You Arrive at "Not" Victimhood?
But “victimhood” has been turned into a character flaw. So I have to ask, when does a victim
supposedly stop living in “victimhood”? It is spoken about as if it is a destination we are meant to
arrive at — some tidy checkpoint on a healing map no one actually gave us. As a child who
was violated, my entire life did not gently “adjust.” It went off the rails. The harm did not stay
neatly in one box labeled past. It tethered itself to me and threaded through almost every
decision I made — many of them painful, self-betraying, and deeply damaging. And yet, I do not
remember standing back even once and thinking, “Ah yes, there I go again, living in victimhood.
Better move to a nicer neighborhood.”
And then comes the middle space. It’s the space no one wants to name. Because we pretend
there are only two categories:
Victim.
Healed.
But real life contains a long stretch in between. And I’d like you to listen when I say this. Victims
do not choose victimhood. There is a space where we are not yet free from trauma patterns. We
are actively seeking healing. But we are still grieving. Still rewiring. Still triggered. Society may
call it “victimhood.” I call it process.
Better language for this space is not “victimhood,” but: living in trauma patterns, living in survival
mode, living from a wounded nervous system, frozen in childhood, grieving an unidentified
loss…
These are not identities. They are not who we are or a choice we are making. They are
conditions that can change.
But process is inconvenient. So we shorten the timeline and blame the wounded.
That is how the tax gets paid. That is taxation without representation. A system that charges the injured for
surviving the injury. I know that tax very, very well. And I’m done paying the bill in silence.
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The Trauma Tax
Enter Exhibit A.
This is where the surcharge is collected.
It is not enough to have been harmed. First you endure the violation. Then you endure the
cross-examination. The Trauma Tax is the additional charge applied after the crime, because
you dared to survive it imperfectly.
Look at how victims are questioned after sexual assault.
Were you drinking? What were you wearing? Did you provoke it? Why didn’t you leave sooner?
Look at betrayal trauma.
Why are you still upset? Why can’t you let it go? Why are you reacting like this?
Notice what just happened.
The focus is no longer the harm. The focus is the reaction to the harm. The reaction became the crime.
That is the surcharge.
The courtroom and the therapy room often run the same script: reframe the violation as mutual dysfunction. The harm is no longer the centre of the story. Your reaction to the harm becomes the evidence.
It is the penalty levied against visible injury. The moment your evidence bleeds, your credibility
is questioned. The more affected you are, the less trustworthy you become. Your trembling
becomes instability, and your grief becomes exaggeration. Your anger becomes proof that you
are “not healed.” The wound is used to disqualify the witness.
I also know this tax well. Funny how that works.
It is the price of a life knocked off course. It is the line item the justice system routinely tallies as
“resolved” before moving on to the next case. File closed. Matter settled. On paper, everything
is tidy. In real life, nothing is. Sure. Call it a day if you want. But we don’t get that luxury.
When a file slams shut, or worse, was never opened at all, there is no payout for the nervous
system. No restitution for lost years. No repair for the relational damage that ripples outward.
Closure is declared administratively, not biologically. And that declaration often functions less
like justice and more like permission. Permission for silence. Permission for forgetting.
Permission for harm to remain structurally unexamined.
And then another bill arrives.
The Costs Nobody Tallies
We pay it in relationships we never should have entered, because harm quietly recalibrated
what we believed we were worth. We pay it in the good relationships we sabotaged, not out of
malice, but because safety felt foreign and kindness felt suspicious. Healthy love sounded like a
dialect we were never taught to speak. I have begged God’s forgiveness for that one. I was too
young and too fractured to understand what I was reenacting.
We pay it in patterns we did not consciously choose, and then, heartbreakingly, in the patterns
our children must work twice as hard to untangle. Trauma compounds. It accrues interest. It
travels generationally unless someone decides to interrupt it.
Yep. That.
The Trauma Tax.
It is the pay-it-forward nobody volunteers for. Not the coffee in the drive-thru. Not the
anonymous gift card. It is the inheritance we would return to sender if we could. But there is no
return address.
