I'm Trusting You

I've been thinking about that sentence.

It could feel like a gift and rejoicing - I'm trusting you! I'm doing it! My heart is unclenched. Be who you are, I'll be who I am and we'll move, together.

Like learning to swim - I'm swimming! Water's around me, I'm in it; I am made from it. It could kill me, but...I'm learning it and my body so well that...look! We're free! Together. I'm trusting you.

I've said it like a threat. I'm trusting you, so when you do the thing I do not want, what you'll be breaking is my trust. You'll break trust. And then you'll never hold me, I won't be rocked by you or feel myself slip through you - you will never get to soak into my hair again. Because I gave you my trust, and you broke it.

It feels right. But then, does it?

These days, more and more, it feels to me like trust is something active; like breathing or dancing - a way of meeting beings and myself as we occur and reoccur in relation to each other. It feels like something I practice - like the clarinet, or climbing trees - like a skill - like sailing - or an art - like weaving.

Could music break my dancing?

Could the ocean break my ability to float?

I think maybe what I meant was - I'm scared of you. I could, so easily, be hurt. I want to swim in you but also (more?) I want safety. I can't find a boat or a buoy. I'll make one out of trust. I'll crouch inside it like a poison raft - danger will sink away when it comes near. We can be safe in it together, but if you step out - waves and sharks; and it will be your fault. I'm trusting you.

I prefer the first way. Where trusting each other mean showing each other our selves, more and more; our rip tides and barnacles and coves. Our leaded boots whose laces are too complicated, today, to undo. Our cabins far, far from the coast, where we can soak in a bath, maybe, if we feel like it. Our hands that can float in the sea while we sit in the sand.

I'm going to practice this kind of alive, evolving, resilient trust. I'd like to practice with you, if you're willing.

I think maybe we cold get good at it. I think, maybe, the better we get the more and more free we could be. Together.