Dressed to the nines.

There has been a common theme in my life that I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to ignore; trying to pretend that it wasn’t an actual issue, merely a stub of the toe on this walk through life. However, it is becoming blaringly clear that it is, indeed, a real, true, actual issue. It is an issue that is far more severe than a stubbed toe; more along the lines of a severed leg.

Trust.

Though I suppose the actual issue is less about trust, and more about my lack of it. And it isn’t just something I don’t have in others. Oh, no. I am a far more equal opportunity distruster. For as much trust as I lack in those around me, I lack far more trust in myself. Which I think is a much heftier issue than distrusting those around me.

I can look back through all my self-proclaimed, “major” mistakes and without a doubt say that if I had followed my gut, trusted myself, the mistake could have been more than just side-stepped; it just wouldn’t have existed. Now I’m not declaring a pimpled past of regrets and, “what ifs.” I wouldn’t change one breath of my life; I cherish every step, fall, skip and face plant. I am declaring, however, that had I only had the simplest trust in myself, a lot of things could have been avoided: pain, heart-break, crushing disappointment. And much more may have been achieved: joy, love, all consuming excitement. And that, my friends, are the closest things I have to regrets. No one thing I’ve ever done, be it a mistake, wrong turn or major failure, has never even registered a far distant blip on the “possible regret” radar. What has registered embarrassingly close blips, however, are all the things I didn’t do because I didn’t trust myself. And those are some of the sorest, slowest healing wounds I have ever suffered.

I’m not entirely sure where this eager distrust of myself came from. And actually, I haven’t the foggiest idea of its origin. And that becomes the source of an entirely new and different and confusing sort of pain. Why, even in this sideways glance world, would a person lose trust in themselves over those around them and then not even have a good reason for it? I mean there must be a reason somewhere, but how great can it be if my twenty five year old, highly introspective self doesn’t even know where to begin to find it? And then how does distrusting myself become such a habit that it almost feels instinctual to question my every thought and decision?

Shouldn’t I be my biggest cheerleader? Shouldn’t it be me who says, “You know what self, you have a really good point there,” and then stand behind it with a grin, patting myself on the back?

The most confusing part about the whole twisted portrait is that I completely trust my gut, my instinct, myself when it comes to applying it to another person’s life. Tell me your problems. Give me your worries. I’ll take that knot of mistakes and mishaps and pain and I’ll lay out a clean, smooth, tangle free rope; all with my eyes closed. But give me the opportunity to do the same for myself and I’ll question each proposal, reject my gut and more than likely, refuse to even touch the tangled mess.

Consciously I know I do this. And in retrospect I am fully aware that had I just believed in myself for just one moment, amazing things could have been achieved. But once I see that tangle, it begins to feel like it’s choking me, and in that moment of frantic gasping for air I forget that if in this world I had only one person to trust, that person is...

Me.