You can deny it all you want.
You can also deny it while living it. That is the quiet genius of the system. It teaches us to
perform wellness while our bodies wage internal wars. We smile because the test came back
negative, even as the joints ache, the fatigue crushes, and the immune system misfires. A
negative test does not mean the illness is imaginary.
Likewise, a culture that refuses to name trauma does not mean trauma is not shaping behavior,
relationships, leadership, theology, or policy. Refusal does not erase impact. Silence does not
neutralize consequence.
We pay the Trauma Tax in raised eyebrows. In awkward silences. In reputations that never quite
recover. In being told we are “too much” for reacting normally to something abnormal.
And we are expected to call that maturity.
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The Real Enemy Is Not Victimhood
We have been fighting the wrong thing. Victimhood does not corrode the soul. Unacknowledged
trauma does. Unacknowledged trauma survives because shame is the enforcement arm of denial.
So instead of asking: “Are you still living in victimhood?” We should ask: “Have you been given
the safety, belief, and support you need to heal?”
Because healing is not a personality choice. It is a communal responsibility.
My daughter’s tattoo keeps circling back to me. When I first saw it, I laughed. Then I swallowed
hard. Because she’s right.
“I am the Hero, the Villain, and the Victim.”
It is uncomfortable because it is true. We are not one-dimensional beings. But our culture
demands clean labels:
Hero = admirable
Villain = discardable
Victim = inconvenient
Real people are messier than that. And real healing refuses tidy categories. We are capable of
courage and harm, strength and wound. The goal is not to erase the victim. It is to integrate
her/him into a larger story of healing. Not one of denial, silence, or performance. Being harmed
is not a moral failure. Healing is not a single decision. And truth is always the doorway to
freedom.
So let’s reclaim the word:
Victim of harm, yes. Captive to harm, no. Wounded, yes. Silenced, no. Honest, yes. Shamed,
never. Taxed? Not anymore. Billed? Returned to sender. Debt? Cancelled.
Before We Begin
This tangent is different. It is more personal. It is direct. It names sexual harm, cultural
gaslighting, and the cost of being believed too late. It will not be tidy. Read accordingly.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Bill You Didn’t Sign For
Every Spring, I open my property tax bill. The brown envelope arrives like clockwork and always
manages to be both punctual and mildly insulting. You know the one. The paper cut of
adulthood. You pull it from the mailbox, your eyes roll back so far you can almost see your own
childhood, and then you stare at the number and mutter something unholy about paying taxes
on land you already bought, already paid for, and already maintain yourself.
It strikes me as deeply unfair and strangely normalised. I purchased the property. I care for the
property. I manage every crisis that pops up on the property. If a tree from “city land” falls onto
my yard, nobody arrives like a pit crew with a clipboard and a chainsaw. What I get instead is a
process. Photos. Paperwork. Phone calls. Meetings. Time I do not have. And after all that, the
answer is usually the same: Case denied. Not eligible for reimbursement. Their tree. My
problem. Hmmm…
I sort of own it, but only as long as nothing goes wrong. If damage comes from the outside,
whether by storm, negligence, or sheer bad luck, it’s tough luck for me. Ownership means full
responsibility. The annual “renewal” taxes are simply a reminder that someone else still holds
the leverage. Every year, I owe money for what is already mine. Refuse to pay, and the property
can be foreclosed. Property tax is not optional.
It is permanent. You never outgrow it. You never pay it off. You simply keep paying.
As long as you own the property, you pay the cost of it. Are you getting my point?
And before someone rushes in with a well-meaning nuance, yes, I understand sewage taxes. I
understand water taxes. Let’s not throw a red herring into the pond to derail the metaphor. I am
not talking about services rendered or maintenance of ownership. I am talking about the kind of
bill that shows up whether you like it or not, the kind that does not care if you are tired, tapped
out, or already drowning.
