“I’m going there to end this war. Wait for me until I return. Things will be different, I promise. Please wait for me.” – Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
I’ve been mulling over one of the questions from the 20 questions meme. It had to do with trust. “Do you trust easily?” I didn’t (and don’t) like admitting it, but I’m not trusting by nature. As a matter of fact, I’m rather distrustful by nature. Who knows why, but it’s probably as a result of trash from my childhood. Everything can be blamed on your childhood in the end, right? “Tell me avout your vader…” Seriously, Jung would rise from the grave if he could to have a go at my battered psyche.
Values = words = actions is the best way that I can define my sense of trust. And that generally takes time to figure out. Time to see, to notice, to incorporate. Because of the relationship between the three, it takes me a while, sometimes a looong while, to trust someone. I watch. I listen. I circle around conversations looking for those moments of duplicity. Probably most people don’t notice any change in how I perceive them, when I go from hmmm to trust because until that point I can be friendly, social, silly, outgoing and helpful, even flirty (if I’ve had perhaps a glass or two of something full-bodied with a cherry or plum overnote). But then again, sometimes I never do decide that I can trust someone and I keep a perpetually watchful eye open.
Then there are the few, the very few, people that I have trusted from the minute I met them. My buddy Ed is one; VanderKitten is another. I don’t know why, I just did. I trusted them in the very core of my being from day one. What is it about them? I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. A few more people fall into this category, but I won’t mention the rest. Keep ‘em guessing. ;-) And then there’s people, most of my people, that I learned to trust over days and weeks and months and years of knowing them. People that grow.on.me like English ivy grows on a brick house, deep and strong and intertwining. While it takes a bit of its nutrients from the very bricks it feeds on, making the building a little more open and susceptible to harm, it is beautiful in its own right. I feel like that about trust. It leaves us open and exposed a little bit, but is so lovely to have in our lives. Until the trust is gone and a little chunk of me is tore away too. The loss of trust is devastating. Heart-punishingly painful. Can you really learn to trust someone again like you once did?
“Things will be different, I promise.”
