Trusting Strangers

At a young age, I was taught not to trust strangers. It came from a few different directions, but the message was clear; if I don’t know somebody then I can assume their intentions for me are not in my best interest. Somehow, this message got a little lost in translation for me. As a child, this message was severely amplified. I genuinely trusted very few people, and for most people I operated under the assumption that they actually wanted to do me harm.

I think I am somewhat anomalous here — the list of people I was skeptical toward included most of my nuclear family, a majority of my teachers, most children my age, and definitely random adults I encountered. I don’t think it hurt me, my mother likes to recall my joyful and grinning youth. In my memory though, I remember being afraid of most people.

I feel like I would have been weirdly okay trusting Jerri. She gives me a lot of 90s mid-life woman realness, which provides a lot of familiarity for me.

Regardless of my situation, this lesson we impart on our children is one of many that I think could use some fine-tuning. Even if I’m just being idealistically optimistic, I believe that we can frame our teachings in a more hopefully pragmatic way, rather than the traditional skeptical and gritty realistic approach.

Skeptical realism served me through my youth. I spent my childhood and teen years fortifying walls around my id and ego, building defenses against every possible attack I could imagine against my person. I can point to moments that affirmed my ideas — kids stealing my stuff in high school, my brother physically and emotionally abusing me, my parents’ divorce. However, I’ll say I sustained a level of distrust far beyond what I consider healthy, and it was all rooted in that start of “don’t trust someone you don’t know.” That’s actually a really big statement.

Because I don’t know anyone genuinely.

And I’m not alone. My knowledge is limited to facts I learn and can affirm through experiment; beyond that it’s filled in with patterns I identify and believe to continue in perpetuity. But, even for someone like my father —

One line, three faces. Art by Modesta Lukosiute.

I don’t know my father.

He’s a whole other human, with a whole life full of experiences informing his decisions in the moment. How could I know him fully?

There’s a Japanese idea of a person having three faces. One for the world, one for those you love and one for yourself. Somehow, somewhere along the way I connected the dots between knowing someone and knowing that final face; anything less was not knowing it was guessing.

And in truth, it IS guessing. That’s the very foundation of trust between two people. I will never know my father’s innermost thoughts and feelings, so I get to trust the face he shows to me.

Unfortunately, this lesson really didn’t hit home until I was definitely an “adult.” I’d recently moved, and I was living within spitting distance of my first gay bar. I’d mostly come out to myself, with the caveat of “it doesn’t matter because you’re not sexy or sexual anyway. You can like men all you want, but nothing’s ever going to happen about it.” I was also in the throes of graduate school, thoroughly externally depressed and in need of any escape. So I drank, a lot.

One night, a handsome man sits next to me. He strikes up conversation, easy small talk seasoned well with simple quips. The bartender loves love, and continued to feed us shots to lubricate the process. At some point, this handsome man places his hand on the small of my back. Lightning shoots through my spine and my brain bursts into a discordant cacophony of thought:

“I don’t touch me there, why is he touching me there?”

“He can’t think I’m attractive, I’m not attractive.”

“What does he want from me?”

“He’s going to hurt me.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Stranger danger.”

Every instinct I have around trust and safety fires all at once. “Thankfully,” my brain and body are heavy with alcohol. Flirting continues, despite the storm. The night ends, I scribble my name on paper, and stumble home a blend of every emotion I can find on the street.

It looks more “epiphany-producing” at night, I swear.

In the aftermath, as I scrounged through my memories of the evening. Those thoughts lingered. Worse, they had called for reinforcements in the sober light of day.

“I was set up.”

“He was making fun of me.”

“He was an escort.”

In my practice of “don’t trust strangers,” I’d grown to a point of paranoia and conspiratorial denial.

Somehow, maybe just in a panicked overload moment, I lost the ability to carry all of those thoughts. I remember a notion, Occam’s Razor — the simplest solution to a problem is likely correct.

This man found me attractive. Every piece of evidence says that. Denying it was playing into a fear of the unknown that really serves me very minimally.

This was a rare “AHA” moment for me — a full-on epiphany. These days, it’s a skill I have to practice. Because when it comes to others, I’m still adrift in that same sea of ambiguous trust. Among the grey, blurred waves I get tossed around by others’ intents. I collect my fair share of bruises.

Sometimes, the injuries are brutal and I’m barely left to walk away with a scar.

I don’t see another way. Trusting the world to be as it is comes with the risk that it’s a lie.

I’m seeing it a lot these days. Tiny bubbles burst, the collective cavitation scouring my psyche daily.

I wish I had a moral for the story. I’m still learning it I suppose.

So far, I’m stuck on

Trust everyone to be human. Trust that in being human, you will get hurt.

For now, I’m also trusting that I can heal.

Sincerely Not Okay,

August