Interpretation Always Wins
It’s the bill insurance should cover. That is the entire point of insurance. We pay in advance so
we are not crushed later. That is what the brochure implied and what the monthly withdrawals
confirmed. But the fine print often functions as a legal loophole factory. It is drafted to remove
obligation, not reinforce it. It protects the institution from loss while leaving the individual
exposed. Words like “reasonable,” “pre-existing,” “not deemed necessary,” and “outside scope”
become shields. You are required to pay in full and on time. They are permitted to interpret. And
interpretation rarely favours the one who is bleeding.
Then there’s medical tax. Oh boy, I could write an entire book on this, and honestly, I suspect
my oldest daughter will one day do exactly that. I’ll gladly help her. We pay into a system that
promises care when we are vulnerable, and yet many of us cannot access care when we need it
most. Is that not a breach of trust? Arguably, a breach of democracy? Is access to care not
supposed to be one of our rights as citizens?
Yes, there are nuances. There are always nuances. But here is the part no one wants to say out
loud: there are few clear boundaries, responsibilities, or guarantees on the provider side, while
the obligation to pay remains absolute on ours. We pay whether it works or not. We pay whether
it delivers or not. We pay whether we are helped or not.
Two taxes. Both promised protection.
And one day, as I stared at that bill, something shifted.
It hit me.
There is another tax we never signed up for but are still expected to pay.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Victim Tax
There are some things in life that are not optional, whether we like them or not. Taxes are one of
them. Gravity is another. And then there are the costs that arrive after harm. The ones no one
warned you about and you never consented to. The ones that show up long after the event,
stamped with the expectation that you will quietly absorb them.
There is a bill that arrives after harm. I am not talking about inconvenience or a bruised ego.
I am referencing injury. Real injury.
This tax does not follow you because you are weak or unwilling to “move on.” It follows you
because something real happened. Something that altered the wiring. Something that marked
the nervous system. Something that does not politely evaporate simply because others grow
tired of hearing about it.
And I do not mean slamming your finger in a car door. I mean violated. Betrayed. Harmed in a
way that rearranges the architecture of your life.
It is a bill society pretends is optional, as though you could simply decline it. As though healing
were a switch you flip rather than a process that unravels and rebuilds you in slow, unglamorous
layers. As though silence were strength and endurance were proof of virtue. As though dignity
required the invisibility of your pain and the muting of its reverberations.
But the tax is not the harm itself. The harm was the crime. The tax is the silence demanded
afterward. It is the demand that you carry the aftermath without complaint, without disruption,
and without making anyone uncomfortable in the process. It is the unspoken expectation that
you manage the damage quietly so the rest of the world can remain undisturbed.
I call it The Victim Tax.
The Brief Season of Belief
And I’m writing this at a time when the world is acting shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that harm
exists. As if we have not been saying it all along. As if we were playing teahouse with imaginary
china while real damage was unfolding in real time. Every so often something so vile, so
grotesque, breaks into public view that it punctures our collective denial. For a brief moment, the
air shifts.
And in that moment, victims are believed without being interrogated. For a moment, suspicion
loosens its grip just enough for survivors everywhere to feel that quiet, almost indescribable
thing you only recognize if you have lived it yourself: a sliver of vindication.
Yes, Vindication. Not closure. Vindication.
Because being believed is not a luxury. It is the bare minimum. Yet we have lowered the bar so
far into the ground that we applaud basic decency as if it were heroism.
For a second, we are permitted to remove the “crazy” label and breathe without being
cross-examined. The vendetta pauses, the conspiracy theories hesitate, and the commentary
softens just enough for us to feel almost human again. But it never lasts. Soon enough the
familiar narrative resurfaces, the one where we are treated as children who somehow
possessed adult reasoning, adult minds, and adult reactions at the time of our harm. We are
told to respond like adults, to process like adults, to forgive like adults, all while having been
wounded as children. We are charged with adult responsibility and then judged when we
collapse into child pose. Our naïve innocence is quietly erased, and we are thrown back to the
wolves for failing to survive like seasoned warriors before we were ever given a sword.
