The Thing With Trust

The thing with trust is that it is the most non-trustable thing in the world. It cannot be done towards anyone these days. No one, not even your most trusted confidante, someone who you have known your entire life, someone you thought you could not live without ever. People manage to break your trust in seconds. It can be the littlest of things, the smallest of gestures or just a word, but it might matter the world to a person. It’s like a rubber band, once it snaps, it’s really hard to put it back together. But the problem is that trust still manages to creep in every time.

Maybe it’s just me, but it can be said that human beings have a very delicate constitution when it comes to trust. Most people have a very benevolent nature by birth. That’s why we are taught from the beginning not to talk to strangers and/or accept any food from anyone we don’t know. It’s because due to our gullible natures we tend to fall into the traps of vicious people who take advantage of our kind sides and hurt us emotionally and physically. And due to this trait of ours, we suffer throughout our lives, going from one vicious person to the next, never finding that one person whom we can trust wholeheartedly. 

Because the thing is, who do you trust? Can you trust your friendly neighbour, who could at any point turn out to be a government agent sent to spy on you? Or can you trust your sister, who might have been adopted from a sleazy black market and turn out to be a serial killer? Can you trust your parents, who could be some kind of shady dealers of human trafficking on the internet? How do you identify who is speaking the truth? How do you sift away the lies? Is the world, as you know it, really what you believe it to be?

Yes, as it is apparent, I have trust issues. I have never managed to trust anybody in life. I have a really sensitive head and I don’t forget a single slight ever done to me, ever. And it’s not that I immediately doubt every word any stranger tells me. No, I trust people very easily. If you come to my door telling me that you need a donation for charity, I will open my doors and empty my wallet for you. If you tell me that you love me for who I am and that my personality is different from the rest, then I will fall for it and feel flattered. And because of this trusting nature of mine, I tend to fall into all kinds of traps.

You see, since I trust people wholeheartedly, sometimes people tend to take advantage of it and do something so horrendous that my trust in them snaps in an instant. And when that happens, not even God can make me trust that person again.

 When I was in school I was probably made fun of the most in class, still am when I am amongst any group of friends. I did not let it affect me very much because I was grateful that I even had friends. It was rarely that I got offended at these jokes about my weight because I had been stick thin. This went on for almost ten years until one day, when out of the blue, one of my classmates called me a prostitute, a “call-girl” to be precise. I still remember how much I had cried that day. Even though my friend had repeatedly asked for forgiveness, I had a very hard time trusting that person again. The next day my mates had planned for a trip to an amusement park, and since I held the whole group of them responsible I did not go with them. This was kind of a big deal because it was the first time any such trip had taken place and due to lack of money my parents had never allowed me to go out with friends. But no, I was so deeply hurt by the remark that even though I was very excited to go on the trip, even though I met my friends on their way to the park, I did not speak with any of them for quite a few days. Of course, it still hurts me to think about what fun I would have had if I had gone, and I have a hollow feeling in my stomach whenever my group recalls the incident and makes fun of me again.

After that, I gave in to the need for social interaction and a sense of belonging somewhere, and everything resumed as per last. Until the second incident which hurt me deeply happened. Now while we were in the tenth grade I noticed a slight shift in the way the girls and boys viewed each other, and how they were increasingly awkward physically. Now I was in no danger of such a situation because I was never viewed as a feminine creature by most people, and it had never struck me that it was not the case with everyone. Later I realized most of my mates had paired up and were being all mushy and stuff. I began to be isolated from the girls who had boyfriends increasingly. They did not include me in their conversations, which was mostly about their last night mush fest with respective guys, and began to talk more and more in whispers. Again, this did not bother me much since I was still friends with them and we did talk occasionally, but this began to be rarer. 

Until this one time when we had to go home early since classes had been cancelled, and I just mentioned in passing to one of the girls that I would get bored at home and she immediately invited me to come to her place, mostly out of pity. Which she instantly regretted because she had already invited the “whisperers” (that’s what I liked to call them) and they were going to have one of “those” discussions of which I could not be a part. I, in my naiveté, accepted the invitation and was leaving with her, excited to finally get a good talk with my friend, when one of the other whisperers refused to come along and wanted to go home. Very late I realized that she did not want to come because of my presence, and I immediately turned around and headed back home. The next day I did not go to school, and from that day onwards to the next two years, I did not speak a single word to them, even though we were still in the same class. Two years we sat beside each other, and yet not a peep did I utter to them. 

Eventually, we did come to a reconciliation of sorts, since my trusting nature and my belief in the adage “do good to those who do bad to you” overpowered me, and I had a gathering at my house where we let bygones be bygones. But to this day, whenever I meet these people, I maintain a sort of emotional barrier where I do not let any of their remarks or jokes get to me in any way possible. I just think that, at the end of the day, it is useless to be offended at below-the-belt tittering because these people do not have any other topic to talk about. But it did make me realize that not everyone is to be trusted freely and passionately, and in all my relationships, personal or professional, I have never sort of quite built that connection. Not that I do not trust anyone at all, but if any of them break my trust in the slightest of manner, I back off and never come back.