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“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

― Ernest Hemingway

Trust is such a strange, tenuous thing. It's one of the things I've struggled with as I grew up.

When I was in high school, I based so much of who I was on it. I ended friendships because of it. For me, trust was do or die. There were no second chances. I lost several friendships because of it. Basically back then, if you had broken my trust, that was it. It was irretrievable. Friendship gone. 

However, you grow up. You realize not everything is do or die. And that if you want to keep the people you love close, you may have to rethink how selfishly you act.

Now, my views on trust have changed. I still think all those hokey, mushy romantic crap sayings are kind of true. You know the ones. Goes something like "trust is like a mirror, once broken you can always see the crack". Stuff like that. I think it's true. Trust is something that if it's broken, it can be very hard to repair. 

Recently I had an issue in which my trust was broken. And it hurts to place it back together again. When you've trusted someone fully, without question, without fear that they would hurt you. . .and then that trust is broken, what do you do? I spent almost a month questioning everything. And I hated myself. Everything that I would previously trust, I questioned. That's not a way to live. Who wants to be questioning and paranoid every time? That's never a good feeling. And I had to come to a decision, to decide what I really wanted to do. 

And it came to me quietly. Kind of like an epiphany. Trust. You can't rebuild trust. It's not a building. It's not lego blocks. Trust just is. When you first trust someone, you're not building that trust. When I first started dating my boyfriend, I didn't build up trust for him. I just DID. Without question, I trusted him. It's like faith. You can't build faith, faith is just there. 

That's why I love that Hemingway quote.It's so simple and true. Just trust them. That's the best way. How would you even build trust anyways? Is there a test? If you get a certain question or percentage right, you start trusting them? I doubt that's how it works. Do you test them in situations and if they don't fail you, you trust them? That's not a relationship, that's an ordeal. So yeah, you just trust them. It's something you just do.

So, in order to try to make things work, I've decided to just trust again. I will believe what you say. I will do it because I care about you and. . .hey. I trust you. I trust you because it's better than doubting you. Because again, who wants to live doubting every word you say? I trust you because I care about you and I believe that you won't hurt me. 

So please. Don't hurt me.

“We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.”
- Frank Crane