On Trust, Friends, and Regret
It is interesting looking back on life. On how our emotions and reactions evolve.
What follows is really an introspection on why I don't trust many people and how my reactions have involved. It is an incredibly self-driven post and I don't expect many people to get it or want to read it but I felt like writing it down
Lots of introspection on why I am how I am below (I tried to LJ cut but apparently am a failwhale)
When I was younger I was slow to trust ANYONE. I was the geeky child who read a whole lot, loved to learn, and did all sorts of things that 'popular' kids didn't do. I caught frogs, I had insect collections, I was in 4-H, I dressed how I wanted and I got made fun of. I got made fun of a LOT. So I didn't trust anyone. If they approached me I assumed it was to tease me, to mock me, or (rarely) to get answers for class homework. Needless to say I had very few friends.
When I finally started to make friends I made a few poor choices. A girl who initially was a lot like me (interests, geekiness etc) then became involved with a local gang. Last I heard she was in Juvi for drugs, but that was back in Junior High. Then picked up with another crowd who were really friendly... until they weren't. I should have seen the signs, and boy I see them now if anyone so much as hints at it. It was one of those if you disagreed with the alpha female she would destroy everything you held dear. And she did. She took everything from me, and it wasn't hard for her to do. She actually told me afterwords that "She wouldn't have done it. Except that I made it so easy." Those words stuck with me. I know it is mere childhood problems but they were incredibly formative in my views of the world. I learned that I couldn't trust people. That those close to me would betray me. That they would use me to their own ends if they could. And I learned from my mother that if you cry, if you get upset, no one will respect you. She taught me that you hold it all in and you deal. You become cold. And most of all you NEVER let anyone see you cry.
So college rolls around and I don't trust anyone. I am nice to people. I am polite, but I don't make friends. Not really. Until I started climbing. Climbing for me has been a revolution. You HAVE to trust people. Not only just trust them. But trust them with your life. It was so strange to me. To suddenly have these friends who I was forced to trust. It did me a world of good. And it helps immensely that there are very few climbers (in general) who are not cool, chill, people who are bluntly honest. They exist sure, but compared to a slice of the rest of the world, the percentage is much fewer.
Between my experiences climbing and gaining friends whose families encouraged open, honest, dialogue between themselves and between friends I began to grow. I trusted more people. I talked to more people. I started to make friends. Unfortunately it took me until far after college to really get to where I could do open and honest dialogue. I think this is why it took me a long time to start blogging. To want to really work on my writing, on my graphic novel, on maybe doing a webcomic. Art is art. It is open to interpretation, and especially if you are doing commission work the interpretation should be someonme elses. But the idea of putting my words on a page. That is far to much like dialogue. That is like talking to another person. And telling someone else when life goes all to hell. My mother had taught me that it was unacceptable. As much as I do love my mom, the damage she did to me, and to my relationships by telling me those things. By a few choice comments she could say, has been irreperable. I may have lost someone I care incredibly deeply about forever. I finally came clean to him recently, told him why I ran away instead of talking to him. It was because I didn't know better. I had done it to other people before but I had never been so cruel as to just leave before. And I never got over it, and I'm not sure that he did either. I did my best to apologize, to explain how INCREDIBLY sorry I am about it. How I will never forgive myself, but how could I expect him to understand. It took me years to untangle my life and be able to put it on a page. Years to be able to tell a friends something is wrong rather than excuse myself pre-emptively from a gathering and just go home and cry. I was taught never to let anyone see me cry. So I didn't.
It's been years now. I'm still bad about letting people know how much I hurt, or when I think something is wrong. But I'm getting better. I don't suspect my friends are going to turn on me anymore, but I am less forgiving than I would like. To myself, and to others. I have trouble forgiving people when they betray my trust, but I have never forgiven myself for some of my past betrayals. It is something I will have to work on for much longer I think.
It is interesting that I have also been trusting my instincts much more. If I immediately feel good about someone, I am much more likely to look at them. I used to be far more analytical, I would take into account what I knew about them, how other people referred to them, I would ignore my gut feelings as that is just emotion. And I was taught that emotion was flawed, and really could not be trusted. I've found that listening to my gut when I meet people has been a much more effective way of analyzing relationships. I still get fooled, don't get me wrong, but it seems to happen less often.
So again, with my personal growth and trying to learn from my past, I will really make a better effort to write here. It is dialogue with a community. It is that thing I always most feared. I realized that in the past I have used this only to make big announcements, for good or for ill, when I thought people should know about what was going on so they could gauge my workload/art accordingly. But really, it will be nice to write. To dialogue, or perhaps to monologue, to this audience.
