Trust.

There’s one thing that’s quite dominant about my memories. That one thing has lots of different names I could call it. “I was close to my family as child” or “I spent most of my free time reading books” or “I focused on my studies when I was younger”. Those statements, while all true, are only versions of truth I tell acquaintances I don’t trust.

For me there’s two kinds of trust. There’s the trust I have for strangers and acquaintances, and the trust where I give my heart and soul to another person.

The latter kind of trust is pretty exclusive. I haven’t quite given it to any of my family members. There was a friend I used to know who had for a while, but if you ask me we’ve drifted apart ever since my family moved away from my country’s capital city around 10 years ago. (For some reason having ~3 hour long train trip between people tends to tear them apart given enough time. Children don’t usually have money for long train trips and taxis on a regular basis, and planning a two way transportation from capital into the woods isn’t a simple task with next to no money.)

The exclusive kind of trust I have yet to give to anyone is probably pretty close to what most people would perceive as love and that’s most likely the most accurate description I have for the trust I want to give to people close to me.

Maybe the term I’m looking for is platonic love. Before I can call anyone a close friend, I want to be able to give my all to them, but most (read as “all”) of the time I’m too scared to get burned to do so. I tend to be scared of new people who try to approach me. I can handle casual “can you borrow a pencil” kind of interaction but in general anything beyond that sets me off.

People are scary since they can hurt without lifting a finger against me. Just feeling lonely can be more painful than falling over and getting all your skins scraped off of your knees and hands. Loneliness can leave scars in your mind and it all can happen over a long time without you ever realizing it except after the damage has been done.

For me the damage is my inability to trust that I won’t be left behind even if I don’t live up to the expectations. So far I’ve only felt like I’m falling into an abyss. A dark and bottomless abyss with no way out. I’ve felt like I’ve been just hanging onto anything I can find in order to stop myself from falling, but what I really need is a strong hand that could pull me out. But trusting someone with my own life is not a small thing. I’m scared.