Chapter 2

I believe that most people tend to expect of others what they themselves would do.  The most glaring exception to that idea is when a person has been hurt or abused, and life has proven to them that other people do not have the same motivations they do.  This can cause a person to be on guard for the kind of bad behavior they have experienced in the past.  Because of my abuses, the motivation I most closely watch in others is (dis)honesty.

I like to think of myself as an honest person.  As a child I know I went to great lengths to always try to be honest, and genuinely agonized over little white lies, often for days or weeks.  Honesty has always been a core trait in what I see as being a good person, and I wanted to be a good person.

As a child, I believed that everyone else in my life felt the same way about honesty, but I could not have been more wrong.  As Older Brother once said to me, “Our family has a creative relationship with the truth.”  As a child I would do whatever mental and emotional gymnastics were required to buy into whatever I was told by my family, because in my heart I did not want to believe that they could lie to me, even a little.  I did not want to see that they would do something that was such an anathema to me, let alone that they would do it so constantly.

I think the pervasiveness of the lying helped me to ignore and overlook it, and to buy into the excuses.  It was part of the background noise of my life, and I had no other experience to contrast against it to illuminate what was happening.  “It was just a misunderstanding,” was far and away the most common excuse given when inconsistencies were discovered.  I accepted that, because of course misunderstandings and miscommunications happen.  Everyone has a different perspective on any situation, and language is imperfect.  Misunderstandings are natural and happen all the time.

It was just a misunderstanding.

Except it was not.  At least not every time.  With the clarity of hindsight, and the knowledge granted by experience in life, it is easy to see.  The fact that “misunderstanding” was a convenient excuse to dismiss real problems seems hollow and obvious now, so much so that I almost feel like I was stupid for buying into it.  However, I was just a child, and I also understand how much I wanted, needed, to believe that my parents were being honest with me, always.  It is disturbingly easy for human beings to talk themselves into believing the craziest things to protect themselves in abusive situations, or gaslighting would not be such an effective tool for abusers.  Certainly, believing in repeated misunderstandings is pretty low down the crazy scale for things people will believe when in the middle of an abusive situation.

When I look back on my time with my family, in a lot of situations I honestly cannot say if things were genuinely misunderstandings, or if it was an excuse to cover a lie.  My Parents lied so much, it was like breathing to them.  They did it constantly, and without any apparent concern for the fact they were doing it.  They even lied to themselves continually.  They did it so much that they could not keep track of what they said to who or when, but they were fully armed with gaslighting techniques for those times when discrepancies were noticed.  “Oh, you just misunderstood last time that came up.”  “Oh, we didn’t mean it that way.”  “You aren’t remembering it correctly.”  “Our words came out wrong and you are misconstruing what we said.”  “That wasn’t at all what we meant, and you know it.”

So, what about the times it actually was a misunderstanding?  Shouldn’t they get credit for that?

Well, sure, but it’s like trying to pick the fly shit out of the pepper, only there is more fly shit than pepper, so endeavoring to find the actual pepper is an exercise in frustration and futility, and even if you managed it the pepper would be completely tainted.  It is also not my problem, because my sanity is more important to me than endeavoring to create a fully comprehensive list of their bad actions over the course of a lifetime.  They can sort that out themselves, or not, as they please.  It is not my job to police their actions, and the parts that matter to me are what impacted my life in a tangible way or stayed with me over all these years.

Even to this day, when someone says that something was a misunderstanding, I tend to wince a little, or maybe a lot.  Misunderstanding usually is the case, and intellectually I realize that, but viscerally my expectation is that when something is a “misunderstanding”, I am being gaslit.

Despite that fact, I still want to believe the best of people.  I want to believe that what they present to me is the truth to the best of their knowledge.  As a result, I usually take people at face value, at least until they do something to prove otherwise.  But, to this day, and I am sure for the rest of my life, the fastest reason I will walk away from someone is intentional dishonesty.  If for some reason I cannot walk away from them entirely, I will keep them at arm’s length and walk away as soon as it is possible.  I have done it before, even with people I once considered good friends, and I do not regret it.

Life is both too short, and too long, for me to keep company with people I cannot trust.  If someone is intentionally dishonest, even if it is not directed at me, that casts suspicion on everything they do.  It means I will now be looking at their every action, every word, through a lens of mistrust.  That is one of the most stressful things I can do, because I can no longer take what they do and say at face value.  I can no longer trust them.  I now must examine their words and behaviors and consider other motivations before I can proceed.  How I proceed will usually be different if I believe dishonesty is at play, so I do not want to be wrong about my conclusion.  It brings up all the baggage of an entire childhood spent being duped and betrayed, and makes them a part of that.  I do not need that in my life.  Ever.

Perfect Trust means that what I like to give to people is complete trust, especially those I am close to or hold in high regard.  Growing up I may have inadvertently granted Perfect Trust to those who did not deserve it, but that does not change the fact it is in my nature to want that connection, without reservation or hesitation.  I may as well be true to myself and give trust, because the risk of being lied to exists either way.  Even if I did not trust anyone, liars are going to lie, and from time to time everyone is betrayed or misled.  It is part of the human experience, and lousy people will always exist along with the rest of us.  Plus, if you constantly behave in mistrusting ways with honest people, they tend to get tired of being assumed to be a liar and will distance themselves, making it all the more difficult to find lasting healthy and fulfilling relationships.

My capacity for Perfect Trust is one of the things I value about myself, so even if it has brought pain from time to time, I will always be proud of myself for having it and giving it to those I choose to have in my life.