To Trust Is To Love

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve seen my mother alone. My parents had divorced by the time I was one, and my mother faced the fact that she would raise me by herself. For many different reasons, she and the entirety of my family have issues with trust. It’s been handed down from my great-grandparents, to my grandparents, to my mother. It is my hope that this issue ends with me. I’ve learned from my own experiences that trying to protect yourself by not trusting hurts you and holds you back more than it protects you. Life can only open up through our relationships. Relationships require trust. If we are too afraid of getting hurt, we will end up worse off having never given anyone the chance to love us.

About a year ago, I had an eye-opening conversation with my mom. I had just gotten out of a very difficult relationship and was in a cynical mindset about love, being that I had just been hurt. My mother is a cynical person when it comes to relationships in general, and takes it upon herself every chance she can to reflect that. She stood there cooking dinner, the smell of tacos filling the house, as she had fallen in to the habit of making tacos every night she was too busy to make anything requiring more time. Stirring the hamburger she said, without looking up, “Love doesn’t exist, and you’re wasting your time believing it does.” The weight of what she said settled in to me, and regardless of the fact that my heart was broken; I was defiant in the hope that she was wrong.

I had spent every day of my life afraid of letting anyone in. It wasn’t until I was 14 that I took a risk. I fell in love. Naïve as I was at 14, it was still love. I shared secrets with him that I had never told anyone else in my life. I allowed myself to love him, to trust him. He was my best friend. Before, the thought of letting anyone in – friends, family, and boys – scared me to death. I know now that this was because I had been taught that trust was synonymous to vulnerability. I grew up listening to my mother talk about my dad, and all men, as people that would only take advantage of you and hurt you. No one in my family trusted each other, either. My family spent holidays either speaking behind each other’s backs or not speaking at all. It was the way it had always been, and it was what I grew up thinking was normal; that all families were like that. My perception of strength was not showing any weakness, when in reality strength, I believe, is defined by the risks that you have the courage enough to take.

My relationship with this boy didn’t last. However, the lessons I took with me are more important. He taught me how to trust, and in turn how to love. I’m no longer afraid of the possibility of being hurt. Everyone at some point in their life will be hurt by someone they trust, but the reality is that life has no worth without the fulfillment of knowing that you are loved and appreciated. “If I speak in the tongues of angels and of men, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-2) Love is God’s gift to us, it is what makes us human, and to live being afraid of love is to live without purpose.

I hope that one day my mother can realize this as I have; to never have love in our life is far worse than to open our hearts knowingly to the possibility of being hurt. My life has changed completely because of my new found willingness to let people in. I believe that love does exist, so long as we can find the strength enough within our hearts to trust that it does.