I know it’s hard for people to understand who didn’t lead traumatized childhoods where nearly everyone treats you like garbage, but this is so true. I usually don’t like things like this, but this one at least spoke to me.

When you emerge from that, when someone genuinely treats you with love and respect, you think it’s a joke. A prank. Because people have pulled “pranks” on you like that before. Many times. You get so that don’t trust anyone. Your every move is defensive, or pre-emptively defensive. When my to-be high school girlfriend expressed interest in me, I coldly rejected her the first time around because I thought she was running some game on me to attempt to horribly embarrass me. Luckily, she was persistent and patient and just as blunt and direct as she needed to be to convince me. Was she ever the right person at the right time. But the little speech she gave me and how she went about it all is a tale for another time.

Even with that, with people like her helping, it takes a long time to un-learn those negative behaviors. In some ways, they never completely disappear, just lessen over time.