(note: there will be at least two parts to this topic. Topics may or may not be posted sequentially.)
Dear John,
As you get older, you're going to learn that trust is a little harder to come by than it is when you're young. I know, you probably find that hard to believe even now – it's easy to be burned, even early in your life. I think that as we grow up, each of us adapts to the way we see the world, and most of us begin to withhold trust until it is earned, rather than giving trust until it is lost, based on our own experiences.
I can't tell you how to know when someone is worthy of your trust. I can tell you that not everyone will be, and inevitably, you will encounter people who will betray your trust. What matters is learning to find people you can trust, and recovering from those times when it is lost.
Through most of grade school, I didn't have many friends. I tended to wind up with best friends who would move away the year after I became friends with them – I'm pretty sure that happened to me at least 4 times. It's kind of hard to get close to someone when they keep up and leaving on you, you know? So when 8th grade rolled around, and there was a new kid in my class, I said, what the hell? Besides, the new kid sat one seat in front of me diagonally, so it was easy enough to start up a conversation during homeroom.
Of course, J was a little different than my other friends. First off, he was kinder, and much more respectful than I was used to. In fact, I'm not entirely sure he knew what to do with us crude, vulgar Northeast Coast folks (he was from the Southwest). But he gave us a chance, and some of us gave him a chance. He would hang out with us in homeroom and lunch, that sort of thing.
As we got to know each other, we became good friends. I think he was the first boy that my parents actually accepted was my friend, in fact. He'd call the house and we'd talk for hours. We'd pass notes in school, since we had a lot of the same classes. Of course, he was also really cute, and a couple of my friends developed crushes on him. Eventually, I pretty much fell for him too. (Not that I was about to tell him about it.)
When I went to college the next year, we stayed in touch for a while. I'd send him letters, he'd send me letters, we'd even talk on the phone once in a while – although I couldn't really afford it, since we had a tendency to talk for 3-4 hours at a clip. But it was clear we still cared about each other, and that was all that mattered. And yes, I still had a big crush on him. I fail to recall if I let him in on that secret, although it was possible I had, or at least that I had planned on it.
And then my birthday came around, and he sent me a big package. Inside were a few gifts, and a long letter. About 4 pages into the letter, he told me if I lost some weight he might be interested in going out with me. (Note: Do. NOT. EVER. Say that to a girl.) Of course, two pages later, he said my sister had asked him to a dance, and he was really looking forward to going out with her.
Wait, what?
He'd just said he might be willing to go out with me... and then he said he wants to go out with my SISTER? Oh, HELL, no.
From then on, my friends and I called him the Evil Bastard. (Thank you, Molly, for that moniker.) I refused to talk to him if he called, I avoided him if I saw him out, I didn't answer his letters. I basically cut him out of my life. I even burned or destroyed everything he'd ever given me (which is why I don't remember a lot of it).
It took me 15 years to get over that. I'd begun experiencing some regret over losing his friendship, and then my sister found him on Facebook. I thought about it for a few days and decided I'd try to connect with him. I finally did, and we talked a few times. Eventually, I even apologized to him for how I treated him, which he didn't even remember – probably because I never told him how I felt about what he did.
Amazingly enough, I didn't learn from that mistake. Oh, I stopped trusting my sister, to be sure, but honestly, that was a mistake on my part. She didn't know how I felt about him, and even if she had, it wouldn't have been fair of me to expect her to not act on her own feelings, given that I was unlikely to have my own opportunity. Sure, I realize that now, 16 years after everything happened, but at the time, I felt betrayed on both sides.
Of course, that didn't stop me from giving my heart to someone who truly didn't deserve it, which is the kind of thing I wish I realized sooner.
My first boyfriend, who you'll hear more about later … I can't even call him by his real name, because you'd be confused. For safety's sake, we'll call him Useless. I was still only 14, he was … well, he was much older. Old enough that we both should have known better, but of course I didn't, and I lied to him to get him to go out with me in the first place. (Give me a little credit – I was pretty good at playing someone 5 years older than I was – especially given that my situation made it pretty damn easy. In retrospect, though, that was probably still too young for him, but that's a separate issue.) Because I was so young, there were a lot of things I wasn't really willing to do, although I came awfully close one time... but anyway. This was during the height of my internet addiction, and I'm sure that my relationship with him was a huge factor in that addiction. I spent more time online with him than I did in class or even asleep.
The thing is, meeting and talking to someone online means they can show only that part of themselves that they choose to show to a given audience. I was too naïve to think anything other than what he told me – even when other people told me elsewise. I went home for a school holiday, and when I came back one of our mutual online friends asked if we'd broken up. I asked why, and he said Useless had publicly been awfully cozy with someone else.
That should have been a sign.
I confronted him, and he denied it. That should have been another sign.
Stupid me, I believed him. I believed that he was a good person at heart, and even if he needed to work something out, that as long as I was understanding and compassionate, he would stay with me and eventually be who I wanted him to be.
A word of advice – if you don't like someone's behavior, you don't have to expose yourself to that person, no matter what their position in your life. I wish I'd understood what that meant at the time, because I was so completely wrapped up in this tragic saga, I had no idea that I could have just walked away. So I stayed. He cleaned up his act for a while, but every once in a while, he'd try to pressure me into something I didn't want to do (basically, he wanted me to share him. I was 14, and I was not about to let that happen with my first boyfriend). I always said no, or that I'd consider it but not right now, but he was persistent. I should have taken that as yet another sign. It happened a second time a few months later; he slipped and sent a private message in the wrong window.
And it happened a third time a couple of months after that. I don't even remember what happened, but I think the other woman came to me and told me he'd been seeing her for a while. I was, of course, devastated. He'd kept telling me it wouldn't happen again. She and I talked it over, I didn't blame her at all, and we actually became friends. But Useless? I'd finally had it. I'd spent 5 months of my life throwing myself at him, and he persisted in breaking my heart. I couldn't handle it anymore, so I told him I didn't want to speak to him again, ever. I gave him back a lot of his stuff; he kept most of mine. (Bastard.)
I heard several stories about him after we broke up. He'd threatened suicide; he had a gay relationship for a while; he was still trolling the internet for susceptible women. About 6 months later he asked if I wanted to get back together with him. I told him there was someone else, because I'd been through a couple of better relationships by then, and I knew I wanted nothing to do with that hot mess anymore.
I don't think I really realized how that affected me for a long time. I'd given so much of my young heart, and each time it was like the floor dropped out from under me. For a long time since then, I braced myself for that to happen in my relationships. I waited for the other shoe to drop. I couldn't trust what my partner told me, because I was constantly waiting to catch him in a lie.
For the first several years of my relationship with Chris, I didn't believe that he loved me. I didn't believe it was possible, because I'd felt so undesirable for so long. I'd been rejected so many times.
It's amazing what self-esteem can do for your faith in other people.
For a long time I'd based my regard for myself on how others felt about me. I wanted to make them happy because if I made them happy, maybe they'd like me. Now, I'd given my heart a couple of times, and had it thoroughly broken each time. I wasn't about to trust that it wasn't going to happen again, and I kept trying to brace myself for the inevitable.
What I didn't realize is that I was pushing Chris away that whole time. I almost lost him because I was afraid of losing him. Thankfully, he was smart enough to realize it and hang in there, because once I finally figured out what I was doing, I stopped, and here we are.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you are going to make mistakes when it comes to who you trust. And the mistakes will be in both directions – you'll trust people you shouldn't, and you won't trust people you should. Eventually, you'll figure it out. When you do, take a step back, reflect on it, and learn from it. You won't always get it right, but maybe you won't always get it wrong, either.
Love,
JRM
