I don't like talking about myself.
Well... That's not entirely true. I like talking about myself, as long as it doesn't get personal. Since that is pretty difficult, I'll stick with: I don't like talking about myself.
You see, I don't like being vulnerable. When someone knows something about me, whether it's my favorite color or my greatest struggle, I get scared. It is as if, through knowing something about me, that person has the power to hurt me.
Trust.
What is that? It is an action, I believe. It gets harder to do every time I get hurt. But if I don't do it, I'll never know if a person can live up to that trust. (Of course some people quite obviously should not be trusted. I'm generalizing here.)
Love.
Being fully known. That's a pretty unsettling thought to me. But what about being fully loved? That sounds wonderful. Is there not, though, a connection here? To love someone, you have to first know something about them. Something like, I don't know, maybe that they exist? That sounds like a good start to me. If you don't even know that a person exists, how can you love them?
Once you know that a person exists, now you get to start loving them. Personally, I believe that every person is made in the image of a loving God, and is therefore worthy of love, just because they exist. That is a nice idea, but can be much harder on an individual level. When I start loving a person, (I should mention, in case you are unsure, that I am talking about love in general, not romantic love. Seeing as I have almost no experience in the romance department, I will not be posting about the topic until further notice.) I want to get to know more about them. I can't really explain why, but as I get to know a person better, I tend to love them more, and vice-versa.
Then it gets back to me. It's nice to be loved, as well as loving. When thinking of love as a gift, and trust as the acceptance of that gift, I realize that it is difficult to allow myself to be loved if I do not trust the one who is loving me. When I think of how I want to know more about the people I love, what they love, what makes them laugh, what burdens their hearts, I realize something. When I do not trust a person to know who I am, I am rejecting their love of who I am.
Since writing this post a couple of months ago, I completely forgot about it. But I did start to trust more. I opened up to relationships. I met a guy, and started to date him. It didn't work out, but I think taking the risk was worth it. And it's true, the more I liked him, the more I wanted to know about him. That's the interesting part about the romantic side, even though it didn't quite end up developing in that direction, I do care a lot more about him as a person now that I know more about him.
