Hanging with a friend

I hung out with my best buddy again tonight. I can't remember if I've assigned him a pseudonym before, I'll have to just give him another now, haha. Let's call him Rick. Hopefully I can remember the thought process that let to that name, haha.

Anyways, we went and had dinner and then went to the gym. I introduced him to this vegetarian restaurant that I eat at occasionally. They have really tasty food, and I've gotten over the initial weirdness about eating fake "chicken" and "beef." The gym didn't go so well, I got a headache and had to call it quits after a couple exercises. Still, I've mostly been having good workouts lately. I'm definitely back into going regularly and I've been trying to eat enough to put on some muscle. So far I've been happy with the progress I've been seeing.

After the gym Rick and I talked for a while about my dating. I told him about the date with Ben last weekend and my continued daily correspondence with Jake. He told me to be cautious telling our other friend from college about my secret, since apparently the guy's a bit of a blabbermouth. I don't think I'd have to worry about him spreading this particular thing around, but good to know anyways. Whenever I told him it would need to be accompanied by a disclaimer.

Rick told me something very interesting. He said that this was the most relaxed he had seen me. EVER. That took me by surprise. I asked him how I usually acted before. Uptight? High-strung? Guarded? He said uptight  might be a good word for it. He said I would often seem like I had something troubling me, something on my mind. I didn't realize I was that transparent! It crossed my mind to ask, "How come you never asked me what was wrong?" but it's not like I would have told him before now anyway. He also commented about how we were now talking about things we'd never talked about before, such as me dating people (I pointed out that this was because I hadn't done that before, haha . . . though he clarified that I hadn't really even expressed the desire before).

We chatted a bit more, I told him more about my career decision struggles and my anxiety issues, as well as my recent increases in confidence. He told me about his own career issues as well (that's one thing we definitely have it common, he's on his way to getting a second bachelors for a career change). All in all, opening up to him hasn't harmed our friendship at all. If anything I feel closer to him than ever before. I feel less pressure to put on an act, I can be myself and express what I'm really thinking and feeling. For instance, somehow the topic of lesbians came up in the car. I asked him if he enjoyed watching girls make out. He said yes, but he wasn't really that much into lesbian porn. He asked me if lesbians did anything for me, which I honestly answered, "No." He then said that one thing he couldn't watch was two dudes making out. To that I responded, "No comment."

Man, I should have done this a long time ago.