What is trust?

For the past few weeks I have started going to a therapist to try to help figure out whats wrong with me. There is a lot of things broken in me and I honestly don’t think I will ever be whole again. But that’s not the point I’m trying to get too. My therapist asked “What does trust mean to you?” And I knew the answer before she even finished it, I have no idea what trust means, or is. Most of my life I have felt empty, like I have no connection to the rest of the social world. Is it because I don’t really feel like I have any of my own feelings? Does anyone ever really know how they feel?

Sure you might know what happiness, sadness, or even loneliness. Sitting here trying to think of what I feel, and I seriously come up with a blank spot. The only real feeling I have is depression, but that’s not really a feeling now is it? Or just a state of being. What are feelings exactly? How do you know what they are? How do you know if you really have them? Are feelings nothing more than a myth in your head? Or is there something much deeper to them.

So I started thinking about my childhood, trying to dig up any form of feelings I could find. The biggest one I continue to come across is fear, fear of my father mostly. This isn’t going to be a “blame my father” piece, but I am going to write it all down. Just because this is where the question of “What does trust mean to you?” has taken me over the past couple of days. So here it goes… When your growing up your father is the one who you’re supposed to look up to, to be an example of what it means to be a man.

When my father finally retired from the Navy he came home and focused more on my sister than me. Now being that young I really didn’t understand what was going on. And honestly my memory doesn’t really go back that far, what I do remember is being a problem for him. I only remember the negative attention that I received, the constant beatings, standing in the corner a lot of time. And most of the time I never understood what I was being punished for. Why was I always standing in a corner for something I did wrong. What did I do wrong?

Later in my life, the doctors told my parents that I had ADD, and that shoving these pills in me would help take that all away. My parents did what they thought was right for me, but during the time I was taking Ritalin I don’t remember much of anything, from daily life to school, it’s all a blank to me. I remember bits and pieces, like the time one of my teachers forced me to sit in a corner away from the rest of the class because I couldn’t sit still and pay attention, and she didn’t know how to deal with me. The more I remember the more I realize, that honestly the only real feelings I know I feel are fear, humiliation, and rejection.

It seems like these are the only feelings that I really know that I know. My father rejected me for my sister, the social world rejected and humiliated me. But I’m getting away from my point again. What is trust? What IS trust?? I still have no idea what to say about this question. It is so hard to try to put it into words. I understand what trust might be. Trust for some people may be the hand on your bicycle as your father teaches you how to ride. I can’t remember if mine ever did that with me.

Maybe I did have trust in my father sometime, but there have been things he’s done to me, that have damaged that trust. Please don’t get me wrong, I love my father now. At least for me I think I love him. Love is another one of those emotions that I don’t understand. I thought for a time that I knew what love was, but in the end I was once again abandoned by someone I thought I loved. The first time was when my parents decided to leave Chicago and move to Cali, and they didn’t want too or couldn’t take me with them.

And I had no clue what to do, I felt lost and tossed aside. So I latched on to someone as quickly as I could, and that was the worst thing I’ve ever done. And again in the end, she ended up not understanding me, or how to even talk to me. So when she was fed up she left too. So yea, I can honestly say I don’t trust the world. Seems like the only person I can trust is myself. Which is so hard to accept. How does one learn to trust someone who doesn’t trust anything around them? How do I even begin to learn what it is, this feeling of trust.

What is trust? How do I learn to trust people? Can I learn to trust?