ugh

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I am a pretty optimistic person. I like to look for the best in people, assume that goodness and fairness and honesty is there within all of us. This gets me into trouble more often than not - some people really are just shady or hateful or manipulative, and while I'm sure there was once goodness within them, the older I get the more exhausted I am having to deal with current states of personhood, which generally can be fairly terrible. Last night on the train I experienced a slight example of this as I bumped into - and stepped on the foot of - a rather large man as I was getting crammed into my train home by the hordes of fellow commuters. I turned slightly to apologize for stepping on him and he told me it was quite all right. "Nothing wrong with getting bumped into by a beautiful woman." He nodded as he spoke and I couldn't help but laugh out loud - I was commuting home after a sweaty gym session, and still bloated from Thanksgiving, so I was feeling nothing further from passable let alone beautiful. Unfortunately that seemed to give him his cue to continue even as I turned back to face away from him. He went on. "Any man who has a problem getting bumped into by a beautiful woman, that ain't right. Why's he got to complain? He wants a man to bump into him?" This last comment raised the tiniest of red flags which were validated when this stranger chose to lean in towards me with his last bit of philosophizing before getting off at his stop, "If a man wants a man to bump into him in a crowded train, he's got something wrong with him. Something wrong with him inside." And with that last bit of conspiratorial homophobia he wished me a good night and left the car. And I was left with a sad, sick feeling of just how far we have to go and of the fact that humans are always going to be ignorant and fearful and hateful and awful to each other, based on one thing or another. And it was all I could do to get myself home and showered and put myself to bed.