I feel like not enough people realize that people under enormous strain act really really fucking Weird
If someone is doing things that don't make Sense, try to understand that it is entirely possible that their brain is probably under an enormous weight and fracturing under the pressure. People who have been stabbed will sometimes talk a circle around the fact that they've been stabbed because stress and shock prevent you from recognizing the distress you are in and what you need to do to seek help for it. PTSD will do this also. You will find yourself repeatedly jamming a bag of frozen fruit into the same spot in the freezer where it doesn't fit and keeps falling, over and over and over, focused on nothing but that bag. You will decide that a beanbag chair is 10000% necessary to your life. You will lose your entire shit because you stubbed your toe on a table and that means the whole setup of your furniture is wrong. These are largely harmless examples. People under strain will also hurt themselves and others. Cornered animals bite. And it doesn't heal the bite to go "Hey, are you okay?" But it might get you to an animal that stops biting, so you can start to heal. And before you had an animal that bit, you probably had an animal that kept doing shit you didn't understand as stress signals
Mental illness is Off-putting. Trauma and stress make people hard to be around. There are no perfect victims. If your framework for someone under pressure are people who cry photogenically at home in the bathroom or at night when everyone else is asleep and then wake up and act like they're fine then you will fail to recognize it when your coworker who's normally really nice suddenly blows up on someone for leaving forks in the company sink.
Everyone is going through shit. And it doesn't make it okay for them to treat others badly, but it also sometimes makes it difficult for them to recognize that they're treating you badly, like the person on the phone with 9-11 who no longer realizes that he's telling the operator about his day and not answering questions. When your friend of ten years who has a new boyfriend suddenly starts being a massive bitch to you about your weight maybe she's just being a cunt, or maybe she's internalized some bullshit. You don't have to take that, but you Can go "Hey, what the fuck?" And that is often more helpful than you realize. It is easy to assume that someone who does something cruel is acting with intent, but especially in cases where someone's behavior changed in a short span of time, they aren't, any more than the person who is convinced the beanbag chair is going to fix them.
You don't have to give people endless chances. But you should give them at least one chance. Because on your worst week, it's going to be you crying at your friend's birthday party because she ran out of chili before you got to have some, and you're going to want some grace for yourself.
All of this and also, sometimes you just cannot control your reaction even if it’s harmful or mean. Which also doesn’t make it acceptable to treat people poorly, but it does tie into the give people a second or third chance and communicate before deciding they’re just terrible now
