Trust

Ah, yes, trust.... Trust is a difficult one for me. There are few people I really trust. Trust with me, is earned.

It took me a long time to trust my higher power, which is love. Love was something unfamiliar coming from other people. People often said things I did NOT want to hear. I had learned from my nightmare marriage not to trust people who did say the things I wanted to hear all the time. Since people tend to do one or the other, I didn't really trust anyone.

When I was almost four years old, I lost my mom to a car accident. It took me a long time to recover from that. There was not a lot of love for me from my stepdad. He often disciplined me with corporal punishment (with my pants down) My stepdad and his wife had little patience with me, and I was often disciplined for simply crying. I did not understand why God had "taken away" my mother. I learned too, that I couldn't trust other children either. One incident that stands out in my mind is when a bunch of neighborhood kids made a ring around an injured crow and stoned it to death. I guess I couldn't understand why anyone would want something living to die. I felt guilty because I had thrown one stone at first, but I stopped and tried to get the other kids to stop too. I remember feeling bad, too, about eating meat.... But, I did not have much choice about finishing my dinner in that home.

It was probably 30 years after the death of my mother that I began to trust my higher power. I realized that my higher power had consistently, albeit slowly, gotten me out of several abusive situations. My higher power had found good adoptive parents for my two daughters. My higher power had found me places to live. My higher power helped me find safe shelter when I was travelling around hitchiking. My higher power often warned me about people that were untrustworthy -- because I'd often get a feeling about people who weren't so savory, and I was very rarely wrong.

With trusting other people, I find it very helpful to carry a minimum of expectations. If you don't expect too much from other people (who are not predatory I must say) they will rarely let you down. I also find it helpful to not compare my insides to their outsides. I can see common ground better that way. I am, basically, a nice person, and not everyone is nice! I used to deny that little warning feeling I'd get because I thought there had to be a nice, compassionate person inside the monsters I'd met, just waiting to come out. All they needed was a little "encouragement."

I've been through a lot of abuse at the hands of men. I find it much easier to trust other women then men. I know that even with all the cattiness and jealousy and other things that women do when they are being "evil" they simply cannot hurt me as much as abusive men can. I'm not saying that women can't do damage; they simply can't do as much destruction as men can. And, men can be masters of head games, cattiness, jealousy, etc. too.

I know that my mistrust of men goes a little too far at times. Other times I am too trusting of strange men. Its easy for a man to lose my trust. They say "curiousity killed the cat" and my curiousity often gets me in trouble with predatory types....

Trusting yourself is very important. It may take time, when you have done things that you really regret in addiction to learn to trust yourself. It's okay to lean on that higher power until you can trust yourself to say "no" to drugs and alcohol. It's very hard to repair one's self esteem when one does not trust oneself!

Today, I trust myself. I trust my sponsor. I trust my Higher Power. I trust several women friends I have made. I don't really have any men in my life right now that I do trust -- but I'm sure it will still take time to undo the damage that was done to me at the hands of men. I know I can walk past the bars. I know I can trust myself to walk away from drugs. I know I can trust myself to say no to cravings (which are rare nowadays). I know that trusting my higher power is also known as faith. Faith is important in recovery. Patience is good to develop with yourself if you are new to recovery. A lack of faith and trust seems to be the hallmark of many a newcomer. If you are new to recovery, give yourself time to develop these things. It takes a little while to see clearly.

Above all, don't beat yourself up for not being immediately healthy!