Trust Issues

The following Spring in 1980, I started my period, just a month before my 11th birthday. Unfortunately for me, it was on a Saturday, when my step grandparents and great-grandparents were visiting. My mom was never one to hold back private information and proudly announced it to the room before walking with me to the grocery store near our house for supplies. I had already been experiencing other changes in my body for some time and was terribly embarrassed that everyone knew, what I considered to me, my very private business. 

This was not the beginning of trust issues with my mom. I held resentment towards her for many years, without trying to sort out, or not being able to understand how to sort out, the why and when it began for me.  

There were many times I can now account for, both early on, and at this time in my life when I felt uncomfortable with the situations and attention my mom seemed to revel in.  When I was small, it was about putting me on a stage, literally and figuratively. When I learned how to read very early on, she would gather the family to have me recite poetry I had memorized. Or a private piano recital. Dance recitals. Gymnastic routines. Even purchasing new clothing for me would mean I would have to parade around while others were expected to “ooh, and ahh” at the glorious specimen she created. No matter how uncomfortable or anxious I was, it was expected to do as she asked and put a smile on my face.  

I learned to stuff my feelings, mask my anxieties and found infinite unhealthy ways to cope with those feelings so I didn’t disappoint my mother. 

I started lying as a child. Not to intentionally be deceptive at first as I can remember, but to not disappoint her. What began as an attempt to not disappoint her as a child, in my teens turned into just simply not caring anymore how she felt. In my immaturity and pain, I reasoned with myself that she didn’t care how I really felt, so why should I care how she felt?  

When I was 11 and my older brother was 14, I gained access to alcohol. We weren’t allowed to drink, and in fact, my mom stated more than once she had never drank a drop of alcohol in her life. I know part of that was the abuse she herself experienced at the hand of her dad, my Grandpa S, which she mentioned frequently. My stepdad was not a big drinker, but they did keep an unlocked cupboard of liquor for their friend visits and parties. My brother and I figured out quickly how to keep them watered down and colored enough that it wasn’t suspected.   

When we couldn’t get alcohol at home, there were always opportunities at friends' houses, who were also curious about drinking at that age.  

My brother started high school at that time as well, which created even more opportunities with older students, happy to have keggers on the weekends when their parents were out of town. Being younger, the keggers were off limits to me for a few years, but at any opportunity to drink, I took it. My brother seemed to take to drinking as well. 

The friend-relationships I cultivated at that age only lasted for a couple of years.  A deep betrayal of a girlfriend of mine who, with another friend, told this other friend's mother of my escapades, which was relayed to my mom and all hell broke loose for a while. I recognize now, she was uncomfortable with participating in the road I was going down. Having gone through puberty years before she did at 14, and not having the apparent traumas I did, I’m sure she felt the divide in our relationship and decided to save herself and move on instead. I don’t blame her now, although I wish it could have been handled differently. I felt the ending of the relationship with her as quick and efficient on her part, but it was very long and difficult for me. She was my best friend, and I spent my years of 12-14 years old trying to cultivate other relationships with girls in my class that were a little more unhinged, like me. Sadly, between the difficulties of trust between my mother, and the betrayal of my best friend, I have never fully trusted another woman. I’m still working on that. 

My grades suffered then as well.  Having never received anything but an “A” in school, by 7th grade, I found my grades slipping to “C’s”. My mother was furious, making sure I knew that I was a disappointment and a burden to her both financially, and as a reason why her marriage to my stepdad was suffering at this point.  

We went to family therapy once, with a separate private session with a therapist afterwards. Only once.  I’m sure I sugar-coated my life to the therapist and basically bullshitted my way through it. 

I just didn’t care much about anything, anymore. 

How have you been able to cultivate new relationships if you have had trust issues in the past? 

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