Almost everything that has ever hurt you, angered you, or left you feeling like a victim was not actually the event itself. It was the meaning you attached to it. The event was data. Neutral, impersonal, indifferent data. What turned it into pain, into trauma, into rage, into a story you still carry years later, was something that happened entirely inside your own mind: the interpretation you ran it through and the connotations you loaded onto it. This is not a comfortable idea for most people, because it removes a certain kind of victim status that feels important to hold...