Trust

Today I was thinking about trust. I'm always being asked by my phone to verify my identity. Recently I started to use online dating apps to meet people here in Charlottesville. Nothing has really come out of this aside from one in-person meeting in the last six weeks. This person took the bus to the coffeeshop we were meeting at and when it was time to go this person took the bus home though their apartment was a fifteen minute walk from the café. I was walking that way to get to my own home but it was important, I suppose, that I didn't know where this person lived. The underlying assumptions here was there was a possibility that I am an axe murderer and therefore, it is a bad idea to reveal too much to this stranger (me) in case something went wrong. 

Trust. I don't expect the birds to trust that I won't try to harm them, or the squirrels. I am not to be trusted by these animals but I can understand, and can smile in the face of their fear because I know that I am not interested in harming them and can also understand that they don't know that. Whenever I encounter a snake I tend to jump, even though I don't think of myself as being scared of snakes. When I took my computer in to get it fixed I needed to create an account that required me to verify my password. I needed to first create my account and then needed to log into this account again. At this point, instead of creating my own passwords for the many log-ins I must perform to gain access to even the most basic forms of information, I just let Google come up with something for me, something like JKJ!8987vUll3. Trust is proving who you are. 

On Thursday I will shadow one of the DJs at the local radio station as part of my training (I'm volunteering at the radio station), a late night radio show from 11PM-1AM, and they informed me that their partner would be there with them. It's hard not to think that this is because I am not be trusted, that I may be an axe murderer or a rapist. On the one hand I can understand this. Trust. I can understand that axe murderers exist and that I could be one of them. On the other, it feels like distrust has been encouraged as a default setting (note the passive voice, has been and the absence of the agent). I've been out of the United States for the last five years  more or less. I've missed living in the Trump years along with the two-ish years of Covid business. I wonder how much this period has conditioned us to distrust each other. After all, you might be; I might be, some kind of MAGA Lib Tard Incel. I might have Covid and not know it, or know it and not care. You can never be too careful. I also wonder how much the internet's algorithms have worked to affirm the idea that there are far too many bad people in the world who will do bad things to you given the chance.

I'm not a woman and don't know what it is to feel threatened as I walk down the street in the way the women might feel threatened. I cannot evaluate the truth of another's fear. Yet, I know what it is to feel threatened. I know also that there is a grey area between what I am projecting onto the world and what is actually there. I know that anxiety, excitement, discomfort, and pleasure all live together and are such good friends that they wear each other's clothes. I wonder what kind of a world we live in when my friends who have children are careful not to let their kids wander the neighborhood without parental supervision, as we did when we were children. I wonder, are there more axe murderers and rapists in the world? I don't know. At the same time, even as I write this I worry that simply articulating my thoughts on the matter might raise red flags, that they only reason I am writing on this topic is because, I am, in fact, an axe murderer and/or a rapist. Trust. 

Trust is not easy. There is trusting others and there is also trusting oneself, as the confidence experts like to say. While there are times that I have been brave, I mostly consider myself to be hiding in various ways, way that are born of distrust. Distrust of the other, that they will not understand what I am talking about or why. Often on my mind is the Holy Grail of who I might be, that is, a person full of confidence and unafraid. This way I would be able to express myself fully to all, to always be ready to ask for what I need. There are times when I have reached for this ideal and was met with shame or silence. There are times when I have reached for this ideal and was met in kind. This is trust, at least for me. Today I got a haircut and the man who cut my hair put his hands on me in a suggestive way. He was looking for touch and I certainty can understand that. I was not but I admired his forwardness. I did not know him, but I would not imagine that he would think to harm me.