"What are people with trust issues called?" "Normal."

“I have trust issues.”

The moment one utters this statement, people assume that the person has been betrayed, his/her trust has been shattered so much so that they developed issues around it. Probably, but not necessarily. One might even assume that people with trust issues do not want to take risks in their lives or are scared of trying something beyond their comfort zones and worst of all, they are trying to protect themselves. Sit down, give up any thought that you might be having about this blog post, and before you close your eyes, for once, in the blankness of your mind think about a person who has not developed trust in the first place. What did you make out the person to be? Were you baffled by the idea that there might be people who were born with the ability to not develop ‘trust’? Probably, you never even thought about it, because trust and broken trust are what we grow on, learning lessons.

I cannot speak for the people developing trust issues later in their life. I can speak for the only person I have known so far who has never trusted people or things for the simple notion that, ‘time’ cannot be trusted. So, here I am talking about my ‘trust issue’. It was quite early in my childhood, when there recurred an ad on television, probably that of some cement or battery brand, where a man even at the altar asked, “Guarantee hai kya?” As silly as it might seem, for the first time in my life I realised that things and people can be questioned if not should be. I cannot recall talking about a future, I cannot recall using the phrase ‘I trust you’ with complete consciousness of the term. To my childhood self, like the ‘idea of love’, the ‘use of trust’ seemed overrated.

For a long time I believed that something is really wrong with me (because people around me constantly unconsciously told me so). I saw my inability to trust as a drawback. It was painful, because for brief moment I wanted to let go of constant nagging of responsibilities by trusting someone. I wanted to say that things happened because I trusted so and so. I wanted a moment of carelessness. In the beginning I believed my so assumed inability to be a form of self defence. One of the definitions of trust is “allow without fear.”  I believed that I am scared of getting hurt. That fear turned into a sense of power and I could not make myself be under anyone’s power consciously if it can be avoided.

It was a couple of years ago when I realised, that, if some people can trust then it doesn’t imply that the ones who can’t are 'weird'. We have a tendency to define things my relating them, presence in absentia. As much as darkness is the ‘lack’ of light, it cannot be termed as a defect. Light, after all, is the ‘lack’ of darkness. It takes time to realise that people can lack a million things that the ‘normal’ folk might have but it does not make them ‘abnormal’ or wrong which the ‘normal’ folk keep insisting upon.  ‘Abnormal’ is again a way for simplifying deeply rooted complications that we do not want to deal with in our pursuit of a simple and happy life.

To be someone with trust issues is to literally live with chaos inside your mind. You cannot claim anything, you question everything. Of course, it can be said that, “this is not a trust issue but a tendency to question (sceptic, much?).” You cannot put your faith in anything. You can believe something and not believe it at the same time. It is a complex state of being that can frustrate you unless you accept it. To be a person with such a trust issue is to be in a constant state of flux, ever changing and not changing at all. You live in a multi-verse full of paradox and you have to hear things like (with a hovering look of sympathy and disapproval),

·         Everything is black and white.

·         You make things complicated for no reason.

·         You are a coward.

·         It’s high time, s/he deserves your trust. It is unfair to him/her otherwise.

·         You think too much.

            Honestly, I wish I could say that any of those statements were true. But to live a life, where you simply cannot believe in time (not merely the ticking of clock hands) is not easy. Time has the ability to make things go haywire. Nothing lasts forever, nothing is constant, not even ‘change’. I think about such little things because they matter to me. These little things when ignored can actually start a domino effect, and the outcome can leave everyone with a trauma they weren’t ready to deal with in the first place. I think I wrote this blog post to request anyone who reads this, to pay attention, to start accepting an anomaly as a ‘normal’ reality different from your own. Something dismissed as ‘wrong’ because you were too ignorant and busy can drown someone in self-doubt. What I am trying to say is that, trust issues might at times come with the complication of ‘not having a broken trust’ and it is not something that needs ‘fixing’ with any motivational words. It is simply, a state of being, just like having trust is.

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