Trust Issues - by Shade

These past couple of weeks made me realize something I’d been dancing around for a long time. I have trust issues. Not the “you’ll cheat on me” kind, that one’s valid, don’t get me wrongThis is something quieter and somehow more destructive. It’s the kind where I can’t trust other people enough to feel safe with themWhere I don’t believe them when they say they love meWhere “it’s fine” sounds like a lie and “nothing’s wrong” sounds like the beginning of something ending. My nervous system is constantly on edge, constantly wary of danger that isn’t there.And the worst part? I wasn’t always like this. There was a version of me that was openFoolishly, beautifully open. The kind of person who led with their whole heart before checking if it was safe to do soI still had my attachment style back then , I still needed reassurance, still felt things deeply but it was manageable. Simple even. All I needed was to hear “I’ve got you” and I was okayJust a word, a gesture, a moment of certainty and I could breathe again. But then the painful separations cameOne by onePeople who said they’d stay and didn’tPeople who held me carefully and then dropped me without warningPeople whose “I love you” had an expiration date they forgot to mention And slowly, quietly, without me even noticing, I stopped believing. Words stopped being enoughSo I started watching actionsThen actions stopped being enoughSo I started testing situationsAnd the goalposts kept moving because the fear kept growing, and before I knew it I had built an entire architecture of defense around myself and called it survival It worked, in the way that all survival responses work - it kept me from being blindsided. It also kept me from being loved. Here’s what I’ve been too afraid to say out loud until now: the way I respond to love when I’m scared isn’t just self-protective…It’s harmful. I lash outI try to controlI avoidI stonewall I hurt someone I deeply care about because I couldn’t believe that they liked me. Couldn’t fathom that another person could actually love me unprovoked, without an agenda, without a countdown timer running somewhere in the backgroundSo I tested themSet hoopsCreated trialsPushed and pulled until I’d manufactured enough chaos to justify the fear I’d been carrying all along. And for what? My brain likes to rationalize itLikes to come up with tidy explanations that make it someone else’s problem. *I’m too available”“I’m too open”“I’m too vulnerable”“ I care too much and they don’t at all” But looking back honestly and this is the part that hurts I was the one creating the distanceSubconsciously testing them, pushing them away, waiting for the reassuring response that would temporarily quiet the fear. TemporarilyBecause it was never really about them, It was always about the people who came before them, the separations that rewired me, the version of love I learned that came with conditions and expiration dates. For someone with abandonment issues, I’ve gotten remarkably good at engineering my own abandonment. It’s not verbal abuse, It's not physical. But let me be honest about what it is: Emotional withdrawal is abuseStonewalling is abuseWithholding love as a test is abuseUsing silence as a weapon is abuse I did those things,Not because I’m a monsterNot because I don’t careBut because I was scared, and scared people do damage when they don’t know how to ask for what they need. That doesn’t make it okay,It just makes it something I can actually work with instead of something I have to hide. Looking back, it’s insufferable. I’ve been insufferable. But “insufferable” isn’t the whole truth eitherThe whole truth is that I learned this somewhereSomeone or several someones taught my nervous system that love wasn’t safe, that people leave, that you have to test and control and brace yourself before they do it to you first. I didn’t arrive here randomly, I was shaped here, by loss, by disappointment, by the particular cruelty of loving people who didn’t know how to stay. That’s not an excuse…It’s just the context. I’ve been on guard for so long that I don’t remember the last time I was at ease with another person. Really think about that…Not tense, not scanning for exits, not waiting for the other shoe to drop, just at ease.PresentSafeI can’t remember when that was. And I’m looking back at the good people…The ones who showed up genuinely, who meant what they said, who were trying to love me the right way. And I can see now, with a clarity that feels like a punishment, exactly how I responded to that goodness. With suspicion. With tests they didn’t know they were taking. With a version of me that was so busy protecting itself that it couldn’t receive what was being offered. I’ve spent so much time hurting and brooding and stewing in misery that it’s affected how I show up. Even now, writing this, I’m still scared…Scared they’ll leave. Scared I’m too much. Scared I’m demanding too much, feeling too much, needing too much. “Handle your emotionsNo one can ever know what you’re feeling”I don’t even know where that voice came from anymoreBut it’s been running in the background for years, convincing me that my feelings are a burden, that needing things is weakness, that the safest version of me is the contained oneThe one that doesn’t askThe one that tests instead of trusts. I’m not writing this because I have it figured outI don’t. I’m writing this because I hurt someone I care about deeply and I finally understand whyNot as an excuse, as a mapA way of seeing the terrain so I can stop walking the same path and calling it fate. The reassurance I used to need so simply? I still need itI just stopped believing it when it cameAnd instead of saying “I need reassurance,” I created situations designed to force it out of people, which isn’t reassurance at allIt’s just more uncertainty wearing a different mask. What I actually need…what I’ve always needed is to learn how to believe people when they show me who they areTo let love land instead of deflecting it, testing it, pulling it apart to check if it’s realTo trust that being loved doesn’t have to mean being destroyed. I’m still scared… I don’t know when that stopsBut I’m learning to see the fear for what it is, an old response to old pain, showing up in new places where it doesn’t belong. And maybe that’s where it startsNot with the fear disappearing, but with me finally being able to say: this is fear talking. This isn’t the truth. Maybe the bravest thing I can do right now is just stay. Stay openStay presentStop running the tests and just…believe. Even if it’s terrifyingEven if I’ve been wrong to trust beforeEven if it costs me something to try again. Because the alternative…staying on guard forever, keeping everyone at arm’s length, engineering my own loneliness to avoid being left has already cost me more than I can afford to lose.

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