how to trust yourself

closeness, freedom and fear

Henri Fantin-Latour, Roses in a Bowl, 1883

You have to trust people to know what’s right for them. Well you don’t but that’s beside the point. First you have to know what’s right for you. No way out of it—not your best friend, boyfriend, therapist, Claude. No way out of sitting down, sprawling out, consulting the feeling deep in your bones. Though the feeling deep in your bones is mostly a confused muddle that doesn’t tell you anything much. Tough luck! You meditate with no success, go to yoga class, walk all the way through Golden Gate Park to the ocean and call a Waymo back, slap a boy as he’s driving you home, take three grams of shrooms belly down on your bed, read Tolstoy, read Edith Wharton, try to read Shakespeare. Fights, frustration, silence, crying. Writing, coaching, matchmaking. It takes a while before you realize there’s no drug in the world that could free you from this mess. If someone Eternal Sunshine’d you you have no doubt that two weeks later your memories would freakishly flood back in.

You stop believing in talking about things. You no longer think that confession will save you; you no longer think anyone has insight to offer. When you tell someone something it’s just so you can see how they’ll react. There’s certain lines of analysis you do not want to go down. What made someone this way. Are they happy. What will they do. What do they fear. Are they capable of change. It’s not interesting to you because you are no longer interested in culpability or salvation. Everything that could be said you’ve already said to yourself. Even when you get mad you have a sense of humour about it. You are so far past disappointment you feel relief. You don’t find secrets erotic. It’s hard to even talk about beauty.

What’s at the very bottom of it all? What do you do when you stop thinking reason, language, virtue, or obsession can save you? You move onto other preoccupations, like pushups and martial arts. You are so sick of being bad at jiu jitsu. You have never been more enamored with the life of the body. It’s so hard to admit that this is all there is, slightly uneven dining table with the laptop, Google doc open, White Rabbit candle lit, wondering if anyone will ever understand. You can feel yourself, K says you seem more grounded. Your therapist says you’ve made quite a lot of progress, she’s impressed. You buy a second coat rack for the loft of your apartment. You don’t worry anymore about who likes you or dislikes you. You’re not insecure about your face or body. You’re not sorry you told the truth even though it didn’t go so well. Who are you? You’re someone who can live with other people’s mistakes. You’re someone who can live with your own mistakes. You can be mad at yourself. You can forgive yourself.

The girl on Tiktok says: "It’s you, babe. You’re what you’re after. You’re what you’re looking for. You’re the missing puzzle piece. You’re what you miss. You’re what you want to experience and have yet to experience.” Her voice sounds like the very beginning of crying, the welling of emotion in your throat. You don’t care if it’s cheesy. You can feel your questions, your longing, your irritation, your rage, and your love. It’s easy to do and it’s very simple. You know when you like someone and how much you like them. You know when you trust someone and how much you trust them. It used to scare you when people said extreme things to you and now it doesn’t. They should think a little harder about what part of their emotional experience you’re actually responsible for.

It used to scare you so much when someone was mad at you. Or didn’t think you were pretty or thought you were standoffish. You never trusted yourself, so you could never trust anyone else. You never felt yourself fully all the way down because you were scared of what you were going to find. You flinched at your shadow. You fawned, you placated people when you didn’t have to. You woke up in the middle of the night and ruminated. It was so hard to let go of all of that. It was what you knew about being a person.

You have to trust yourself to know what’s right for you. Mostly people are just trying their best. You have to love them, forgive them, let them get it wrong. You have to believe that you know what you’re doing. At this point, you know in your bones you’re past advice. You finally feel loved after all this time.