So.

Hi, Ghost.

After my last post about my mentally ill neighbors and their wild treatment of me, as well as my totally off-the-charts insane physical and mental reactions to their insanity, I had a profound realization about myself this evening.

I am not trustworthy.

Faith in other people, and other people’s faith in me, is one of my core values. To be trusted by someone else is a pure and precious gift. For myself, I trust hesitantly, but also wholeheartedly, when I believe someone is in my corner.

My trust in others has been shaky lately, because of a weird loss of a dear friend last summer that coincided with the loss of my cat The loss of the friend had almost everything to do with that profoundly life-changing event. But the trust has been re-affirmed by mutual friends who continue to do the important things with me: trust me with their physical and mental health by working out with me and telling me the things that bother and hurt them. They also trust me to do the penultimate friend thing: help them move. And they trust me with the ULTIMATE THING: to babysit their pets, which I love.

I also recognize that my trust in others has a lot to do with my confidence in myself. But the thing is, I don’t trust myself, and this is the key to, the key, to…well, everything.

I fundamentally expect myself to fail. I rarely keep promises to myself. I chastise myself for the most minor indiscretions, misdemeanors, perceived failures, and for things like tripping over a rug. I am a HARDASS and an ASSHOLE to myself.

I’ve started to pick up on things that I routinely do that are detrimental to my person. For example, I say “sorry” in almost every interaction, whether I’m writing an e-mail or opening a door for someone, inadvertently encountering someone around a blind corner or making space for someone else on the sidewalk. My life is a litany of “sorry”’s.

How is a person like that expected to react in the face of adversity? They’re not betting on themselves, I’m sure. How is that person expected to face themselves in the mirror? They probably look away. I know I do. How is that person perceived by others? As weak. As incompetent. As late, and wrong, and unable to meet their needs.

I have to create an atmosphere of trust around myself. Based on myself. I need to keep my promises to me. I need to know that I am here for me, first and foremost. The knowledge that no one else is ever going to bail me out, the certainty that I am 100% on my own, those thoughts are true and valid, but are never going to do anything but make me anxious and drive me to drink. So I need to establish a basis of safety from which to operate. Financial security is one aspect of that, and is pretty fundamental. But mental security is the thing. Knowing that when I say something to myself that is positive, I cradle that idea, nurture it, and keep to it, that is building trust with myself. I have to meditate on it. Breed it. Maybe the idea is to think of one super positive thing at the beginning of every day, or week, and dwell on that.

Creativity and physical fitness are other ways to build trust. I used to keep those promises to myself, why don’t I do that now? Part of that problem is remembering my fitness level when I ran my marathon at age 50, and feeling the decline since then now, at 53. I know that women over 50 routinely slay at 50k’s and other long distances. I can get there. I am able to do that. I know I am.

I have to trust myself. I have to build on the self-reliance that allowed me to move 1500 miles and leave my partner of 24 years. I have to build on the confidence that allowed me to run 26.2 miles. I have to remember that I did those things, and that I am capable of greatness.

I also have to find the thing that moves me. I’ve had experiences, like weddings and funerals and graduations and barbecues and shows and concerts and private times with myself and dates and bike rides and shows, and I’m not any closer to the thing that moves me. What do I love? What could I spend so much of my free time on that it seems worthy? It’s definitely not my phone or my TV, so what is it, then? It has to be something other than BMX, because that’s simply not a possibility for me right now.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I wasn’t taught to adult, so I’ve been winging this since 1988. I talked with my therapist today and realized that everything I’ve learned about being a responsible adult has been taught to me by my peers over the years. The things that children learn in the schoolyard, I was taught over a period of decades by people who actually knew how to live, in part because they’d learned it themselves, or because they had parents who loved them for who they were and gently steered their course through life.. These peers most notably taught me how to treat other people.

Through all of that I found myself, to a certain degree. I’m still working on that, post-separation from a person who I modeled my being after. For the record, that was partly a good thing. My ex is a wonderful man, with firm values and a fantastic understanding of what he projects to other people, and absolutely zero fucks to give about what they think of him. What I’m finding, seriously my dear Ghost, what I’m finding about myself, is a gentle, beautiful soul, who really just wants to exist, and wants to stop screaming herself into existence for the benefit of others’ understanding, and to simply accept her nature at no one’s behest.