Trust Me.

"Thanks for trusting me"

I didn't. I expected you to keep walking, and then I'd have called you a bitch in my head as you walked past.

No journey of self-discovery will ever end with a happy discovery. I'm living in a house with seven other guys, and I have several times that number of friends up here. And yet, every day, all day, I feel alone. There's no one up here that I'm really close to. It wasn't too bad last semester, but as this year started, it felt worse than usual.

So I applied my intellect to the situation. Why did I feel alone, surrounded by friends?

Here's what I found: I trust exactly zero of them. Oh, sure, I'd be honest with them, but I never really let anyone inside the armor that I wear all day every day. So, it wouldn't take much for me to be honest, because if I honestly represent who I am, and you're not cool with that, piss off, right?

I mean, it's your problem. You're the one who can't accept me, or what I believe. There's nothing wrong with me, it's you.

I took this hypothesis, and I tested against my past.

I used to attend Nampa First Church of the Nazarene. It's a fair assessment that at the time, it was a church that was rather full of affluent folks, and so single-parent children of working mothers kinda stood out. My friends and I got picked on almost constantly, for whatever reason the rich kids had that day.

What did I do with that? I got pissed, locked myself down, and withdrew. The same thing would happen at school, but at school I could hang out with the heavy metal stoner kids, and we could talk about music. They never gave a care that I didn't smoke weed, they accepted me.

I never trusted anyone at that church. I could be honest, but I was always ready to slam the door if I saw trouble coming. And, for the most part, trouble always came.

I tried being duplicitous and manipulative, but I couldn't keep up the happy-guy image long enough, and it never worked very well. Some of the worst mistakes of my life came from trying to make other people like me.

I eventually wound up at Crossroads church in Nampa. I thought "Hey, maybe I can trust people here." And for a while, it worked, but I was always ready to slam that door. Eventually, I'd had enough of them not letting me into their lives, yet hypocritically not letting them into mine, and I told them all to piss off as well.

Luckily for me, there was a trio of folks that actually cared enough to talk to me. One of them in particular tried to get me to understand how the social society at that church worked, and to a large extent, it helped me. But I always seemed to stay in fight mode.

Any time I ever put myself out there, it seemed someone was always ready to slap me back down.

I talked to my pastor once, tried to get some advice on being a missionary. All I wanted that day was some confirmation that going to flight school was the right thing, but he told me that I would be expelled from Moody.

So I took off again. Cause, you know, fuck that guy too.

Went to a church across the valley after some prayers for guidance. Found a nice Bible study, and some people I really cared about. A former preacher joined that small group, and I thought I'd finally found someone nice, who knew a lot about the Bible. I told him I was Methodist, and he replied that if I ever read my Bible, I'd get over that. My parents should have raised me in the Bible, not in Wesley's heresy.

And so the armor came back on in an instant. Fuck that guy, man. I don't need him, I don't need anyone. I tried to be nice, but haters gonna hate, you know?

Then I came to Moody, and tried to start fresh, and trust folks up here. I went evangelizing with a guy one afternoon, thought I could learn how to witness to people. Instead I got lectured on how it was horrible for me to listen to metal bands that weren't explicitly Christian.

It seems that every time I ever attempt to trust people with my emotions, I get burned. I've worn my hand-crafted armor of staying aloof from everyone and kept a "piss off" in a quick-draw holster for so long that it's become my primary nature.

I've got a fuck-you haircut, a fuck-you beard, I wear fuck-you clothes, and I never let anyone inside my shell, ever. I own an AK. I prefer secular heavy metal to the Christian variety. I like this, I like that, I'm totally different from you, and I don't care. You don't like it? Fuck off.

But honestly, it's fuckin' miserable inside my head. I had an epiphany a few days ago, I was dancing around my living room to a song, and I realized that I could never do something like that with people around. I can make excuses, but honestly, I'm terrified of letting anyone see me in a truly unguarded moment. That one realization, that I never relax my guard, blew apart the house of cards that was my self-deceit.

I haven't let anyone see me in a vulnerable moment in years, probably a lot of them. That's what my life is missing. That's what I need, someone, anyone, I trust enough to be vulnerable in front of. I don't even know what that would feel like, but it's the one thing above all that I'm looking for. I'm tired of being strong, I want to be vulnerable.

No wonder no one seems to care about me. I'm probably a pain in the ass to have around. Unless everyone is totally blind, people have picked up on that forced aloofness, and have taken the hint. So...no wonder folks don't stop by to say "hi." No wonder guys don't invite me over to hang out. No wonder girls seem like they're interested right up the point I start to let them inside.

I don't really know if I even have a point with all of this. I feel like I've made a great discovery in my life, yet it doesn't actually change anything unless I apply what I know to my life. In my eternal quest to live authentically, I must now find a way to adapt.

I suppose that ultimately, it's up to God, but that's a copout. If I don't work for it, and God doesn't miracle my ass one step nicer than I was, I can blame God and stay this way with a deceptively clean conscience. So, I guess I don't really have an answer to it, but I do know the problem.

And that's a good place to start.