It has been almost a month. Not quite, but almost a month since the love of my life died. It’s funny how we mark tragedies in days and weeks and months.

Dead.

He’s gone and part of me still can’t accept that, because it means there’s one less good person in the world and there’s one less person that I trust.

Over the course of fifteen years, I loved him. I loved him practically from day one, but the trust grew slowly. Because of my past, I find it incredibly difficult to trust anyone. It takes a very long time and lots of good intentions. I trusted Male almost completely, as completely as I am able.

I can never trust anyone entirely thanks to the monster who raped the trust out of me as a child and the second monster, the domestic violence monster, who took what was left and stomped on it. I can’t trust and with damn good reason.

I trusted Male as much as I could. I could sleep next to him. When you’ve been dragged out of bed to be tortured or raped starting at the age of seven, and repeated in your twenties like a recurring nightmare, sleeping soundly is something you don’t really do. I could sleep next to Male. You have no real concept of how much that simple sentence meant to me.

He knew all of my stories, even the ones I haven’t told you yet, because they’re too hard for me to think about, let alone write down. He accepted me through all of it. He knew my strengths and weaknesses. I could cry in front of him.

And that’s all gone now. And I wonder why it is that a world like this one would allow that to happen. I don’t believe in destiny, fate, or an invisible sky king who created and rules us all. If I did before, I wouldn’t now. I would have to question a sky king that would allow me to survive a past like mine only to take away a trust I cultivated in the wake of it all. I would be very, very angry.

I’m not angry, but I am asking why. Why would trust be stripped away from me again for the nth time? I trusted my family. I told them there was a monster in our house who tied me up and raped me. They didn’t believe me and let it continue. Strike one.

I trusted a monster who physically abused and mentally tortured me for eight years before I finally saw the sociopath underneath. He nearly killed me. He succeeded in taking what little trust I had left and destroying it. I couldn’t even trust myself after him, because I didn’t see him for the monster he was until it was nearly too late. I couldn’t trust my judgment. Strike two.

Over fifteen long years, I finally let someone else in. I let him see all of me. I began to build trust in others and started to trust myself again. He’s dead. There is no one in this world I trust like I trusted him. Strike three.

And I feel very much alone. I feel like there’s no one I can trust. I feel like that seven-year old child again; unprotected and alone in the dark with a monster lurking, and I have to wonder why. Why do some people walk through life without hardship, while others have to deal with all of this? Why do the monsters get away with it while I live in hiding? What do I do with this justified paranoia? Who do I trust now?

My psychiatrist thinks I’m shutting down. She thinks that I’m building walls inside of myself again and she’s right. I can almost physically feel a box around my broken and battered heart. My fiery core is contained inside a box in my center and I don’t know that it will ever come out again. I’m not even sure that it should.

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Please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to comments on these grief posts. I read your comments, but I can’t always respond. I write this for myself, because it’s all I can do.