Forgive Us Our Trust Issues

You’ll have to excuse my trust issues,
they get in the way sometimes.
But, like always in life,
the way that I perceive you
says more about me than it does about you.

(This is true of everyone; it’s why you should never take anything personally, no matter who says or does it.)

The truth is that trust isn’t earned,
because earning implies that, by doing something
to prove your trustworthiness,
you are then in control of the choice
another person makes at the end of the day
(and that’s just not true, not possible).

The truth is that we each choose who to trust
based on who we believe others are-
based on their actions, their energy,
and our own, inevitably biased, prior experiences.

We can ‘teach’ others how to ‘earn’ our trust,
but what we are really doing is teaching them
how to dance around our triggers
and overcome the memory minefield we haven’t cleaned up yet.

(And by the way… We might not choose our wounds in life, but we are responsible for the healing, which includes uncovering and healing our triggers. We are responsible for how we treat others, even if they’ve set off a trigger.)

I’m not saying everyone should trust me,
or that everyone deserves my trust.
I’m just saying, to think trust can be earned
is to be in denial of my own power
and the other person’s power as well.

I’m a work in progress, and I’m asking you
to forgive my trust issues
when you tell me that you quit drinking

Because the truth is that my mom was an alcoholic
and she “quit” too. Many times.
I trusted her when she did, at first.
And I paid for that trust.

(I paid with my heart, my pride, my hope, my innocence, my childhood.
When others spoke of their lack of belief in my mom, I defended her fiercely, and I paid for that too.)

Watching her fail, I learned that an addict “quitting”
often meant more pain
for those who love them
at least the first few times.

(And that it’s only worth it if they’re one of the few who succeed eventually- less than 10%, my mom once told me!)

Please Forgive Me For Struggling To Believe, At Times, That You Really Quit.

In reality, it’s not you I don’t trust;
I’ve seen your beautiful, bright core.
I believe in you.
Of course I know you can do this.

I can see now that you’re serious about winning this battle, and that’s what I needed to be able to stand by you through it.

When the trust issues come up,
it’s Addiction that I won’t trust.
It’s human nature that I don’t trust-
that innate need to press the button we’re not supposed to touch,
to go down every path just to see what’s at the end,
to risk our lives hunting for buried treasures.

It’s my attachment to the outcome that I don’t trust, too.
Because when I believe in who you say you are,
I see the world as a more joyful place…
And it would be just too painful to bear
if I were to allow myself to believe in that version of the world,
only to watch it slip away upon learning that you’re not serious.

(We all know what a challenge it was for me to learn to let joy into my life, after all.)

It’s not that I don’t trust you.
It’s not that your word isn’t enough.
It’s not that I don’t believe in you.

It’s that I’ve seen the monster of Addiction take down my greatest heroes, destroy the pedestals every child has their parents resting on, and bring terror, trauma, and tragedy to my life since childhood.

Almost every Superman and Wonder Woman I know were once ripped to pieces by this disease.
The truth is that I don’t want to see it rip you away from me too.

And I don’t want to have to forgive you for choosing that over me,
like my mom did. Like my dad did. Like my aunt did. Like, one by one, my best friends did.

(Please stay.)

You’ll have to excuse my trust issues.
I’m still learning that the times Addiction won the battle
didn’t mean anything about the war as a whole.
I’m still learning that, while it hurt in the moment,
I grew stronger and learned to love more deeply as a result.

(And in reflecting, I realized I got back half the people I lost to Addiction.
Half of them were strong enough to come back to themselves, I’m grateful to be blessed with them in my life today.)

I hope you can understand
(and forgive me for)
when I can’t help but look at you
with teary eyes filled with pain and hope and doubt all at once.

It’s not you- this happens because I can’t breathe.
In these moments, ropes of thorns are threatening
around the edges of my heart,
eager to protect me from being 12 years old
and watching my mom relapse again.

(From being left behind by everyone for just “one last hurrah,” again.)

In the moments when I look at you in silent tears,
I’m telling myself that you’re you
so it’s going to be okay,
because you always surprise me.

In these moments, I’m telling my panic to hush;
assuring my heart that I’m safe and it’s going to be okay.
I’m swearing up and down that you’re different,
and embracing the potential consequences of my being wrong about that.

My walls might try to come back up
because I should never have seen the things that I saw happen to my mom,
because I should never have been crying in the shower at my best friend’s house on Christmas
after a mile walk in the snow… after a night sleeping on a dust and smoke-caked floor
listening to nightmares no child should hear.

Vices (and the people who serve them) are my triggers, love.
It’s a constant battle for courage, compassion, and perspective for me to be here.
It’s facing my deepest fears, and finding that gentle voice in my heart that tells me
that I’m strong and that I’m going to be okay,
and that I can stay here, that I can love you, and I will survive it.

I have to listen closely for that voice
as alarm bells sound and scream for me to run.
It’s a battle on those “fun” nights for me to
allow myself to see you as you are

(and not as those who would hurt me).

