I'm playing the game of Life and losing miserably

I get so tired of playing games. Everyone has one. Everyone is working an angle. People in general are manipulative. I wonder if we’re born that way. It seems like no one can just be honest anymore. I’ve come to believe that most people spend quite a bit of time sitting around thinking about things to tell other people to get what they want. “If I tell her/him this, they will think about me this way.” “If I do this or that they will think I am this type of person.”

Why is it that people expect you to be honest with them without being honest in return? I very seldom let people into my life, but when I do, it ends in disaster with me wondering how I could possibly be so naïve and unsuspecting. I guess I give too much of my soul away, because sometimes I feel I have nothing left. I hope the people who have pieces of it are enjoying their acquisition! I want to trust other people. I really do. I want to believe what they say and do is honest and sincere. Am I an idealist?

I don’t think that people set out to intentionally rip your heart out of your chest (and laugh while they hold it still beating in front of your face). I suppose they just don’t think through the consequences of their actions. Every action has a consequence. Everything you say or do has an effect on someone or something. It may not have an effect on them today, tomorrow, or next week, but eventually it will.

As usual, these are the ramblings of a mad woman. Right now, there is a man in a white coat with a syringe knocking at my door. I had better see what he wants…

Trust

Trust is a minor word for a major part of life. There seem to be two types. The type you are born with for your parents, family and caregivers that can be either nurtured or shattered, and the kind for the rest of the world that has to be earned. I argue that we have the former because we don’t know any better and really have no choice.

In my life trust has been given to, earned by, and shattered by more people than I care to count. My ex-husband violated my trust on a daily basis. He seemed to lie for no apparent reason about trivial things and at one point told me he liked to feel like he was getting away with something. In the beginning, he regained my trust on multiple occasions, but mostly because I wanted to trust him. In the end, he violated it so badly that I was not mentally capable of trusting him again, no matter how much I wanted to.

It doesn’t always take something major to make a person lose trust in someone else; rather it is the culmination of smaller things. A person says they will call and they don’t. A person says they will be there at a certain time and they aren’t. Someone tells you that he or she will help you with something, bring you something, do something, and when you are let down repeatedly, you lose trust in that person. At some point or another, my trust in 95% of the people in my life has been challenged. I have done the same to others and I have been fortunate enough to be forgiven and have a chance to rebuild that sacred bond.

Trust is such a fragile thing. Once it is lost, there is a chance that it will be impossible to regain. It’s like whittling a piece of stove wood. Every piece whittled away makes it weaker until it falls apart and nothing is left. You can’t put it back together. All you can do is hope for a new piece.