Whenever I read your words, there is a tiny part somewhere in the back of my brain that says in a namby-pampy voice, “LIES. None of that is true.”

I don’t believe you.

But, it’s not you. It’s me.

You see, I don’t trust anyone. I don’t take anything at face value from god to entertaining blog stories.

I’m sorry.

I want to believe you. It’s not like I disbelieve; it’s just that my sense of trust was raped away at seven years old by a pedophile and by a family that swept the abuse under the rug.

I trusted a pedophile, because he forced me to. It was our little secret. You can’t have secrets without trust.

When I disobeyed and broke the pedophile’s trust by telling my family what was going on in my room at night, my family rewarded me by not believing my story. I trusted my family to protect me from the pedophile they brought into our home. They returned my trust by doing nothing at all about it and letting the abuse continue. They betrayed me and sent me right back to the lion’s den.

Their actions led to an abusive relationship with a psychopath. The psychopath lied about everything all the time. He tried to kill me and stole everything out from under me. When I told my friends about it, they rewarded me by not believing my story. They returned my trust by betraying me and siding with the psychopath.

So, can you maybe understand a little why it is that I have a hard time trusting?

It’s not you. It’s me.

I really want to believe. I would like to take something on faith. I want to believe in fairy tales, leprechauns and unicorns, but I have never been able to. I never had the option of trusting. It was taken from me so long ago that I don’t even remember what it was like. It sounds nice, this trusting business.

I don’t mean to call you a liar, because I really don’t think you are. Most of me doesn’t think you are. But, that little part in the back of my brain just won’t open up any more than it already does.

Someday, maybe I’ll be able to trust someone again without being betrayed. That sounds nice.

Abuse is goddamn exhausting and I’m tired of it.