Isnt it amazing when you can look into a persons eyes and know that you can have complete faith and trust in them? You can trust that this person wont hurt you, they will do everything in their power to make you happy, and they will never intentionally make you cry. You trust that they are loyal to you and that a lie will never escape their mouths. It must make you feel safe, secure, and at ease to have that kind of trust in another person.

I wouldnt know because I have never trusted anyone in my life not completely at least.

I trust no one and keep one of the largest walls up around me that you could ever imagine. My invisible wall is thicker than the Great Wall of China and probably taller than Trumps wall that he so desperately wants to build. I never believe that anyone has my best interests at heart; I believe that they are using me for some unknown reason, and I am convinced that at one point or another, I will be lied to or used by everyone in my life.

I create scenarios in my head of what I think people are going to do to me; I imagine worst case scenarios of someone breaking my trust and I prepare for it internally. I imagine myself hearing bad news, someone breaking my heart, or I will imagine someone I love hurting me beyond belief and I play out a scene in my head of how I will react and what my next steps will be. I over analyze what people say to me, breaking down their stories in my head to find any traces of deception so I am not fooled later on.

Its rather draining to tell you the truth. Just to be able to trust people would be so much easier than the hell I put myself through.

But I find it near impossible to take the easy way out and just blindly trust other people. I cant; not when I lived the life I lived. My entire life was filled with deception and hurt; I could trust no one not even my mother. I couldnt trust my mother to protect me from harm when she was the one harming me. I couldnt trust family or neighbors who looked the other way and did nothing. I couldnt trust the value of a marriage when Mom was running around with different men every day of the week. I couldnt trust my own judgement in right from wrong when Mom was making me shoplift and then rewarding me for it.

I couldnt trust anyone and I never learned how.

I couldnt trust Moms good moods or believe that she was genuine when she was nice to me because there was always some catch or something that she needed from me. Kindness came with a price, and if Mom was being nice to me, it meant that she needed me to keep my mouth shut about an affair she was having or she needed me to shoplift her a nice trinket from the local jewelry store.

My way of thinking in life has been: If you cant trust your own mother, then who can you trust? I mean, think about it. If you cant trust your own parents, how in the world can you trust anyone else in your life? How can you trust your spouse to stay faithful when you witnessed so many affairs? How can you trust that your neighbors will look out for you and your best interests when so many of them turned their back on you as a child? Its a daunting task and a constant battle in my brain. I want to trust so badly, but then my protective wall comes up and Mom pops into my head. I cant let myself get hurt like that again, so trusting no one protects me from any further pain.

I have no magic answer on how I can start trusting people, but all I can say is that Im trying. I trust my children explicitly; I trust that they love me and never want to cause me pain. And maybe if I start from there, trusting the other people in my life might not be so hard.