Trust

Trust is an interesting thing. I say "thing" because I can't really describe it any other way. Trust is the golden ticket in life yet it is the most difficult concept to grasp. I have HUGE trust issues. And right now I just don't know how else to deal with them other than to give myself the time to heal from past wounds so I can trust the present and future.

Once upon a time I trusted everyone. But slowly as time passed I began to realize that people were abusing that trust. Not in small ways but completely violating me in the most intimate ways. To trust someone is to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable is terrifying when you've had others take your vulnerability and run with it. Vulnerability has become weakness in my eyes...

To a lot of people I come off as very strong but inside I am just like everyone else. I am weak and scared.

I have learned to identify my problems. My biggest problem is my addiction to attention. I am not tempted by substances. But attention....I can't seem to get enough of it. You have to understand one thing about me. I was never the pretty girl...I never went on dates really. All I ever wanted was the attention of the opposite sex because I wanted love and for some reason I felt those correlated. When I finally started getting attention I was on cloud 9. At first I wasn't addicted. I was still very trustworthy and knew where to draw the line but as things got worse and my trust in these people became more and more violated I began to hunger for attention. Any kind. Good or bad. I couldn't be alone. I couldn't stand to not have someone interested in me. But of course it never lasted long because I was a mess. They would soon figure that out and leave. So then my trust would diminish and my self-worth went with it. If I wasn't getting attention...I wasn't worth anything. What a sad life.

I still struggle with this even though I am in a very monogamous relationship with a man I want to spend the rest of my life with. We have had one hell of a rollercoaster ride for sure but in the end we still love each other. We're here together and making it work because we both feel it's meant to be. But just because we want this to work doesn't mean that our fears and weaknesses vanished over night. I absolutely love him with all of my heart and I know it's difficult for him to understand all of this but he needs to know that I am a work in progress. Some people are paint by number pieces of artwork that can be figured out in a couple of hours and some people are Michelangelo masterpieces that take years to study and understand every detail. I just hope that he doesn't get overwhelmed by the complexity of the piece before he's understood the meaning in every detail.

I have never proclaimed to be perfect or to have it all figured out. And for some reason it is very important for me to figure it out otherwise I wouldn't be so concerned with what I am feeling and how I am acting. I would just be like every other 20 year old and live life on a whim. I don't want to be 40 and figuring myself out. I want to do it now before I ruin too much of my life. I just pray that I will be given a chance and not thrown to the wayside. I am strong and I have survived so much internal turmoil that I know I can make it.

Time still exists....