Hi, Everybody!
This morning I went into my favorite café for coffee. When I was finished, I wanted to go to the loo before I left. But a little girl got in ahead of me with her younger brother. Now it was the usual set-up: one door that leads into a corridor, and then you have doors for the Ladies and Gents on the right.
So I had to wait. And I waited and waited until finally I said to myself, "Jeez! She's taking her time, even for a female." But then I heard some noise inside that indicated to me that I might be mistaken. Perhaps she was already finished and she was waiting on her brother.
So I decided to check it out because I really did want to get gone. And when I went through the first door, I saw that I was right. She was waiting in the corridor for her brother, which meant that I was free to slip into the Ladies'. As I did so, she smiled at me. So I smiled back. Then I heard her brother calling out from the Gents', "Who was that?" And she said, "A lady."
Very nice little experience. But it got me thinking about some things. E.g., the GG I met in a pub a few nights ago. You know how it is, sometimes people hit it off with each other from the start, and that's the way it was with us. We immediately took a liking to each other. At one point she actually embarrassed me, telling me what a wonderful person I was. I was thinking that perhaps she had a bit too much drink in her. But I liked her enormously as well.
And then, a couple of weeks ago I got on the train, sat down next to a woman more or less my age, and within two or three minutes we'd struck up a conversation that went on pretty continuously for the hour or so that I was on the train.
And then, there was the time a while back when I was walking home and I passed a woman who was trudging along very slowly indeed. When I looked at her with some concern, she explained that her legs were hurting her. So I slowed down and walked along with her and we began chatting about this and that. And I noted that twice during our conversation she said, "Good girl!" and twice she called me, "Dear!". And when we parted company, I could tell that she really liked me.
This is what bowls me over. I get the impression that people actually like me, that they like the "New and Improved Foxglove". This is my perception at least, and of course perceptions can always be wrong. But I've been very lucky. I didn't lose any friends when I came out, and the people I meet these days are always very nice to me.
I know that we're not supposed to care what people think about us. But I do care, and I don't apologize for that. I want the people I like to like me back (I don't care about the ones I dislike), and it makes me very happy when it appears to me that somebody genuinely likes me.
What can I say? It's a fact I'm different now. Having come out of the closet has taken a huge amount of pressure off me. I'm much, much happier, much more relaxed than I was before. Maybe this is what people see and what they're responding to. Or maybe I'm just plain wrong and maybe people liked me well enough before or maybe they don't like me as much now as I think they do.
Can anybody enlighten me with your own experience? Do you think people, those you knew before and those you met after you came out, like you better than before?