To See You With My Heart, And Not With My Fear, Is Either The Bravest Or The Stupidest Thing I Have Ever Done.

(Time will tell.)

Forgive me for sometimes struggling to convince
my broken inner child of the difference (between you and those who cause pain carelessly),
but know that you’re worth the fight
or I wouldn’t be here cheering you on
despite the instinct and nightmares telling me to run.

When I was 14, mom “quit” for a few months.
Things were getting better,
we even had multiple bedrooms between the 5 kids.
I’d stopped refusing to visit on weekends
and even visited when I didn’t have to-
to babysit so mom could go to her NA meetings.

Dad quit too, or so I thought.

And then… Addiction won again.
She said she’d be home by 8

(from a party with old drinking friends… she insisted she wouldn’t be drinking and was just eating and then leaving early, but you know how those things go…).

Come midnight, someone who’d lost their license over DUIs
pulled up to the house and carried my mom to her bed.

I could smell the alcohol rolling off her mostly-limp body
and I heard her puke as they made it to her room.

When I was 14, my mom failed at quitting.
Again. After months of “earning my trust.”
I was babysitting, doing my homework, preparing for final exams in my first college courses
and my mom was throwing-up-drunk in the bathroom at midnight.

After months of sort of making up for the years of childhood lost,
I remember thinking “I guess I just wasn’t worth it. Still.”

I called my dad to come and get me
and he couldn’t - he was drunk too.

(And I told myself I’d never be the friend, lover, or parent who couldn’t drive to the aid of a loved one in need just for the sake of being numb to life for a moment.)

So when I forgave my mom at 16,
and supported her as she quit again,
the thing that worked was to detach myself from the outcome.

I had to make myself so strong and so safe
in my own heart and life
that her relapse couldn’t hurt me, if it happened.
I had to learn to love the human inside (to separate the addict from the Addiction, to see her loving core underneath it all).

I had to be able to support her without having any personal interest in whether she succeeded or not.

When I want to run from you,
it’s for that same reason.
If your losing has the potential to harm me,
I don’t trust myself to love you where you are.

In those moments, I’m afraid I’ll be too busy protecting myself, rather than showing up for you.
That’s only human, I think. Self preservation is a natural instinct.

But I won’t settle for offering that kind of love.
I want to always have love that is true,
that goes beyond my own self-interest;
love that comes from a space of compassion and non-judgment.

Forgive me for my instinct to distance myself from you,
when it looks like you want to have ‘a little fun…’
but the truth is that I know what Addiction does
when you try to defeat it.

(It flares up, it fights to keep you. The battle gets messy, and bystanders- including children, pets, parents, and partners- get hurt…
Some Addicts commit suicide, overdose, or effectively destroy their entire lives with a single binge.)

“One Is One Too Many; One More Is Never Enough.”

Addiction can make a person do crazy things,
and I haven’t known you long enough
to know that you are stronger than this beast
that has done nothing but destroy
the greatest people in my life time and time again.

(And cutting holes from my heart in the process as I see the days, nights, months, and years lost every time.)

This is why, when it comes to just one drink, I cannot budge.
This is why I insist on a life surrounded by only those who can say no
to that “just one drink” lie Addiction loves to whisper in your ear.
Because “just one drink” has stolen too much from me already.

I won’t give it one more grain of my life’s sand.

This time, my life is my own.
Nobody else can have it.
I would love to share this life with you,
but only on the grounds that Addiction never gets another piece of us.

We’re here for so much more
than to serve the god of waste.
I’m here for so much more than to grieve
by the side of friends and lovers
who are still living, but no longer alive.

It hurts too much.
I won’t go back there.

I will fight Addiction gladly-
with those who are actively fighting the fight,
with those who want to win.
But only with those who are fighting to win.

It’s not that I don’t trust you;
it’s that I’ve been on this ride before
and I know where it ends for me.
I will trust you when you are no longer the kind of person who sees the ride as an opportunity (rather than the waste it is).

But that isn’t something you can earn,
it’s just a matter of who you are-
and if I’m willing to see you as you are.
It’s just a matter of being fully ourselves.

(And by the way,
please don’t ever take my doubt
as a measure of your potential
or the value of your efforts.

I’m doing my best in learning to communicate more gently, but please never take my feelings personally.

Know that my reaction to fear
is never judgment or reflection of you;
it’s a reflection of the healing
I still have left to do in myself.

I’m paying attention, I’ll keep getting better too.
That’s what we do.)

The universe seems to know what it’s doing.
I’ll do my active part
when it comes to changing my life,
but I know better than to force things, too.

So I hope that you can forgive me
and learn not to take my fears as a sign
that I don’t believe in you or that you can’t do this;
because there’s nothing true about that.

(I’m sorry for the things I say when I am afraid, and for how easy I make it look to walk away.)

Fear is as good a liar as Addiction.
So I’ll fight mine, and you fight yours
and we’ll keep each other strong
coming back to look from a space of love
at the end of the day and always.

What do you say?