Still, those short moments matter. When a victim is publicly acknowledged, victims everywhere
quietly register the win. Not because it fixes anything. It does not. But because it reminds us we
are not insane for naming what happened. It offers a small, fragile glimpse of peace.
Sure, it is brief, and immediately threatened by the next comment section. The next think
piece or the next whisper campaign. But for a moment, we hold it close to our chest and take a
full breath. We feel the warmth of tears trace down our cheeks and whisper a quiet, trembling
“Thank you, Jesus.” Not because justice has arrived or the damage has been reversed. But
because for one flicker of time, abandonment loosens its grip. The body releases what it has
been bracing against. The child still locked inside the adult frame feels seen instead of
dismissed.
And even if it lasts only seconds, that recognition matters.
The Word That Got Hijacked
Which brings me to the language that keeps showing up like a bad check that never bounces:
victimhood. Victim mentality. Living in victimhood. Stop living in the past. Move on.
And in my less-than-polite, thoroughly-done voice, I want to say: what a load of fuckery.
The Badge Ceremony That Never Comes
When people lecture about “victimhood” or warn against a “victim mentality,” I have a simple
procedural question:
When do I turn in my badge?
You know the one I’m talking about.
That imaginary award that apparently reads:
“Congratulations. You are no longer a victim of sexual assault. Your childhood has been
restored. Your nervous system has been reset to factory settings. Your body and your
innocence are hereby returned to you, unaltered, undamaged, and untouched.
Tell me when that arrives. Will it come in the mail? Will there be balloons and cake? A
commemorative plaque? A gold envelope? (I’d prefer gold. It complements my skin tone.) Will
my nervous system reset itself that day? Will four decades of therapy be reimbursed? I could
sure use the money. Will my body suddenly forget what it learned to survive?
Now that is a lobotomy I’d sign up for.
And while we’re at it, will my lost relationships be restored? Will my family return intact? Can my
daughters be there to see their mom fully healed? Should I set a calendar reminder for the day
the universe suddenly admits what it did, what it allowed, and hands me a receipt stamped
“Paid in Full”?
Because if that moment exists, I’d like to be prepared. I might even wear a dress—although that
might be pushing it.
However, for such a memorable occasion, I could pull out the fairy princess gown, wave the
wand, click my ruby slippers like Dorothy, and spin in a glitter cloud while a crystal ball reveals
what should have been, what could have been, and lets me step right into it.
I want that.
But here’s the problem: it does not exist.
The Relocation of Blame
So stop telling me I chose what happened to me. Stop pretending trauma is a mindset I can opt
out of. Stop speaking as if my body, brain, and soul were untouched. That is what your slick
language about “victimhood” actually does. It relocates blame from the perpetrator to the person
who was harmed.
And I’m calling that what it is: a moral and spiritual fraud. Actually, I take that back. It’s worse. It
is a psychological, cultural, and often religious evasion that protects abusers while disciplining
victims. It lets perpetrators remain conveniently blurry while survivours become the ones on trial.
It creates a world where harm is acknowledged in headlines but controlled in real life. It’s where
exposure is celebrated, but the people who lived it are still expected to speak softly, heal quickly,
and keep their grief aesthetically pleasing.
Haven’t we had enough of that? Have we not learned our lesson yet?
Believe me, if I could wake up tomorrow and erase what happened, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d
dance down the street in a tiara if it meant getting my childhood back. But I didn’t get to choose
what was done to me. So stop the nonsense of telling me I chose how it shaped me.
My head is not floating in the clouds, it is attached to a body that was harmed. My heart did not
remain neutral. My soul did not stay untouched.
The False Equality After Harm
There is another move that happens after harm, and it is subtle enough to sound
reasonable while doing real damage.
It is the creation of false equality.
You harmed me. I reacted to being harmed. And suddenly we are told we are standing face-to-face
as equal participants in the problem. It’s as if the original violation and the survival response
belong in the same moral category. It implies the reaction cancels the violation.
