Trusting me - not just trusting you...

I have been thinking a lot about trust, privacy and the relation of those things to relationships. Not necessarily romantic relationships but all relationships, whether that be with friends, family or a partner.

I have recently come across someone who has experienced a decent amount of distrust in their life. Their privacy was deeply invaded in the past and the saddest thing about it is that not only did it destroyed their faith in another person but they found the violation so strong, they ended up destroying something they should have held on to for the rest of their life. Although they seem to trust pretty well now, you can still see that hesitancy where they aren’t positive you aren’t going to do the exact same thing.

At what point in any relationship do you realize that you can trust someone? And I don’t mean the trust where you are ok with them coming over to water your plants while you are out of town. I mean the real trust where you can tell someone things about yourself that under normal circumstances you would be afraid it would change their opinion of you; the type of trust where you can say anything and not feel judged in any way; the type of trust that leaves you completely vulnerable with your heart on the table and it doesn’t really scare you but excites you for the possibilities for the future.

I think most of us believe that type of trust has mostly to do with the other person. But what if that trust comes mostly from ourselves? What if it’s not really about how trustworthy that other person is, but how much we trust our own self – how much we believe that no matter what this person finds out or how much we share of ourselves, we still know that we are a good person and love ourselves enough to allow that other person to see what is inside.

I want someone to come across “The Book of Julie’s Deepest Secrets”, and rather than ripping it open and reading every line, they bring it over and put it on my lap…and ask me to read it to them. Every single page. Not because they NEED to know those things from my past to see if they could love me, but because they do love me, and don't want to miss out on one single thing about me - good or bad.