Lys Says: Trust is Vulnerable and Deserves to be Treated as Sacred

There are two kinds of trust.

The first is the kind that comes naturally. It’s the trust of youth, of people who haven’t been crushed by repeated trauma. It’s innocent and sweet — like the trust of a baby for its mother. It often feels effortless, like breathing. When it’s there, it can feel like a rare gift, a full embrace that lets us rest. But when that trust is betrayed, it can shatter the ground we stand on.

The second kind of trust is forged in fire. It comes after the innocent kind has been broken too many times, and is now fully destroyed. For trauma survivors, it isn’t automatic — it’s a deliberate choice. This kind of trust says: “I know you could hurt me. I know what the risk is. And still, I am choosing to trust you.” It’s a trust built on calculation, not naivety. Survivors ask themselves: Can I survive the hurt if this person betrays me? Do I believe they won’t? Are they worth the risk? When that trust is broken, the pain runs deep. But the choice to give it anyway gives it weight, intention, and value.

For me, the last time I gave the effortless kind of trust was when my best friend was alive. She was the last person I trusted without question. Since then, too much has happened. Innocent trust is gone.

But I don’t see my deliberate trust as lesser. If anything, it carries more meaning. When I trust now, it is conscious. It is edged with risk and strength. And it is never accidental — it is an act of courage.

And that’s what I did with my former therapist. I didn’t give her the automatic, innocent kind of trust — that part of me has been gone for decades. What I gave her was the deliberate kind. I knew the risk. I knew how deeply she could crush me if she chose. And I still decided she was worth that risk. That was my act of courage — an act of courage I had to reinforce and stand by over and over again. In the end, she betrayed it; that was her choice. What I called independence or self-direction, she labeled defiance, complex, or distrustful. What I called vulnerability and trust wasn’t seen or acknowledged. She didn’t see how much I weighed each decision to trust, or how much of myself I was risking. But the fact that she didn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

So here I am again, living with the horror of having chosen to trust, and of being crushed anyway. And when you choose trust, in the end, you also own that choice. It’s a different kind of grief — not the grief of losing innocence, but the grief of seeing deliberate courage turned into yet another wound; and the realization that you get to live with this wound for a very long time.

But still, I know this: even when crushed, the trust I gave was immense, deliberate, and a gift. The trust I gave was me standing up, choosing to be vulnerable with someone I thought was worth it; choosing to stand emotionally naked in the hopes of being met with kindness, gentleness, dare I say — healing. The fact that I chose to give it at all is proof that my integrity is still intact.