TRUST

 For a person like me, one who has alcoholic parents, one who has been physically and psychologically abused, there is no frame of reference for trust.  It's disappointment, distrust that you become aquatinted with.  Many broken promises, many, many, many times that you don't know what's coming in a day, all kinds of unsure difficult times.

So, on top of developing a personality that isn't the real you, there is no one you can trust.  You can't trust yourself because on an unconscious or conscious level you are not being real, and you believe everyone else plays the same game.  You never trust what people say, you don't trust people's motives because your motives are usually about manipulation or trying to guess what other people want to hear. I had some vague notion that I was manipulative and dishonest, but I genuinely thought everyone made the same decisions.

I would say that most of my lies were told to try and get people to like me.  Not all of them, sometimes I did things to manipulate people to feel or do what I wanted them to do, but most of my untruthful behavior started by watching my mother very closely and telling her what I thought she wanted to hear. How do I not "make Mommy mad?".   

There is also this deep feeling of unworthiness. It was communicated to me that I was irritating, not good enough, not right, lazy, so I tried hard not to show who I was by making up some persona that would be loved or respected. 

Why would you trust this real self who is so unworthy? There were so many times when I hated myself,  was self destructive.  I felt this darkness inside of me that will ruin me, kill me, destroy me.  Like a deep dark growth that I have no power over, it will eventually destroy me.  

I realize that this is not true.  It is chimera based on the unworthy feelings that my mother instilled before I could speak, and that she inherited from her childhood. She hurt me, and it caused a cycle, over and over again. 

I don't really trust myself to take care of me and make good decisions for my health.  I don't make terrible decisions all the time, but I make enough mistakes that I continue to beat myself up over some of the ways I conduct my life.  I have little or no ambition, I waste time, I eat the wrong things and so am habitually 10 pounds heavier than I should be.  How I hate to look at myself in the mirror, at least my whole body.  Sometimes I can stand to look at my face and I feel pretty, but the whole body?  Hardly ever.