Story "You're Offended," or How Smoking Cigarettes Sparked a Conflict, an Epiphany, and Made Me Grateful for Someone Losing Their Shit on Me

[GoodPersonEffed]

A few years ago, I was living in a shared studio apartment where the beds were sublet. When I moved in, the person we rented from, who didn't actually live there, said that any of us who were smokers could smoke out on the fire escape. So I did. A lot.

One day, I'd been smoking out there for quite a while. When I tried to go back in the building, the door had been locked from the inside. It felt really creepy. I went down the stairs and entered the building from the floor below.

A couple weeks later, I was smoking on the fire escape again, and after I put out the butt and turned to go back inside, I caught a man closing the door.

I'm a few inches over five foot, and he was just slightly taller, an intense little man who looked to be my age, maybe mid to late forties.

I asked him what he was doing, and he got sharp with me about it being illegal in that city to smoke on fire escapes.

I could feel the confrontational energy, could feel that this could blow up. I grounded myself, kept my body centered and my stance non-threatening and firm. I breathed and set the intention to stay aware and calm. I told him I had no idea about the law I hadn't been living in that city very long. There were no signs that said smoking was prohibited.

For every measured and reasonable response, his anger and intensity escalated. He tried to make me wrong about not knowing, but I and my responses remained calm, rational, and groundedly firm.

He complained that the smell went all the way down to his apartment, and the way he said it, he implied I should have been aware and should own it. I reiterated that I didn't know, there were no signs prohibiting smoking, and no one had told me there was a problem.

He just kept escalating. There had to be a way to make me wrong. He told me his mother had died of lung cancer from smoking. He started calling me stupid. I remained calm and rational. He aggressively questioned my stupidity about my health, getting more and more unglued, more attached to being right, more attached to me being wrong.

And that's when it hit me.

I grinned a bit, in awe at the revelation.

"You're offended," I said.

That threw him off.

He started blustering, then tried to regain his power by calling me stupid again, and making weak and irrational assumptions about me based on my stupidity, blaming me for everything he was feeling, and trying to get me to take responsibility for his aggression.

I was just so stunned at and pleased with my understanding. I looked him in the eye and smiled at my epiphany, and those actions were a shield against what he tried to put on me. I repeated the message, almost sublimely stunned by its simplicity, as if I'd had a revelation from God and surely he must see it, too: "But you're offended!"

He blustered even less than the first time, backed off, and walked away, threatening all the way down the hall to call the manager, yadda yadda yadda. (Turns out blowing up the manager's phone several times a day about smokers on the stoop was a daily thing. The manager was a slumlord, it took him at least another month to make the effort to put up a no smoking sign with the city code. Even then, some people ignored it, and a couple months later, another resident got locked out as I had.)

After the confrontation, I was a little shaky from the adrenaline rush and went into my apartment to do some calming. Having been doing PTSD recovery work for many years, I was proud of myself: for how I stayed firm and fully aware during the confrontation; for how quickly I was able to ground myself afterward and keep my thoughts from scattering; that I was able to quickly identify all the information I'd taken in during those intense moments, and that I processed that information, as well as the experience, quite fully and quite quickly.

I recognized the man was himself triggered. During the confrontation, he called his own mother stupid, and I realized during my processing afterward that he was likely traumatized by her illness and subsequent death, and had felt extremely disempowered by his inability to stop her from harming herself and taking herself away from him. I recognized that, like me, he had PTSD. Trying to control and punish me was his way of trying to gain control over a situation and a person, both long past and passed, over which he'd had none.

I was amazed that I'd been able to be so aware during an intense and aggressive confrontation, and was able to recognize in the midst of it that he was trying to place the responsibility for his feelings, his reactions, and his aggressive actions on me. I was amazed by the clear insight I'd had, and that I'd had it at a moment when, in the past, I would have been shaky and my thoughts already scattered:

He was offended.

