When Trust Dies

Being a trusting person for many people in life comes with its ups and downs. The emotional highs experienced with trusting others, are always tenuous, almost transactional rather than relational. Perhaps, that’s why when a person feels betrayed, trust dies within the relationship of that party and eventually leads to skepticism and cynicism with future relationships. I’ve lived in the arena of trust and betrayal which have led me to believe, anything dead needs to be buried, never to be resurrected again.

The most trusting people in the world are children and they are the most disillusioned when that trust is broken because of the adults in their lives. It’s one thing for adults to promise children “anything” and not follow through on the promise, which is extremely devastating to children — never seeing a promise realize. From my own experience I remember an uncle was supposed to visit and bring me a camera. He never showed up and I never got the camera. I think that incident was the beginning of my learning to distrust adults. By the time I was twelve years-old, I realized most adults simply lied to children because they could, never understanding what they were creating in the minds of the children they betrayed.

Speaking of betrayal, broken promises are not the only events that lead to broken trust with children. Adult predators, who molest, and abuse children escalate distrust and moves the trust factor closer to the edge of a widening grave dig. No child should ever be subjected to the horrors of a sexual predator who in most cases, is a family member or someone known and loved by the child and the family, until trust begins to die. When a child is bullied into silence or is not believed when they tell someone what others are doing to them, they lose trust of all the adults involved, some end up living with lifetime trauma and distrust of anyone. As a child, I was molested by the babysitters my mother trusted. Two sisters took advantage of an eight-year-old child and threatened me into silence. I’m now 69 years-old and still harbor resentment towards those two and have attempted to find them via social media to tell them exactly what they cost me in life. I cannot help but think how my life and my relationship with others could have been so much different and better, had it not been for the treachery of hormone driven teenagers, who thought it would be fun to…