Looking For A Fix

Trust, once broken, is a fragile, tenuous thing at best.

I struggle with trust. A lifetime of experience has made me cautious. I think there are things in my past that get in the way of this.

Lies my siblings told me.
Lies the person who molested me told me.
Lies my teachers told me.
Lies my first boyfriend told me.
Lies the man who raped me told me.
Lies my husband told me.
Lies my fiance told me.
Lies my bosses told me.
Lies my last best friend told me.
Lies my closest friend told me.
Lies my co-workers told me.

My parents, they may have lied by omission, but they never lied with malice, never lied to hurt me. The same cannot be said of the folks on the list above. And you know what? A lifetime spent around untrustworthy people does a number on your head. I am not the only one who pays for those lies. People I love, people who are trustworthy, they pay for them too.

Reality does bite sometimes. Now, I am trying to find a fix. The Band-Aid solution is to do battle between the me that has trust issues, and the me that understands that there ARE some people I can in fact trust. The problem with a Band-Aid solution is that sometimes it slips, sometimes it falls off, and inevitably, it needs to be replaced, even with the exact same kind of repair. I wish in moments that I could scrub all the lies from my memory, all the hurt, the despair, the sadness and doubt that were secretly tacked on to those lies. I don't want my loved ones paying for my past.

So, where is the fix? I don't know but I will keep searching.