It could be over a few months, like a new job where one day you feel like actually going to work thinking, hey I actually like these people and don’t mind working here.
Or when your friends have been super busy for months and suddenly you get matched on dating apps, old friends reach out and people want to buy your old junk on Craigslist in a single day.
My mother is a conservative who poured subtle homophobia into me when I was a child.
I was at a rave, high on MDMA (ecstasy back then), smoking in the rain in the parking lot with some other young people. This flamboyant gay guy was hilarious and making everyone laugh heartily. In that moment, I realized that we were the same. He just wanted to go out and have a good time and take drugs on a Saturday night, too. My homophobia was gone in an instant. (I won’t lie; I had to have more exposure to LGBTQ people before I stopped noticing them so hard, but moving from the midwest to the Bay Area fixed that problem).