This shows up everywhere, including therapy rooms, where phrases like “hurt people hurt people”
are used as if they explain the whole story. The statement is not always wrong.
But watch what it does when used carelessly. It flattens the timeline, erases sequence, and dissolves power.
It turns injury into interaction, quietly suggesting my response is now equal to the harm itself.
That we are simply two wounded people colliding with each other. You break into my home and assault me.
My body goes into survival mode and I fight back. Now we are both guilty.
That is the logic. But that is not equality. That is distortion. And distortion has done enormous damage.
One act created harm.
The other act emerged from harm.
Those are not symmetrical realities.
Yet once they are treated as equal, responsibility becomes shared, and the original violence
loses its moral weight. The conversation shifts from accountability to mutual dysfunction.
The focus moves away from what was done and toward how the injured person behaves afterward.
And that is where “victimhood” enters the room. It does not enter as a description.
It enters as an accusation.
Do not speak too loudly. Do not react too strongly. Do not grieve too long.
Do not make others uncomfortable.
Because if you do, you are no longer a victim of harm. You are “living in victimhood.”
And that label does something profoundly dangerous. It transforms the reality of being
harmed into evidence of personal failure. It reframes injury as performance.
It disciplines the wounded for the visibility of their wounds.
This is not healing language. It is regulatory language.
It tells victims their credibility depends on how quietly they carry what was done to them.
But healing does not begin when people behave correctly. Healing begins when they are believed.
Belief is not validation theatre. It is structural recognition of reality. Without it, harm is doubled.
First the injury. Then the denial of the injury. The nervous system absorbs both.
So when someone claims the authority to judge how a person processes trauma,
what they are really doing is misreading the architecture of harm itself. They are treating survival
responses as voluntary behaviour rather than biological consequence.
So let’s make sure we are naming it correctly. That is re-victimization.
The Payoff Myth
If you think I’m exaggerating, answer me this: what do victims actually get?
Where is the payoff everyone seems to imagine?
There is no concierge trauma team that shows up at your door. There is no guaranteed therapy,
no institutional safety net, no funded rehabilitation for the nervous system you didn’t break on
purpose. What you get is skepticism. Abandonment. Rejection. Silence. A ticking clock that tells
you when your pain has overstayed its welcome.
You get a label, and then you’re told not to live inside it.
Reputational Discipline
And that, right there, is where the tax gets collected. I was bullied as a child. This is the grown-
up version. This is adult psychological extortion, and I’m not playing anymore.
Because if we can turn “victim” into an insult, we never have to reckon with the crime. When we
turn “victim” into a character flaw, we do not free survivors. We discipline them. If we can
reframe the issue as your personality, your posture, your “mindset,” then we never have to ask
harder questions: Who harmed you? Who covered it? Who minimized it? Who benefited from
your silence? Who still is? You speak, and you are told you are dwelling. You set boundaries,
and you are labeled unforgiving. You ask for accountability, and you are called bitter. You did not
choose the harm. But you are expected to manage everyone else’s discomfort about it.
This is why language matters.
Language Is Power
Words do not merely describe reality. They shape it. They determine who is believed, who is
protected, who is supported, and who is blamed. And society is strangely gentle with
perpetrators and remarkably loud toward victims.
Prove me wrong.
Because from where I’m standing, we’ve created a culture that says, “We care about victims,”
and then quietly adds, “But not if you inconvenience us. Not if your story disrupts us. Not if your
grief lasts longer than we can tolerate. And certainly not if it changes the narrative we have
written.”
Facts do not dissolve because they make us uncomfortable. Sure, you can reframe injury as
mindset, violation as perspective and trauma as attitude. Go right ahead. Ring your bell for “smartness.”
But that is not wisdom. And it is most certainly not compassion.
Let’s separate the words properly, because they have been blurred on purpose.
The Three Words We Blurred on Purpose
There’s an Unwritten Rulebook everyone enforces. It’s like there is an invisible etiquette manual
for trauma that no one ever handed to us, but everyone seems determined to enforce. So I want
to linger here with these three words for a moment, because they’ve been blurred together in a
way that serves power far more than it serves the wounded. And to be frank, I’m kinda sick and
tired of the power play.
