I have been working hard lately on the idea of trust.  Trust doesn’t come easily to me; never has.  I am simply not the type of person who has that emotion or even that need that so many others find naturally.  I trust people to a certain degree, for instance I trust my mother to love me, however, that all encompassing emotion, that one person you put all of yourself into, is a stranger to me.  The real tragedy is this disease keeps me from even trusting myself.

I dream about meeting someone that I can trust fully.  Someone that I can take my mask off for, and know that that someone will not be repulsed, not be hurt or harmed by who and what I am.  I dream about a person that I can talk to and not fear the repercussions;  I dream about a person that can handle the truth and I dream about a person that I can trust to be not human, but more.

The truth is that we are human, and therefore, trust isn’t something that can easily be found.  It requires a great deal of strength and more importantly a great deal of risk.  To trust you have to risk that someone won’t scream before it is all said and done, you have to risk that the goodness weighs more than the night and the monsters that roam and tease.  You have to risk more than just your heart, more than just your soul – you have to risk the very life that you have built on years of sorrow and disappointment.

You have to risk all the lessons that you have been taught in the darkest night, and you have to risk all the you have been taught about the majority, those on the throne, and those whose life resembles that of evil.  You have to believe beyond the knowledge, believe beyond even your own instincts developed to keep you whole, alive and true.  You have to believe beyond the promise.

There are days, lonely nights, when I sit by myself and wonder if giving in to the ease of false trust wouldn’t be worth the companionship.  Whatever gets you through the night is sometimes more powerful than the solitude of a wild emptiness.  But the ghosts of the past hold me back, keep me safe from lessons I don’t need to learn over and over.  They don’t let me forget that which this life has taught me, and they don’t allow the freedom to believe in the soul of another.

Those ghosts of my past have taught me about deception, lies, the thunder and the lightning.  The moments of shear pleasure followed by the light of the dawn. The moments of perfection that is broken by the desire for understanding, for love, the desire for the power of it all.  Those ghosts have taught me that humans are frail, they are weak and powerless to fight the demons that reside within their soul. They may put on a great show, they may speak the words of God himself, but at the end of the rainbow they will take the pot of gold.  At the end of the high they so easily crash and burn.

I wish that I was the type of person that was more acceptable of the human condition.  I wish I was the type who could believe that humans fight the demons and occasionally win.  I wish I was the type who could see that the darkness is sometimes saved by the dawn.

But I am not that person. I will never be the girl who can believe in the beauty of the human, neither child nor adult.  I will never be the girl who can believe that those insidious voices will be quiet for one person and not another.  I will never believe in the full goodness of a soul that is not tested by the very monsters that destroy me.  I will never trust in them, nor will I ever trust in myself.  I have been burned and the truth is, my soul is weary from it.  Each and every time that I don’t set myself up in trust, I find that those around me become the very things they have always promised.  If I don’t set myself up for misery, the truth shines like a beacon.

But not having trust leads to a very lonely existence.  It leads one to bitterness, disappointment and an amazing amount of sadness.  It leads you to standing alone in a crowd of people, and it leads to the sad eyes in those who follow you. It leads to hurt, pain and sorrow in those around you as easily as it leads to the hurt, pain and sorrow deep within your own heart.  The tragic truth is that trust not given hurts the world around us as much as it can isolate our own selves.

This world isn’t trustworthy, but the truth is that knowledge, or even the giving of that knowledge is painful.  The normal man wants to be trusted, wants someone to believe in them; and when it is not given the soul crinkles as easily as the one holding back.  The knowledge that one won’t give the gift of trust to another is as painful as the knowledge that one can’t find the goodness in another.  It becomes the contention, the point of no return.

So I make up my truths.  I find a way to live without acknowledging the pain, and I find a way to never show the truth to those around me.  I hide my disdain, my disappointment, my own loneliness in an attempt to navigate a relationship with some sort of care.  I hide not only my true self, but the reality of my distrust, so that those who can hurt me the most is given more than they ever give me.  I give of myself that which I will not take for myself.

And despite the gift, despite all that I want to believe, I will still go to bed alone.  I will still hold my demons and my angels close to my own breast, and hope that there will come a soul that can lift the burden for just a moment.  I will dream about the day when my soul will be held as tightly in someone else’s arm as it is held in mine. I will fantasize about a pillow that breathes to hold me, comfort me and give me what this world has denied me most of my life. And I will dream of never waking up.

I will hold my breath to find the strength to give my full soul its freedom in the world of someone else.  Because it will take strength and it will take risk.  It will take giving more than I so easily hide.  It will take the will that I have never found, and it will mean defining myself to be something altogether different then what the ghosts I have lived with has defined.  It will mean believing in hope, the possibilities, and living with the truth.  It will mean ignoring the lessons of a lifetime for the single breath of freedom to be found in the arms of someone who has the ability to hold my soul in warmth.  It will mean giving up on my own reality, to find the fantasy of a single break.  It will mean listening and understanding the monsters for one night of freedom.  And watching as the dawn once again shines light on us all.