In therapy today, I was told that the opposite of love was fear.

The lack of feeling comfort creates fear.

And that love is acceptance.

We cannot love someone we are fearful of, nor can we love someone we are not comfortable around. It is impossible to love someone we do not accept.

Including ourselves.

The common denominator?

Trust.

You need to trust someone to be comfortable around them. Building trust takes time.

I have always given my trust away 100% immediately with no boundaries or rules.

I knew that person would fail me somehow.

I did not trust them. I could not trust them.

Letting anyone close has been an impossibility. But letting it seem like it was their fault was easier. I gave everything, so of course it had to be them that fucked up.

I did not have any trust in myself. I did not know the basic concept of the word.

I have had a false sense of the word lingering in the background. I have kept my word, I have done what has been “correct”. I never trusted anyone to do right by me. Not once. I have always assumed that I would be left behind, done dirty, harmed in some way, lied to, cheated on, stolen from, raped, abandoned or murdered.

This is all I have ever known.

The foundational story of who I am is a lie. I was told it as a child. My brother was told a different version. My mother decided we did not deserve to know who we were. I knew she was not being truthful. Her words smelled like asphalt. Nick and I got into fistfights about how our father died. I said he died of cancer. He said he died in a car accident.

It was not until years later that we understood that we both had different fathers and neither of them was dead (at that time).

We grew up in an environment of mis-truths. We were not important enough to know our own stories.

My mother believed her boyfriend’s version of events when I told her that he was being abusive. When he raped my best friend while high on drugs and I went to the police, she told me I was not welcome in her home any more.

I was 15.

When this same man was abusing his 6-year-old daughter, she let her own son take the blame.

Trust is not something I am accustomed to.

She lied to anyone that would inquire about me. And they would believe her because she was an adult.

I woke up in the middle of the night to strange men sitting at the foot of my bed. They would sometimes sit there and talk to me. Some would tell me what a pretty little girl I was. Others would rub parts of my body, legs, bottom, back – “you will grow up to be beautiful, you know. You will need a man to take care of you.“

I would never bother to cry out or call for my mother. I knew she did not see these men out the door when she was done with them. Our safety was not a priority.

I learned to sleep lightly.

One man I hit with my stuffed elephant because he went climbing the ladder to the top bunk where my brother slept.

My health was ignored because she called me a hypochondriac. I had been ill for days, vomiting and had not wanted to leave my bed, and she asked me if I was pregnant.

I was in first class.

I had appendicitis. My grandmother told her to take me to the hospital. She said I was faking because I did not want to go to school (which made no sense, I loved school. It got me away from her).

By the time I made it to the hospital, my appendix had burst.

A teacher, a guidance counsellor, countless therapists and my principal from primary school all suspected I had autism. This was ignored because my mother refused to follow up. I did not cause trouble, so she did not care what happened to me. She did not sign permission slips for extra testing, field trips or anything extra.

She did not attend a single Open House at school. Or any teacher meetings.

I was a good student. My teachers liked me.

Until my grandmother died, and I had to live with my mother full-time.

Everything changed then.

The only person that could be bothered with me (and even that was quite small) was gone. She shut us off completely, living her life, dragging us reluctantly behind her.

She made a good salary, we lived in a decent neighbourhood. It was the first time we had a house with no holes in the roof, and no pigeons in the walls – but still, there was little to no food to eat, and my brother was sleeping on a fold-out sofa in the living room. She bought enough food to cook us, and then we had to wait until she did it again. She locked her door with snacks and extra stuff she had when she got high.

It got worse when she had that racist, abusive boyfriend move in. He lived with us for weeks before I even knew his name. He called me niglet. She would snicker.

I sat in my closet a lot. It was the only place I could be away from them. I heard how he spoke about us to my mother, my uncle, and his friends. He thought about killing us. He called my mother a “stupid nigger loving bitch“.

Trust.

I do not know what it feels like to be close to someone. I know that sex is manipulation. It is why I tend to avoid it. People use it to make me feel a lull of safety and I do not like that.

Those endorphins are troublemakers.

I guess I lie to myself a lot maybe I see people as worse than they are so I can leave and feel better about it. I know there is no future, there is nothing to give them. IT IS ALL I KNOW.

It does not give them a pass when they prove me right.

Still, I do not want to live my life in this manner. It is destructive. I want more for myself. It seems… like such a waste that due to my poor upbringing I should never get to bond properly with another human.

And geez… this makes so much sense.

(Side note: Heart enlargement is a sign of heart failure)

The belief that someone or something is good…
Now how do I do that?