April 1, 2006 1:08 PM BST
Hi Susan, that’s a nice, heart-warming story about your landlady, it’s always nice when you finally find someone to share your secret with after many years of keeping it to yourself.
But your last post offered real words of wisdom, and I just wanted to echo the sentiment: “…we feel so bad about ourselves we build up a hostile world around us”. I’ve seen it so often, and I did it myself for a long time. We may push it as far back in our minds as we can, but as long as we are being secretive there is almost always some sense of guilt, self-disgust, or something along those lines. Perhaps we feel bad about ourselves because we assume that others will too, if they know the truth, and so we fall into a vicious circle; we hide because we fear others’ reactions and our hiding compounds our fears. Thus we create, as you say, a hostile world.
The hostile world we create is not reality, it is in our heads. There is certainly some hostility out there, but it doesn’t exist the way we think it does, and no-one should hide behind their own self-created hostile world.
When I started getting reactions from my friends and acquaintances after coming out, I felt relief, respect (for them), and some guilt at ever thinking they would react in any other way. I tried to avoid thinking people would react in a certain way, but it’s almost impossible to avoid thoughts like, “Such and such will probably be fine with it… So and so might have a problem… Thingamajig will probably find all this VERY amusing…”
I wasn’t far wrong second-guessing my dad’s reaction, and that put me off for a very long time, but it shouldn’t have done because this is my life, not his or anyone else’s. It shouldn’t matter what anyone thinks, and in fact they don’t really think what you think they will think. Most people out there are good people, understanding, with good hearts. Don’t assume they will detest you for who you are.
I feel I get on with people better now, I am able to fully be myself, which makes me a better person, happier, well-balanced, and without doubt, more well-respected and better understood. Much as I like to blame other people for stopping me coming out for so long, the only thing that ever really stopped me was me.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
Love yourself, and BE yourself. Life is wonderful.
xx
July 30, 2007 9:56 PM BST
Sally, even the ones who toss it under the covers may be unsure and are trying to pretend it wasn't seen when making the bed....to save you imagined embarrassment over it's discovery or real embarrassment if you bring a business contact back to the hotel room. If they wanted to be mean there are a lot of other, more hostile, ways they could have handled it.