Not holding back

I am working on being friendlier. This is not my natural state, being friendly. I'm sort of standoffish by nature; I'm a little bit bitchy, a little bit aloof. I enjoy people watching in almost every environment but I often don't know how to interact with people normally. I am deeply curious about why people do what they do, but I am disinclined to get involved in dialogue with most people, don't want to engage others for fear they won't disengage when I'm ready for them to.

I have failed at a lot of social relationships, have lost long-time friends over my reticence and stuck-up-ness. I'm a little too philosophical about people coming and going from my life, and I tend not to attach to others even though I love them very deeply. I have trouble opening up to any but the closest of friends and I keep so many feelings to myself that I should share, and I share opinions that I should keep to myself. I am opinionated and brazen, and people don't always love me for it.

I'm working on changing some of that. I'm a work in progress. Part of my personal-growth-learning-experiment-resolution stuff is to not hold back. I have been practicing the not holding back, and the response has been a little interesting.

This morning I stopped at the coffee shoppe that sits on the corner that marks the precise half-way point between my apartment and my office and ordered a pumpkin spice latte. As soon as I walked in I was greeted with a perfectly cheerful (but not overdone), "hello again!" from the stunningly beautiful black woman working behind the counter.

The first time I saw her was just a few days ago, and I found her so alluring I could hardly keep my mouth closed. I'm not talking run-way model with flawless skin and nice breasts beautiful; I'm talking radiating from the inside out, truly happy with where she is and what she's doing beautiful. She seems like the sort of woman you could tell the most horrible experience to and she'd find the good in it. There is nothing remarkable about the way she looks physically but she exudes a calm, peaceful zen-happiness. The kind of happiness that knows everything will work out all right in the end, and that we just need to have a little faith in that. The kind of happiness that made its way over to me and managed to make me feel all serene inside.

And in my efforts to be a little more friendly and a little less closed off, I blurted out "you're leaking such terrific serenity all over me."

She didn't pause, just looked at me full in the face with eyes that could drown a god in their depths and said, "I'm so glad it's not going to waste" and handed me my coffee.