Trust

Trust is a verb. Webster's dictionary provides the following definition "Believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of." Trust is a very hard thing for me to do. To trust others, to trust in them is an almost impossible feat. No matter what people do to reassure me that they are "trustworthy" in the back of my mind I am always fearful that sooner or later they will do something to hurt me. And even though I know that is a part of life and one that cannot be avoided it always knocks me off my feet to see "humanness". Why? Is it because I want so desperately to experience a pain free existence? Is it because I want to deny that humans are imperfect. I want to put them on a pedestal and then when they fall off I'm devastated. More importantly why do humans try to convince you of their supposed "trustworthiness" when the TRUTH is no I can not trust you or trust in you because you're human and capable of the most heinous of deeds, acts, tragedies.  I live in fear of YOU. My anxiety is on a 10 at all times waiting for the bottom to fall out, each day feeling like I'm one step closer to falling into an abyss of emotional destruction. Will I ever be free from living under this bondage? I've heard so many times that if one cannot trust others its because they cannot trust themselves. What a crop of SHIT! The fact of the matter is I do trust myself that I won't do any thing to harm myself but that still doesn't mean that I can trust that you won't harm me. It also seems that trust in intimate relationships is more difficult for me because there's more at stake. I fear being betrayed, being lied to, being deceived, having my love be made a fool of. I fear being abandoned, being unloved, being disrespected. In my experience I haven't known intimate relationships to be sources of strength, peace and joy. I have witnessed the destruction of "loves" path, I heard the cries of those wounded by its embrace only to look around and see its victims sprawled out on the floor begging for death because to breath another second was pure torture. And I too have been love's VICTIM! And with even that, I've longed to have a "love of my own"...call me masochistic but I just wish that I can be one of the few who can dodge the silver bullet to the heart and beat loves' assault. I read, I pray, I meditate, I repeat mantras to encourage myself, I focus on what I have instead of what I don't and somehow someway, that fear still creeps up on me.  Out of the blue, at any given date or time, when times are good my inability to trust smacks me in the face and drains me of my energy. It changes my mood, my peace of mind is robbed in an instant, my mind races all over the place of all the "what if's" ...paranoia takes over and all that's left is a scared little girl biting her nails, fearfully looking over her shoulder but trying to front for the world that she's cool and got it all under control.