Trust

sometimes I wonder
where I'd be in my life
by now
if I'd have just learned
to trust

when I was a kid
and all the "bad shit"
went on
I stopped trusting
the people that I should have
been able to trust
the most

as a young adult
I didn't trust
that they'd keep me safe
cos they hadn't when I was a child

so I set about
developing the defense mechanisms
that I needed
to participate in my life

I built walls
to keep me safe
walls to live behind
walls to protect me
from the outside world
and possibly walls
to protect the outside
world
from
me....

I worked and worked
and built walls so strong
that here I am
more than 50 years old
and
many
of those walls
are still intact

as a young woman
I didn't trust enough
to believe people
when they told me I was smart
or pretty
or any of the many things
young girls hear from adults

I set about building a wall
of intent and purpose
to keep those people
from finding out
who the real me was

I built walls of anger
and walls of hatred
and walls of violence
and walls of fear
and packed them all up
in a package
that grew and grew
as I did over the years....

there was a time
when
someone truly
broke down a many
of my walls

he worked hard at it
and he taught me to trust
as I had never trusted before....

sometimes I think
maybe I trusted him too much
cos when he died
a big old chunk of
who I'd become
died too
and I lost trust again

and so I set about
reinforcing those walls
and in turn
set about living my life
again...
as carefree
and unrestricted
as humanly possible

in those days
in my life
carefree and unrestricted
meant precocious, promiscuous
(sometimes not by choice)
and high
leave us not forget very very high...
some times so high
that I'd thought I'd die

but
maybe that
was the point?

in the process
of proving that I needed no one
I almost killed myself
by putting myself in the position
to have to consciously chose
life over death
many times
(although sometimes
Dr's made the choices for me)

all of this because
I didn't trust myself
enough
to realize that what I was doing
was defensive
as opposed to offensive

over the years of my life
I've trusted enough to be involved
in 3 relationships
that lasted more than 10 years each
but never trusted myself enough
to truly be myself
in any of them

I've spent most of my life
living behind walls
and now
that some of the walls
have come down
I have time to wonder
what my life would be like
if I'd just learned
to trust...

even now
there's a nagging
voice
in my head
that says
"I know I'd be a better person
if I'd just trust more"
but
I know better

I'm
a
tuff
sell.