I, like the majority of Caucasian-American middle-class males, went through childhood with the usual trust in authority figures and peers. In fact, going into my teenage years, I probably still trusted them more than would be usual for someone my age, and I was convinced I could bring the same trust to everyone else. All everyone needed was some hope. But then I, too, became entangled in the fights, lies, secrets, betrayals that surround the dark heart of modern teenage culture. There really wasn’t any transition – I don’t know if there is for anyone – but I wasn’t ready for the experiences of adolescence and they hit me hard. Broken relationships broke my ability to trust, and it’s difficult to reconstruct that. So for me, it’s not so much a problem of maintaining faith in others but rather developing it at all.
In addition to that, my few encounters with law enforcement had been with less-than-friendly police officers (I said hi to multiple “guards” at the SOA, and they just stared back at me), and the actions of local, regional, and national government had (and still do) completely disillusioned me in regards to the good intentions of so-called “civil servants.” These combine to made me feel an automatic aversion to authority, especially when it’s overtly exercised (I would die in the military).
As a defense mechanism, I began to recognize danger in a group of people and then labeling everyone in that group a danger. Of course, it kept me safe, but it really limited the number of people I felt I could reach out to. Still, this cycle of cynicism continued and fed off anything I saw that could have been a threat to trust had I trusted anyone. But I always left back doors open, so I could always get out without getting hurt too much. The problem is, there’s no trust in that kind of relationship, and thus it cannot really go anywhere that matters. You can’t discuss your ideas or your weaknesses or your fears with someone without trusting him or her. If you can’t trust, you can’t connect with other people. And if you can’t connect, what kind of life are you living?
I began to realize this when friends started to voluntarily walk away from me instead of waiting for me to leave them behind. Loneliness is a scary place to be, but it is also a crossroads: will you continue to live this half-life to avoid the pain that accompanies trust, or will you risk the pain, make yourself vulnerable, so that you can create something more beautiful with the people around you? Like the Catholic understanding of conversion, the choice to open up to other people must be made repeatedly, in each situation in each relationship, until it becomes strong enough to mirror instinct (similar to Jefferson’s concept of repeatedly making the right moral decisions to strengthen one’s morals).
I am in that place now, making the conscious decision to fully and openly trust people in my relationships with them. I’ve grown closer to my parents than I was a couple years ago – not nearly close enough, but it’s a start. I can also tell my friends more now, whereas I used to tell them only what I wanted them to know or portrayed it in an extremely slanted way. By choosing to make myself open to the important people in my life, I have begun to rebuild my trust in faith itself, although it is very much a continuing struggle.