The scary thing about trust

Trust is a difficult concept. Trusting is hard, but knowing who to trust is even harder. Sometimes I wish everyone was as loyal as they appear to be, so that there was no such thing as betrayal and backstabbing. But I guess without all of that, there would be no drama, no enemies, no grudges, and life would just be plain boring.

And how exactly do we decide whom to trust? Personally, I think time is an overrated factor when it comes to trust. You don’t necessarily have to know someone for a really long time in order for you to trust them. Sometimes having just one conversation with somebody can make you feel like telling them your deepest secrets. And sometimes you may have been friends with someone for years, yet you still don’t feel the connection that makes you want to trust them.

People drift. It’s the sad truth, but I’m sure you know the feeling of losing someone you used to be really close to. It could be caused by a conflict or a misunderstanding, but sometimes it just happens and you don’t really know why. You end up talking to each other less and less and one day, it just stops. And now you can’t even remember the last time you heard the sound of their voice calling your name.

And you’ll start to wonder about all the things you’ve ever told them – all your secrets and your stories and all the memories you shared. What’s going to happen to them now? Can this person even be trusted to keep them anymore? And eventually it will come to a point where you can’t even decide if you should have trusted them in the first place. Whether or not it was a mistake. 

Because think about it – think of all the people you used to be close to. All of them are still carrying around some of your secrets with them. You exposed your vulnerabilities openly, believing that they would never take advantage of you. Different secrets were shared to different people. It was your choice to trust them and you really did back then. Unfortunately, that trust is something you can’t take back. Once you’ve said it, you’ve said it. They’ll know these things about you forever and it’s their choice whatever that want to do with the information that they have. They can be the better person, a good friend even after a fall-out, and keep them buried at the back of their minds, never saying a word about it to anyone else. But they could also be the exact opposite, using it against you and spreading rumours – true or false – about you. You never really know. 

And that’s the scary thing about trust. You can’t decide what happens the moment you’ve opened your mouth and spilled it to someone. You’re giving them the power to hurt you, but you’re doing it because you strongly and firmly believe that they won’t. 

After all, trust is something that’s extremely fragile. It takes merely seconds to break, but forever to repair.