On trust and vulnerability and why it's still so damn hard

Trust is choosing to make something that is important to you, vulnerable to someone else's actions.
~Brené Brown, Oprah's SuperSoul Conversations

My heart beats quicker even writing those words. Because I know that, for all that I profess to have moved on from my husband's betrayal, for all that I claim to be through that pain, trust is still really hard for me. Still. 
Perhaps, always.
Cause I don't really remember a time when I fully trusted. Well, except one. I fully trusted my husband. For perhaps the first time in my life, I had absolute faith that this person would not betray me. That he, above all others, was worthy of my trust.
It had taken me a long road to get to that point. When you grow up in a home where trust is routinely betrayed, where promises are consistently broken, where what you see with your own eyes is called into question, then trust is impossible. You learn that not only others are untrustworthy but that you are. When gaslighting is a daily occurrence, when you're told that you're the crazy one for pointing out what's there – right there! see it? – you stop believing anything and anyone. You hold your breath and when the people you surround yourself inevitably reveal themselves as untrustworthy, then you blame yourself. Because there is clearly something about you that makes you undeserving of commitment and loyalty. The occasional times when someone entered my orbit who was trustworthy? Well, I betrayed their trust because what sort of loser wants to be with me? There was clearly something wrong with them. Better to dispense with them now.
The sisterhood? That was the stuff of fiction. Girls were the worst, as far as I was concerned. I expected men to disappoint me. But occasionally I allowed myself to believe that my girlfriends were true blue. Indoctrinated by sitcoms and teen novels, I imagined a world where a friend would never betray me, where my secrets would be safe, where I could be vulnerable. 
The reality was gossip and backstabbing and, in my early 20s, a devastating betrayal by a friend. 
But all along, I clung to some deep belief that maybe, with help, I could trust myself. Despite consistent gaslighting by a family who insisted that I made things up, I held on to the truth like a life raft. I wasn't crazy, they were. I wasn't making things up, they were. After all, I would say to myself, who's a more reliable narrator: the sober kid watching or the parent who's six drinks in? 
But D-Day robbed me of even that tenuous hold I had on self-trust. I had been so wrong. And if I was wrong about him then, surely, I was wrong about everything. About everyone. 
Healing from my husband's betrayal became an exercise in learning to trust myself. Him? Forget that. Wasn't going to happen. But I knew that my only path toward healing had to be through learning how to trust myself.
I began with a thorough excavation of a whole lot of painful experiences – times when others challenged what I knew to be true. Times when I betrayed myself by choosing their version of events over my own. 
And then I started trying to discern that same small still voice – the one who had been right all those times and that I had ignored. It's there. I promise it's there. Dormant perhaps because, after all, nobody was listening. But nudge it awake. Tell it that you're listening now. 
It's still hard for me. Too often, I prioritize others' versions over my own. It still requires intention to nudge that voice awake because I ignore it too often.
But I'm getting better at it. There's work to be done, clearly. Otherwise my heart wouldn't ache slightly when I typed Brené Brown's words. I suspect it will be the work of my lifetime. Those old messages make deep tracks in our hearts. 
But I can look around now and notice all the people that surround me now. Family and friends that inspire trust. People with whom I can – sometimes! if I try really really hard! – make myself vulnerable. And, almost, trust that I will be safe.