The Hell of Trusting

The beginning is always difficult, especially when you know that every mental faculty you have has been conditioned to question, revise, analyze and usually toss out numerous attempts at communication. Perhaps it's because I always lived under the umbrella of stupid, but not just stupid, but a special category of stupid where your brilliance that has never been questioned when you are not present puts you in positions where the birds of your feather usually enter the same situation with a declaration of "hold mah beer...". Maybe it's because I was in a cult where critical thinking was frowned upon for belief, faith, and unquestionable acceptance. It's easy to look back and analyze where I have gone wrong and what situations have caused me to become this amalgamation of mental checks and balances with the possibility of reviewing what was, what could have been and what I could have done if.......

And this is where I am, IF. I'm going to say that the scientific method is one of the most amazing processes of investigation that can foster critical thinking, skepticism, and a healthy appreciation of fact over feelings. Yet it can not help me where I am at the moment. It can not offer any way to out of where I am. It's why I now can say with much difficulty and hard earned work that I trust two individuals and they both are or were my therapist. In a small room that brought me much joy outside of the need to stare out a window and know that I am not trapped in any enclosed place, I do what I have taught myself out of necessity and survival to never do. Here I allow the person who is sitting opposite of me to engage me in difficult conversation as I handicap myself in every way possible to not challenge, question, or analyze their words, choice of vocabulary, body language, eye movement, tone, and overall meaning including between the lines. I hinder myself, as many of you know having dealt with me since my very nature I have to have the answer. You find it annoying. I find it a life-threatening need. I have to have the answers or at least search for them since it's only me between the worst that can, have, and will happen. I have no safety net, backup, nor do I have anyone to bail me out if the world shatters as it has many times. Your annoyance on how relentless I must be to know everything possible is probably one of the deepest scars I have and in essence, it's what holds me together.

Here with this individual far away from the world that I relentlessly save, the same world that crushes me with an indifference that I to this day will always find personal I attempt to do what I can not: trust. Every second phrase I speak is one that betrays me and offers the woman with notepad in hand scratching away insight that I never share with others. I share intent, need, and reasoning.I expose more than I would expose with others, and considering that I have blatantly shared nightmares in many of your times of devastation and woe, if only to show you what many can survive if only you have the will to endure and strive, and shared moments of my life some would only hold dear and share with those of trust, none of this shames me in the least. I am in control. I have even disrobed in front of you and find my body of no importance or intimacy. I've shared sexual escapades and moments that would cause medical doctors to pause.

Yet never out of trust. Only from an abandonment of what most would consider personal. I do this much like one would take their hand and stab a knife between the fingers, in a show of disregard of one's being and no concern for one's safety, as long as I am the one harming myself. It scares many away, as intended and it offers me an open existence, but nothing more.

I exist. Nothing more.

I never trust, so in this room, I expose myself to this other person with more shame and fear than one would reserve for an intimate meeting of a sexual nature. Here I leave myself vulnerable as every instinct, natural and hard earned scream at me to stop. Here I offer another person the opportunity to not only help me but the chance to strike me down in the worst of ways. I do not trust because those who I have ripped apart the part of me that would allow any means of intimacy, bond, or .....I actually don't know what else. So help me, I'm so hindered here I don't know what I lack and it scares me.

I was happy not being human. It makes life easy, but hollow in the way of having something torn from you and only realizing once you discover you don't have the means of being. It's a hell that many of you do not understand and I would never wish upon. If I had ever met someone who suffered my fate I would have offered them a mercy that I always sought. And yet, death never came and I'm living past a point where I should have left you all. Instead, I'm crippled in the worst way and trying to learn how to be at an age where I've gained master above many things. Legends are meant to pass on, not exist past their point where the sacrifices are so blatant that they become a monument of sorrow.

So I expose and remain open until the point that my very nature takes hold of me and raises up defenses to allow me to move on. And yet, I do not medicate. I do not hide away outside of my reluctance to be among you. I sit and I suffer growing pains never felt and fears that haunt me once more. This is the price of trusting someone not among you and have no connection to you.

This is the work I do. This is the hell I face. This is me fighting for a chance to live rather a means of existence.

And now you know.

1057 words. 50 minutes