“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.”
-George MacDonald.
*
“I hope you have a great time at your party,” CC tells me.
I’m going out of town to visit a cool person I’ve only met one time. But who I’ve been meaning to spend more time with. And meet her friends.
“Thank you,” I say. “You’re not the least bit anxious about my going? Worried?”
“No,” CC says. “Why would I be? I know you’ll make good choices, whatever they end up being. What’s there to worry about?”
I stare at him, wondering at his reaction. “Oh, oh shit,” I say, finally. “It’s because you trust me.”
“Well yeah,” he says. In a tone that tells me that to him it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Whether you should or not.”
He laughs.
“You’d climb into my panel van,” I continue. “Even without an offer of candy.”
“Basically asking for it,” he agrees.
But even so, I’m still blown away by it.
I’m Not At All Used to Being Trusted #
It’s an odd feeling, to be trusted. It’s not something I grew up ever knowing. With a mother who searched my room, interrogated me over whatever writings she found. Who presumed whatever I told her was false. And my motives suspect.
Going on later to spend a decade with a partner who heard hidden venom behind nearly everything I said, regardless of how gently I put things. A haunted man who was still fighting bullies who grabbed his junk and shoved him against lockers. Nothing I said soothed him entirely. He was always suspicious. Always looking for the knife he knew I was going to one day put in his back.
I was floored when I first moved to Cleveland by how readily my new friends accepted me. A scatterbrained poly woman who basically fell out of the sky. Who had moved there from Maine on a lark. Referred there by friends of friends. But Skyspook welcomed me into his house, into his life, without a thought.
“Why do you trust me?” I said to him then, one day after I’d first moved in.
“Because you ask me questions like that,” Skyspook replied.
*
Also see: The Trust Fall Point: Letting Go in Relationships
*
My book is out!