Sunday, March 30, 2008

A Long Time Ago, We Used to Be...

Participants in the same after school activity. Er... I don't think it has quite the same ring to it.


I like you and it makes feel odd. The last time I liked someone it was a thirteen year old boy, smile as slow as molasses as it stretched out over braces. In my own defense, I was 12.

You’re only a little older than me and I always thought I’d want a bigger age difference. Yet, you drew me to you with your poise and intensity.

I don’t know if that spark when I first saw you was recognition of a face I haven’t seen since my high school days or if it was attraction. Maybe attraction came when I saw that pale strip of skin when your shirt rode up that one time. Maybe it was the self deprecating tilt of your smile. Your hands as they spread and clenched to make your point may have played more than a part in capturing my attention.

I don’t know what to do. Your talking about NGOs shouldn’t make my heart flutter. You’re a friend of a friend; I don’t even know how I’ll see you again.

I hate playing games. I don’t do coy and flirtation. Can’t I just come up to you and tell you I like you?

Monday, March 24, 2008

In (?) WeTrust

Trust. It’s an interesting concept. Princeton’s WorldNet says it means to “have confidence or faith in” something. It doesn’t say how much confidence or if that faith is all compassing, or what it is in which we have that confidence and faith. I have faith in you. Some? A lot? Absolute? Faith that you’ll do what? I’m confident that you’ll protect me from physical harm, but that you’ll let my psyche be destroyed. I believe that you'll hurt me if you're able. I have faith that you’ll keep me from danger but only as long as you’re completely safe.

I don’t know that I trust. And yet, I have to trust. We all do. I trust my parents to love and care for me, until they see a part of me they cannot accept. I trust my friends with one of my most important secrets, one that I have not even trusted to this blog, but I don’t trust that they’ll look at me the same way if they read my past journal entries.

Is trust an absolute? Trust, you either have it or you don’t right? How about those little doubts that whisper seductively in the back of your mind, do they negate your trust? We’re human beings, we are by design imperfect fallible creatures. If I trust you implicitly does that make me stupid? Sucker, patsy, chump. There's one of me born every minute.

I waver, I doubt, I fear. My faith, it does flicker. And yet the candle for you is still lit, my vigil for you has not ended. I trust you. I struggle and fight my darker nature, my cynicism and lingering suspicions. I don’t know that I trust you, but I think I do. Try to forgive me this shortcoming, and if you prove unworthy of my trust I shall try to forgive you yours.