Trust

One of the hardest truths of my life that I have trouble reconciling is that we can love someone that we don't trust.  Not with our hearts, but with our stuff.  There are people in our lives that simply have no care for boundaries or belongings.  What is ours is theirs.  What is theirs is theirs.  They don't feel a need to ask or even consider it when using our stuff.  Taking our spare change.  "Borrowing" our things from our garage or home.  They take them.  Use them.  Perhaps even sell them.  Or give them away.  And the hardest part is that they also have a tendency to give guilt to us.  "What, you don't want to give me a couple of bucks?"  or "I can't believe that your....is more important than me, I'm your (kid, parent, sibling, friend)."  Still, when that moment comes when we have to draw a line, it's SO difficult.  Because we do love.  Because we desperately want to trust.  In the deepest place it feels like a primal need to trust those we love.  It's not always possible.  Some people need boundaries that are firm...even with our stuff.  Or they walk all over us. Use us.  And don't think twice about moving on and using the next people.  Circling around.  Never really becoming independent,but always depending on others to meet their needs and "give" them what they want by making false promises...which we gobble up because we so desperately hope that they mean it this time.
Love means being able to say yes OR no just as easily.  When someone loves us, our no does not offend.  They know that we give what we can when we can.  And with those who have proven to be untrustworthy, the best kind of love that keeps us and those around us from bitterness is the kind that says, "I love you, but I need to draw this boundary to feel comfortable:  I don't want you in my bedroom, or I don't want you in my home if I'm not there, or I don't want you digging through my purse, or I prefer that you pay your part of the rent up front, or whatever it is."  And it's so hard.  But they have learned to count on how hard it is for those who love them.  To rest on that.  To know that if they push just right, we will give them what others get from us because they have our trust.  Not because they want to be trustworthy, but because they want us to treat them as those who are trustworthy.  Proverbs warns us to be wise.  Love and emotion can pull us into doing things in bad relationships that we normally wouldn't feel comfortable doing.  I am learning.  Love.  Deeply.  But be willing to love me and those who are trustworthy in my life enough to say no to the addicts, self centered, narcissistic, egotistical ones that I have also loved...and do love.  Story of my non marriage.  I wanted so badly for it to be different.  And same story for those with kids who do the same things to them.  It's painful to love deeply and know that they will take what you have LITERALLY for their own and say that they love, but never have respect of your personhood as well.
I'm learning.  Balance.  Fearlessness.
blessings.