On (dis)trust

It can hardly be wondered now

how it is that I have come to carry such a leaden weight of distrust with me? It can hardly be wondered, after these long years when sharp, broken promises have been used to flail great weeping gashes from the life that was mine, had it been mine to have. (Dear Reader, it was not mine to have. It was a lie). And all of my cleverness and all of my nimble manoeuvres could never guard me against these injuries, because the wounds were carved into the very design of those years, so that there was no escaping them, as surely as each day must follow on the one preceding it. And embedded deep in this ruinous march of ordinary destruction was the very deepest lie of all: one of trust. A lie wrapped in belief and bound in an intimate moment between unlikely, irresistible opposites that nonetheless shared some kindred bond. And it seems each new day, even now, brings a torrent of incongruities: more losses, more slow pain, and yet with it the sparkling glints of sunshine through recent fallen rain. A shining glimpse of improvements, earned or won. I am tempted, again, to believe the old, quiet promise, but with each step my real injuries shriek with the many pains I have acquired. How to reconcile this impossible contrast? How to find again the trust that is needed to go on, when that trust is the weapon that has been used to wound me?