Stigma: It’s Okay to Snap

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines the word “snap” as:

to grasp at something eagerly; make a pounce or snatch;
to bark out irritable or peevish retorts;
to undergo a sudden and rapid change.

I wanted to make sure that is, in fact, what happened yesterday toward the end of my run at the Naval Academy.

My husband and I were talking about my giving up the role of playing a “political correctness” cop on the online depression support group I co-moderate. Someone wrote to me irked that a wrong term had been used to describe a certain diagnosis. Instead of being my people-pleasing self, I said I was really sorry that she was offended, but I couldn’t censor everything on the site.

“But you had the same defensive reaction when your sister called someone ‘cra cra,’ this last past weekend,” my husband said.

I’m not sure why I snapped this time and not when she said it a few days earlier. I figure my brain is like those quarter machines at an arcade. You think you just need one more to tip over like 20 quarters. But the quarters hang on—tantalizing you until you put another one in. Finally, five bucks later, you hear that divine sound of coins falling.