Victim is the simplest one. To be a victim means something was done to you that violated your
safety, dignity, or personhood. That is not a personality type. It is a factual description of an
event. A child who is assaulted is a victim of assault. Full stop. That is not therapy-speak. That
is reality. If you can’t understand that, you are not confused about the word, you are
uncomfortable with its impact.
Victimization, on the other hand, describes the process of harm. It names what happened --
the act, the pattern, the abuse, the betrayal, the violation. It points toward the perpetrator or the
system that caused the damage. In other words, victimization is about what was done to you,
not who you are.
Then there’s Victimhood, as weaponized in culture. Somewhere along the way, “victimhood”
stopped meaning having been harmed and started meaning being morally defective. It became
shorthand for weakness, bitterness, entitlement, or refusal to move on. In this frame, if you are
“living in victimhood,” it is treated as a choice you made, and a choice you keep making. We are
often told, “Being victimized is an event. Remaining a victim is a mindset.” That assumes
healing is simply a decision.
It is not. Trauma is not a mindset. It is an injury.
Think about what that logic actually implies.
But let’s move on.
What I want to say is: That shift is not neutral. It is political, cultural, and deeply theological. And
yes, it has been cultivated — slowly, persistently, and often through propaganda that normalizes
the silencing of the harmed while centering the comfort of the powerful.
The Nervous System Doesn’t Vote
When a child is harmed, their nervous system rewires before their will ever gets a vote. It learns
hypervigilance. And the hypervigilance dominates and presents as fear that you cannot place.
People-pleasing. Shame. Dissociation.
None of that is chosen.
All of it is survival.
I was living in “victimhood” long before I knew what any of those words meant. Long before I
understood my response, my grief, my loss… My child-self hid away in my adult body,
introverted and bleeding on cue. And it bled out on those I loved, and the ones who stood close
enough to get hit by the shrapnel.
When Do You Arrive at "Not" Victimhood?
But “victimhood” has been turned into a character flaw. So I have to ask, when does a victim
supposedly stop living in “victimhood”? It is spoken about as if it is a destination we are meant to
arrive at — some tidy checkpoint on a healing map no one actually gave us. As a child who
was violated, my entire life did not gently “adjust.” It went off the rails. The harm did not stay
neatly in one box labeled past. It tethered itself to me and threaded through almost every
decision I made — many of them painful, self-betraying, and deeply damaging. And yet, I do not
remember standing back even once and thinking, “Ah yes, there I go again, living in victimhood.
Better move to a nicer neighborhood.”
And then comes the middle space. It’s the space no one wants to name. Because we pretend
there are only two categories:
Victim.
Healed.
But real life contains a long stretch in between. And I’d like you to listen when I say this. Victims
do not choose victimhood. There is a space where we are not yet free from trauma patterns. We
are actively seeking healing. But we are still grieving. Still rewiring. Still triggered. Society may
call it “victimhood.” I call it process.
Better language for this space is not “victimhood,” but: living in trauma patterns, living in survival
mode, living from a wounded nervous system, frozen in childhood, grieving an unidentified
loss…
These are not identities. They are not who we are or a choice we are making. They are
conditions that can change.
But process is inconvenient. So we shorten the timeline and blame the wounded.
That is how the tax gets paid. That is taxation without representation. A system that charges the injured for
surviving the injury. I know that tax very, very well. And I’m done paying the bill in silence.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Trauma Tax
Enter Exhibit A.
This is where the surcharge is collected.
It is not enough to have been harmed. First you endure the violation. Then you endure the
cross-examination. The Trauma Tax is the additional charge applied after the crime, because
you dared to survive it imperfectly.
Look at how victims are questioned after sexual assault.
Were you drinking? What were you wearing? Did you provoke it? Why didn’t you leave sooner?
Look at betrayal trauma.
Why are you still upset? Why can’t you let it go? Why are you reacting like this?
