I Have Trust Issues

What’s the difference between thinking you’re being paranoid and knowing you should be?

I have trust issues, but I don’t know where they begin or end. I don’t know if the feeling is a clean, instinctual warning—some ancient animal part of me recognizing danger before language can explain it—or if it’s self-sabotage dressed up as intuition. Maybe the body knows. Maybe the body is stupid. Maybe the body is only desperate to vomit throat-searing acid because it has mistaken old humiliation for present evidence.

The problem with trust issues is that they flatter you. They make fear feel intelligent. They make suspicion feel like vision. A bad feeling gets treated like a prophecy. Something is wrong. Something is being hidden. Something is happening behind your back. And maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re right often enough to keep the old machinery alive forever.