Trust...my friend Maura recently wrote about trust. Kind of funny actually because trust has been on my mind for the past few days. I've decided that my September resolution is to learn to trust myself more. (I have a tendancy to make resolutions throughout the year. Many around September, maybe that goes back to my school days and the beginings of a New Year.)

Recently I received an email from an old friend. This is a friend that I have...well, the best way to say it is that I had a crush on him for years. The feelings weren't mutual, but we were still friends. Well, this friend wrote me to ask me to come visit Labor Day weekend. He had some stuff happen in his life that was making him think about things. And apparently one of those things was his friends. Well, I hadn't heard from this individual for quite sometime, so it kind of threw me for a loop. When I read his email I took it to mean that he needed a friend, and was asking me to visit as a friend. Well, I discussed the issue with a few of my close friends, and some of them...well, they started me thinking down a different path. Which turned out very very badly for me. I ended up sending an email better left unsent. My friend ended up "un-inviting" me. And I ended up feeling bad. Partly because I don't like to make people upset, and I know I upset my friend. Partly because I...well, to be perfectly honest, don't know that I trust my friend to remain my friend. If that make sense. I guess a better way would be to say that I don't know that I have enough trust in our friendship to believe that it will survive. And partly I just feel a bit stupid. My friend now probably thinks that I still have the hots for him. But I really don't. I want to remain his friend and be friends with him because his friendship means a great deal to me on many levels, but that's about it.

My problem was I did not trust myself enough. I didn't trust my intuition about the situation. I usually don't. I often second guess myself.

I was telling my cousin this past weekend that I have trust issues. It's caused me many problems in my life. I don't trust people to like me, so I generally don't share myself with others. Mostly I say I'm shy, but I think shyness is just a lack of trust that there is a chance that other people will like you for who you are. It's a fear of putting yourself out there. It's the fear that if you put yourself out there, you will be torn to shreds.

I have problems trusting people not to leave me. I have abandonment issues. My theory is that it goes back to when I was born and my parents were forced to leave me at the hospital. (Apparently I was a little yellow and needed to "cook" a bit longer or something like that.) My biological parents divorced when I was probably younger than 2. Obviously I don't remember much from that time. But my biological father remarried and moved far away. My older sister went with him. So there's two people in my young life who left me. I know, now, that they weren't really leaving ME, but that's what it felt like. More recently I had a friend that I was writing to quite frequently, and he would write back occassionally. I shared more with him than almost any other person. There are probably only about 2 other people that I shared more with in my lifetime. And one of those people I've known since I was 2. Anyway, all of a sudden he quit writing back to me. In my twisted mind, I took this to mean that once someone gets to know the real me, they leave.

The reasonable part of me realizes that this is poppycock. But feelings are not always reasonable. *sigh* if only they were. Life would be so much easier.

Now, I do realize that I started off talking about trust, and ended...well, who knows where. This is just how my mind works. And writing it out just helps me process everything. And the exhibitionist in me feels the need to write it where anyone in the world could stumble upon it.

But back to trust. So I've been thinking that I need to trust myself more. And to trust in myself more. To trust that I am indeed a loveable person. But in order for people to be able to truly love me, well, 1, I must love myself, and 2, and possibly more important, I must show them the real me and allow them the opportunity to know the real me. Otherwise how can they possibly love the real me, if that's not who they know. Now, if anyone I know ends up reading this (besides Maura who I know will read it), I'm not saying that the person I am around you is completely not me, but I'm just saying that I don't often show the entire depth of me.

I've also been thinking about trusting God more. I've been trying to get a better relationship with God, but in order to do that one must give oneself totally to God. To put complete trust in him. I don't feel I've reached the point where I can do that. The thought of giving complete control of my life over to someone else sends me into sheer panic. I don't even do well in the passenger seat of my car, let alone my life. I do realize that I cannot control everything. In fact life has proven time and time again, that I can control NOTHING! Yet still I try.

Trust. It's a very difficult thing to do. But also a necessary thing to do in order to survive life.