I learned from him about my own self. I now recognize better when I am offended, and I am sometimes able to catch myself before I act out, or at least recognize it soon after and try to work my shit out. I'm continuing to learn to recognize the difference between when I'm being strong and assertive, versus when I'm having a knee-jerk reaction to someone, and perhaps even going farther by giving my permission to my foot to complete the reaction by kicking them, and trying to make them at fault, both for causing my knee to jerk and for trying to hurt them. I'm recognizing more and more when I feel strong and empowered, versus feeling "right" and self-righteous, which is actually weakness pretending to be strong.

I am slowly getting better at hearing the internal warning the intensely triggered man taught me, so that it can serve me before I act, and not just after:

I'm offended!

I'm not perfect, I never will be, but little by little, I become more like how I want to be --- grounded, calm, rational and, most importantly, aware. The blow-ups and confrontations that happen when our shit is all bumping up against each other, irl and here on SS, teach me and help me to grow.

It's fucking hard work, eh? But as they say in Spanish, vale la pena. It is worth the suffering.

___________________

Anyone want to share about similar experiences and/or epiphanies?

 

[ArtsyDrawer]

I... I think I'm offended too...
The internet loves describing intense, high in movement dancing, or really any high movement... movement... with "like an epileptic in strobe lights", or whatever.
These comments piss me the fuck off, but in the Hebrew internet there's no simple word like "offended" to describe it with. "Offended" is an almost strictly American thing because, well, it's mostly Americans (from what I see on Facebook) who get offended by the most minuscule shit.
I'm in a lot of American support epilepsy groups because Americans seem to be less connected with religion, and those who are, are stepping over their heads to not offend the atheists. So far it's been a win/win situation. I can talk shit about God, they can talk shit about... I don't know, Stephen Hawkins, and we all know it's just banter.
But every so often I see some video of some guy "pranking", or whatever, faking a seizure (poorly, I might add) in a public setting, and it pisses me the fuck off!
Or "I'll go dancing like an epileptic in a rave club"!
I... I've learned to be offended...
...
...
I think I need my therapist for some guided thinking, or some shit...

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

@Compodulator, we are indeed The United States of the Offended, and we were long before the Internet and social media came into being. I've observed in my international travels, and in watching television and movies from other countries, that folks in other cultures are more accepting of one another, and more relaxed with one another, and therefore don't try so much to control others or make them "wrong" for their opinions, moods, or personal character.

Edit: I also want to acknowledge the rest of your post, and say thank you for sharing that experience. I'm taking a long way around to get to a point about it: In the OP I alluded to having to determine for myself when i am standing up for or against something, versus when I am merely offended -- that is, feeling piqued by someone else's behavior that is not offensive, or being piqued by the motivations I assume they have for their behavior, such as the man assumed when he called me stupid. Had he rationally explained to me that the smoke was entering his apartment, and that there was a city ordinance against smoking on fire escapes, I would have been made aware of how my behavior was offensive and gladly corrected it, but instead, he went on the attack, in both physically and verbally abusive ways. When people are pranking in the way you mentioned, they are being intentionally offensive, bullying, and unjust, they know exactly what space they are entering and that they are trying to engender negative reactions for their own enjoyment, and I see your response to that behavior as rational and just -- justifiably and justly offended.

 

[Epsilon0]

Congrats on holding your ground and on being able to do something very difficult: to lower your affective response. I couldn't help but smile a little imagining you back in your apartment, hands slightly shaking, adrenaline pumping, but victorious, with your head held high.

What you described is a perfect example of how people who are not aware of themselves usually react during conflicts, when they are on the losing side: they fall back on ad hominems and spew out arguments which have no connection to the dispute whatsoever, just to add more weight to their thesis.


I think you must have infuriated him by keeping calm and sticking to one simple idea: there was no sign and you didn't know.

I am of opinion that people always betray themselves when they talk and act - even when they do not talk about themselves or try to divert attention away from themselves. This guy is text book: he takes out his frustration and anger on a total stranger, because he lacks self-awareness and introspection.


Know thyself goes the old Greek aphorism, meaning know who you, are but also know your place. This guy knew neither.