Please extend the same courtesy to The Recessed. It may require a bit of forethought on your part since topics painful to The Recessed are not as sharply defined as those recently widowed, divorced, separated, etc. I'm not going to attempt to list all of the topics, you're going to have to listen to The Recessed in your world and answer that one yourself. I will, however, share an experience that illustrates the point.
One recent evening, my mind, body, soul and cat were firmly in the crucible's grip. My water was being shut off the next day, which to my mind meant tomorrow might be the day I have to leave my home. In other words, it was Homelessness Eve. That night, I was talking on the phone with a friend and I cracked. She said something along the lines of "Don't give up" and snapped about not having anything more to try and that in my world giving up meant death so of course I can't give up, and how about saying something useful. I hung up on her. OK, maybe my response was understandable all things considered. It was still inappropriate and sub-consciously an attempt to pass on or force sharing of responsibility for my crap.
The next day, we communicated and forgave via the safety of written words. Immediately following her first written response to me, she sent an email with the subject line "FW: Piss Poor." I suspected it was one of her scorpion stings (not a criticism, we all have our natural and good defenses), so I did not look at it until the next day. Sure enough, it was one of those "funny" emails that has been forwarded ad nauseum, this one was about the origins of common phrases and the first several were about being poor. Apparently being "piss poor" comes from people who were so poor they saved/collected urine and sold it to tanneries.
I have a good sense of humor, and since my sense of my friend had me hold a day on reading the email, I was in a better frame of mind and was ready for the humor. I was not ready for the scorpion's tail which read, "I can't help it, it had to do with water..." This told me she knew fine full and well that it was inappropriate, and that the words she forwarded, if read, were going to hurt, offend, rub salt into the wound or otherwise inflict pain. They did. In the context of forgiveness, I wrote back "I'm selling. Who's buying?" It was my best attempt at an appropriately humorous response that did not acknowledge the pain, feed my shame or dishonor the forgiveness we had already transacted.
My take-away was that I had hurt or frightened her on a very deep core level, and that level felt it necessary to return the favor despite the higher road of forgiveness we'd already taken. No problem. Understood. We're human and that's what we do. I commit to learning more about how I hurt people so that I can do it less.
Post-it take-aways for you:
- If you aren't certain if it will offend, don't.
- If you hesitate before clicking "Send," don't.
- If you do it anyway, own the result.
