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learning to trust people has been one of the most rewarding and challenging gifts of my recovery. i never remember ever fully trusting people 100%, even in the days before i used for the first time. i have always had a cynical, what i like to call a realist, streak, hence i always took people for what i could see, and trusted them only after i saw them acting with integrity. as a result, i never developed tons of friends, and became more socially retarded than i was meant to be,
active addiction only made my view of the general trustworthiness of my fellow humans, even worse. i spun away from anyone who could see what was really going on in my life and became even more reserved and distant. if they do not know me, they cannot hurt me. this distance and reserve was based on the fact, that if i knew how to hurt someone, i could manipulate them into doing whatever i needed them to do. so when i came to recovery, there was quite a pit of dank and dark attitudes and behaviors to rise from, especially in regards to trusting others.
so i have told my “trust bomb” story many times before, so i need not rehash that story. as i just went over what i told one of my incarcerated friends about trusting him, i need not rehash that either. what i am learning, as i get clean and stay clean, is that trusting someone, is a risk worth taking, in general and withing the rooms of recovery. it is true that trust may leas to betrayal and pain, that is the nature of that beast. what is different is that today, i am no longer the brittle shell of person i was when i was using or when i removed the crutch of mind and mood altering substances. today, i can withstand a storm or two, that occasionally blows my way.
since i am going on about consequences, there certainly are some that i desire when it comes to trusting my peers in recovery. yes not all consequences of my actions are undesirable, some i desire, hell i even crave and the closeness and care i GET from my fellows, when i trust them, is more than worth the risk i take of being shat upon, spat upon and reviled. as i learn to trust others, i learn that i, myself am trustworthy as well. yes the amount of garbage i know about my peers, could be fodder for a very interesting “tell all” tale, which would lead to a state of mutually assured destruction. the most painful thing my friend, whom i am only starting to learn to trust, did when he was “out of his mind” his words not mine, is to accuse of me sharing his sh!t with others,. stuff, events and feelings he went over with me in his FIFTH STEP. if he could go there, what is to stop him from using the stuff i told him, to manipulate me into supporting a drug induced desire for something that i am morally against? the argument only spins down from there, and where i end up is, that just as i choose who to trust and how far i go, so i will with him. it may not be as risky of a proposition as i think it is, but perception is always part of how far i think i can go, and today, maybe i can go a little but further.
anyhow, the morning wears on and i need to get rolling down the road. it is a good day to be clean and a better one, to learn that yes, i too, can trust myself and as a consequnce of that notion, trust those around me.

∞ DT ∞