Trust, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Babies are born with
absolute trust that their needs will be met. So at what age do we learn not to
trust? No doubt it varies depending on life experiences, but at some point
along the way we all learn the hard lesson that trust can be misplaced.
People betray our trust in them it’s a simple fact of life that it
will happen to us all at least once. Sometimes it’s an extremely painful lesson.
So what do we do? Trust nobody so that we don’t get hurt again? That’s an
option. It used to be my only option for many years. However I eventually
learned that not trusting anybody means not letting anybody close to you, sure
you don’t get hurt but you also don’t get to feel strong emotions and that
means you miss out on joy.
So the choice is a life without pain, but also a kind of vanilla
life in a world packed full of flavours. No pain, but no intensity of emotion,
no close friendships, no rollercoaster ride that comes with letting people
close to you. Everyone is different. But for me, I found that letting people –
some people, okay a very few people – close to me has enriched my life in ways
I didn’t expect. (I should clarify here that letting people close, to me at any
rate, means trusting them.) Mainly because I had no experience in letting
people close so had no way of knowing what to expect. Most of the time I feel
like the world has become drenched with colours instead of being sepia toned. I
like it, I feel alive and it’s a good feeling.
Of course when I am in that hole that I still sometimes fall into,
the colours are darker and more dangerous, but then when I get myself out, I am
in the bright shining light and it’s far more preferable to me.
So I have found the people I have let close to me to be
trustworthy, am I going to say to you all go
on, trust in your instincts, it’ll be great! Well no, this is life, not a
sitcom. I have made a few mistakes, I have trusted people I should not have
trusted. Most recently it was a woman I mistakenly believed was a friend. I
found out that she was not, she was in fact simply using my friendship in a deceitful
and underhand way. That burned, but it only burned my pride. I felt a bit silly
afterwards, and angry for a while. But I had no real emotional connection so it
was pretty easy to chalk it up to experience and walk away with a lesson
learned.
For me, giving trust is difficult, I found that the lessons
learned by trust betrayed are ones learned deeply. I spent – as I said – most of my life keeping
everyone in my life at arms length. When I finally learned to break down the
wall I had built around myself, and let people in, it was really very scary. It
still is, sometimes.
