the faith I do have

... sparked by mayamaia's response to the trust post. I think it's a good thing... I'm not sure yet, though.

She said: I have actually always loved the trust games because they forced me to have faith. But not really blind faith...my eyes were closed, but I knew that I wouldn't be dropped because that person would have to trust me next. I just had to conquer those few remaining fears.

I did the game many times in elementary school in the little PE classes...and almost every time I had to close my eyes and be caught, the person who had to catch me was one of the people who was unkind to me, one of the people who made me an outcast. It requires a very special kind of faith trusting yourself to someone like that.

I wouldn't say it comes naturally to trust like that...that's why we even have the game, so children can learn to trust one another, learn that that's what people do: work together. Personally, I've tried to cultivate that trust...to know exactly how far i can trust someone...and then trust them to the limit. And often, the more they see I trust them, the more they realize they can trust me. And that makes the fall worth it.

Short response: I understand and appreciate the principle. I just never was able to do it. I'd rather trust myself to nothing at all than leave even the next thirty seconds of my life dependent on another human's whim. In my head, I know the fall wouldn't hurt me, if they did let me fall. I would pick myself up and dust myself off and life would go on -- but on the other hand, I would have lost the possibility that someone would catch me if I didn't catch myself. I would never again be able to think, "well, maybe they'd catch me if only I'd let them." That's the faith I do have, and the first time I let myself fall and am not caught, nothing in the world will bring that back. I'd be a much different, a poorer person for that.

And I really didn't know how true it was till I said it, I guess. If I don't trust someone to catch me, and they don't, and I fall, I haven't lost anything. They would have caught me, but I didn't trust them. It is my fault, no-one to blame but myself. No anger, precious few regrets -- and the possibility that next time, it will be different. If I don't say what I want, if I don't say what I need, and I don't receive it, it isn't offered, then my lack, my failure, is entirely in my own hands. I could have done better, had more, been happier, but I did not reach for it, I didn't take it, I didn't ask.

Recently, I asked for something. And in the lack of response I received, I found more and more enduring pain than I've felt in a long time. Because there is now no room for doubt, no wriggle room, no hope I can reasonably hold on to that if I could just have made myself ask, I would have received. This is why I do not ask. Not when it matters, not when it would be more than just pleasant or amusing to receive what I asked for. It lets me keep my faith that people would help, would support me in my aspirations, would give of themselves if only... and that faith is what lets me come back to this space and say sincerely that I believe in people in general and my friends in specific. It lets me put my thoughts and my words in this space, confident that they are going to be seen by people who will attempt to understand them, and me. It lets me keep whispering my hopes to the wind, in the faith that one day they'll be tangible presences in my life. It lets me open my eyes on even the bleakest of days, knowing that there are things I could do and say, if only I would, that would change things sooner than I could change them on my own. And it gives me the strength and the impetus to keep working to change things on my own -- because I don't really have to, you see, I choose to. There's an alternative I'm too proud, too stubborn to take. It's finding out that there's really no alternative at all that would destroy me.