What follows is really an introspection on why I don't trust many people and how my reactions have involved. It is an incredibly self-driven post and I don't expect many people to get it or want to read it but I felt like writing it down
Lots of introspection on why I am how I am below (I tried to LJ cut but apparently am a failwhale)
When I was younger I was slow to trust ANYONE. I was the geeky child who read a whole lot, loved to learn, and did all sorts of things that 'popular' kids didn't do. I caught frogs, I had insect collections, I was in 4-H, I dressed how I wanted and I got made fun of. I got made fun of a LOT. So I didn't trust anyone. If they approached me I assumed it was to tease me, to mock me, or (rarely) to get answers for class homework. Needless to say I had very few friends.
When I finally started to make friends I made a few poor choices. A girl who initially was a lot like me (interests, geekiness etc) then became involved with a local gang. Last I heard she was in Juvi for drugs, but that was back in Junior High. Then picked up with another crowd who were really friendly... until they weren't. I should have seen the signs, and boy I see them now if anyone so much as hints at it. It was one of those if you disagreed with the alpha female she would destroy everything you held dear. And she did. She took everything from me, and it wasn't hard for her to do. She actually told me afterwords that "She wouldn't have done it. Except that I made it so easy." Those words stuck with me. I know it is mere childhood problems but they were incredibly formative in my views of the world. I learned that I couldn't trust people. That those close to me would betray me. That they would use me to their own ends if they could. And I learned from my mother that if you cry, if you get upset, no one will respect you. She taught me that you hold it all in and you deal. You become cold. And most of all you NEVER let anyone see you cry.
So college rolls around and I don't trust anyone. I am nice to people. I am polite, but I don't make friends. Not really. Until I started climbing. Climbing for me has been a revolution. You HAVE to trust people. Not only just trust them. But trust them with your life. It was so strange to me. To suddenly have these friends who I was forced to trust. It did me a world of good. And it helps immensely that there are very few climbers (in general) who are not cool, chill, people who are bluntly honest. They exist sure, but compared to a slice of the rest of the world, the percentage is much fewer.
Between my experiences climbing and gaining friends whose families encouraged open, honest, dialogue between themselves and between friends I began to grow. I trusted more people. I talked to more people. I started to make friends. Unfortunately it took me until far after college to really get to where I could do open and honest dialogue. I think this is why it took me a long time to start blogging. To want to really work on my writing, on my graphic novel, on maybe doing a webcomic. Art is art. It is open to interpretation, and especially if you are doing commission work the interpretation should be someonme elses. But the idea of putting my words on a page. That is far to much like dialogue. That is like talking to another person. And telling someone else when life goes all to hell. My mother had taught me that it was unacceptable. As much as I do love my mom, the damage she did to me, and to my relationships by telling me those things. By a few choice comments she could say, has been irreperable. I may have lost someone I care incredibly deeply about forever. I finally came clean to him recently, told him why I ran away instead of talking to him. It was because I didn't know better. I had done it to other people before but I had never been so cruel as to just leave before. And I never got over it, and I'm not sure that he did either. I did my best to apologize, to explain how INCREDIBLY sorry I am about it. How I will never forgive myself, but how could I expect him to understand. It took me years to untangle my life and be able to put it on a page. Years to be able to tell a friends something is wrong rather than excuse myself pre-emptively from a gathering and just go home and cry. I was taught never to let anyone see me cry. So I didn't.
It's been years now. I'm still bad about letting people know how much I hurt, or when I think something is wrong. But I'm getting better. I don't suspect my friends are going to turn on me anymore, but I am less forgiving than I would like. To myself, and to others. I have trouble forgiving people when they betray my trust, but I have never forgiven myself for some of my past betrayals. It is something I will have to work on for much longer I think.
It is interesting that I have also been trusting my instincts much more. If I immediately feel good about someone, I am much more likely to look at them. I used to be far more analytical, I would take into account what I knew about them, how other people referred to them, I would ignore my gut feelings as that is just emotion. And I was taught that emotion was flawed, and really could not be trusted. I've found that listening to my gut when I meet people has been a much more effective way of analyzing relationships. I still get fooled, don't get me wrong, but it seems to happen less often.
So again, with my personal growth and trying to learn from my past, I will really make a better effort to write here. It is dialogue with a community. It is that thing I always most feared. I realized that in the past I have used this only to make big announcements, for good or for ill, when I thought people should know about what was going on so they could gauge my workload/art accordingly. But really, it will be nice to write. To dialogue, or perhaps to monologue, to this audience.