Epiphany: Trust

[Apologies for those of you who are driven insane by second-person references; I didn't set out to write it that way, it just kinda happened.]

I don't trust people. I also, simultaneously, trust completely. Every kindness you give to me, every tiny act of caring, I grab hungrily, sure that it's sincere. At the same moment, I am searching for ulterior motives. It isn't that I later doubt you; I trust and doubt at the exact same instant, latching on with cat claws to draw you closer — to pull you inside me, or me inside you, because nothing is close enough — and as I do so, slashing you and kicking you away from me. "Ambivalent attachment" is the psychological jargon. It happens with kids who don't form a "secure" bond with their caregiver when they are small. We go through life looking for that intense, all-encompassing connection.

It's hard to both trust and distrust at the same instant, every instant. Not just hard: agonizing. People bandy about the term "cognitive dissonance" flippantly — I do it, too — but real cognitive dissonance makes you want to scream, sometimes for hours. It's exhausting, thinking double, feeling double, especially about something as important as whether you can trust someone with what feels like your soul.

Sunday was not a good day. People surprised me in a couple of breathtakingly awful ways. Not people I intensely trust/distrust; one seemingly tiny event was that at the end of my workday, I discovered that someone had taken my jacket out of the break room. I don't know who, so now I am potentially betrayed by everyone who was in the building, by each person I work with. And I like all my coworkers, so it can't be any of them, but it has to be one of them, but... But the worst part was not the theft. Worse than the missing jacket was the probably three or four minutes I spent, staring at the shelf where I had left it 6 hours earlier, thinking, "But I remember leaving it there. Am I misremembering? I must not have actually left it there, because if I had, it would still be there. Maybe it is there, and I am not seeing it." I went over and actually touched the surface of the empty shelf, half-expecting to feel my invisible jacket. I had to be wrong. I walked down to the other end of the building where I'd clocked in, to make sure that I hadn't brought it down there with me and left it. I did this even though that end of the building is colder than the rest, and yesterday was cold enough that for the first time I wished I'd had something long-sleeved to wear. I remembered standing there with goosebumps thinking, "Gee, I kinda wish I hadn't left my jacket in the break room." And now, six hours later, I stood there in the cold thinking, "Did I actually think that or am I making up that memory?"

I got home and sat with Butler in my lap, petting him more consciously than usual, needing the comfort, and also needing to give him happiness, needing to do something good, to feel good about myself, to feel his happiness. I was after a while completely at peace. But at the same moment, I was in pain. I ached over the betrayals of the day and wanted to scream, while gazing at Butler gazing at me and feeling sleepy peace. It isn't quite the same as cognitive dissonance, but it's still painful to do. And yet, it feels right. The complexity is somehow soothing, feels like what I'm supposed to be doing. But is it something I should do? Is it normal? Not "Is it different from everyone else and therefore bad?", but, is it pathological? Is it maladaptive? Should I refrain from holding two feelings at once because it's somehow hurting my mind, my brain? Just because something feels good doesn't mean it's good for me.

No: especially because something feels good, I need to suspect that it isn't good for me. I mean, I have a track record of calming myself in really bad ways: Shutting off, going numb. Ten years of slicing my arm, or my legs. Attaching myself to people in such all-encompassing ways that I disappeared in them, wore them out, drove them away. Why on earth would I trust myself to make good decisions, to act in my own best interests?

I do not trust myself. Even when I am absolutely sure I'm right, even when a memory is clear, even when I read the facts myself, when someone questions me, I immediately think, "Did I get that right? Did I misread the article, misread the situation? Did I make that up?" The most solid certainty shifts like sand, because it is my certainty.

I trust you completely, but I am absolutely sure you are untrustworthy. And I am sure you are untrustworthy precisely because I trust you. I cannot trust myself to make good decisions about who to trust. I have a track record, from the moment I was born, of completely trusting absolutely the wrong people. Why should I trust anyone I trust?

So at least for me, my own attachment disorder, my trust issues, are in the end all about me. It's not my parents I don't trust, or my friends, or anonymous coworkers when I'm not in the room. It's me I don't trust. It's me I'm suspicious of, that I second-guess until I third-guess until I don't know which certainty to discount. Like all the epiphanies I've ever had, it seems blindingly obvious now. I don't know if seeing it will help anything. Maybe?