Victims and Villains

Victims and Villains
It was Saturday and I was returning to Club 55 shamefully for the third day in a row to attend the birthday lunch of a friend of a friend.

A table of 14 under pine trees and a make shift tarp was the venue. Our hostess happened to be a lady of a certain age who clearly had engaged in recreational surgery. Botox. Boobies. Lips, the Works. Her eyes were so arched that I thought she might catch flight at any moment were it not for the jewels around her neck weighing her down.

“Madam only has one wrinkle, and she’s sitting on it” my friend announces under his breath as simultaneously he made the introduction. “Charmed, I’m sure”
Frightening to look at upon first glance, Madam was bursting with wit and personality. She didn’t seem the victim of poor self-esteem which her multiple self-imposed surgeries would suggest. In fact she seemed bursting with pride next to her much younger boyfriend. She was actually a spectacular creature, the empowered Cougar. Her energy was electric , and I was hoping to be seated next to her!

Yet, fate was against me that afternoon.

Instead, I was seated next to a troll of a woman who looked like a blonde Kathy Bates and a tubby Cruella de Ville. Within seconds, she began to recruit me into her war against her ex-husband. He was a successful restauranteur who reportedly sold his franchise of restaurants and licensing agreements for $80 million. I didn’t know the man, and it quickly dawned on me that upon meeting anyone new, this woman established her identity as being the scorned woman of a man who ran off with a hostess who he impregnated while still married to wife #1.

As I looked down the table and saw my friend and the Cougaress laughing from the bottom of their stomachs at a story I was missing out on, I tried to summon an ounce of empathy for Mrs. Vinegar sitting to my left. “Was he unkind in the settlement?” I asked her travel companion sitting to my right? It looked like she had sucked the life out of this frail man who I couldn’t fathom to be her romantic partner. The only color he had left was the pink around his eyes and the yellow around his nails. He reminded me of one of the inbred children in “Flowers in the Attic”.

He informed me that the ex-husband gave her half of his net worth without contest though she had only been married to him five years. He had launched his company prior to their marriage, and they had no children because she didn’t want any. I asked her questions directly. “How long ago did this happen?” She replied that she found out about the affair seven years ago and the divorce had been finalized for six. He announced to her one morning that he had fallen in love with another woman who made him happy, and left with only a suitcase.

And, she kept making references to her therapist throughout the conversation. I thought well, at least she’s committed to therapy in an effort to try to find happiness. “You seem to admire your therapist. How long have you been seeing her?” She replied “twenty-two years”….

Although I had a glass or so of wine by this point, I was trying to calculate the present value of all these payments. Was paying her therapist in today’s dollars on average $250 per session over twenty-two years is about a million dollars assuming that money had been invested at 5% interest rate? It was no wonder she was depressed.

This lady had been playing the victim for at least seven years now, probably longer. She was holding onto anger as some false sense of empowerment. She wasn’t a defeated woman who invoked empathy; she was a bitter woman who entrapped herself in the past.

It was hard for me to even pity her as I saw her as a villain robbing me of a fun conversation at the far end of the table! Refusing to play the victim myself, I became empowered and departed for the beach in self liberation.

Victims and Villains? Aren’t we all protagonists in our own stories?