Notice what just happened.
The focus is no longer the harm. The focus is the reaction to the harm. The reaction became the crime.
That is the surcharge.
The courtroom and the therapy room often run the same script: reframe the violation as mutual dysfunction. The harm is no longer the centre of the story. Your reaction to the harm becomes the evidence.
It is the penalty levied against visible injury. The moment your evidence bleeds, your credibility
is questioned. The more affected you are, the less trustworthy you become. Your trembling
becomes instability, and your grief becomes exaggeration. Your anger becomes proof that you
are “not healed.” The wound is used to disqualify the witness.
I also know this tax well. Funny how that works.
It is the price of a life knocked off course. It is the line item the justice system routinely tallies as
“resolved” before moving on to the next case. File closed. Matter settled. On paper, everything
is tidy. In real life, nothing is. Sure. Call it a day if you want. But we don’t get that luxury.
When a file slams shut, or worse, was never opened at all, there is no payout for the nervous
system. No restitution for lost years. No repair for the relational damage that ripples outward.
Closure is declared administratively, not biologically. And that declaration often functions less
like justice and more like permission. Permission for silence. Permission for forgetting.
Permission for harm to remain structurally unexamined.
And then another bill arrives.
The Costs Nobody Tallies
We pay it in relationships we never should have entered, because harm quietly recalibrated
what we believed we were worth. We pay it in the good relationships we sabotaged, not out of
malice, but because safety felt foreign and kindness felt suspicious. Healthy love sounded like a
dialect we were never taught to speak. I have begged God’s forgiveness for that one. I was too
young and too fractured to understand what I was reenacting.
We pay it in patterns we did not consciously choose, and then, heartbreakingly, in the patterns
our children must work twice as hard to untangle. Trauma compounds. It accrues interest. It
travels generationally unless someone decides to interrupt it.
Yep. That.
The Trauma Tax.
It is the pay-it-forward nobody volunteers for. Not the coffee in the drive-thru. Not the
anonymous gift card. It is the inheritance we would return to sender if we could. But there is no
return address.
You can deny it all you want.
You can also deny it while living it. That is the quiet genius of the system. It teaches us to
perform wellness while our bodies wage internal wars. We smile because the test came back
negative, even as the joints ache, the fatigue crushes, and the immune system misfires. A
negative test does not mean the illness is imaginary.
Likewise, a culture that refuses to name trauma does not mean trauma is not shaping behavior,
relationships, leadership, theology, or policy. Refusal does not erase impact. Silence does not
neutralize consequence.
We pay the Trauma Tax in raised eyebrows. In awkward silences. In reputations that never quite
recover. In being told we are “too much” for reacting normally to something abnormal.
And we are expected to call that maturity.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Real Enemy Is Not Victimhood
We have been fighting the wrong thing. Victimhood does not corrode the soul. Unacknowledged
trauma does. Unacknowledged trauma survives because shame is the enforcement arm of denial.
So instead of asking: “Are you still living in victimhood?” We should ask: “Have you been given
the safety, belief, and support you need to heal?”
Because healing is not a personality choice. It is a communal responsibility.
My daughter’s tattoo keeps circling back to me. When I first saw it, I laughed. Then I swallowed
hard. Because she’s right.
“I am the Hero, the Villain, and the Victim.”
It is uncomfortable because it is true. We are not one-dimensional beings. But our culture
demands clean labels:
Hero = admirable
Villain = discardable
Victim = inconvenient
Real people are messier than that. And real healing refuses tidy categories. We are capable of
courage and harm, strength and wound. The goal is not to erase the victim. It is to integrate
her/him into a larger story of healing. Not one of denial, silence, or performance. Being harmed
is not a moral failure. Healing is not a single decision. And truth is always the doorway to
freedom.
So let’s reclaim the word:
Victim of harm, yes. Captive to harm, no. Wounded, yes. Silenced, no. Honest, yes. Shamed,
never. Taxed? Not anymore. Billed? Returned to sender. Debt? Cancelled.