I am credulous.

Despite betrayal in high school that swept through the entire class,

and rape,

and finding out the hard way my intuition is almost always right. Again and again.

I am trusting and believing and maybe even gullible.

I believe your heart is filled with more love than hate and more right than wrong.

But I feel exposed in the worst way.

In a blindsided way;

a terrible car accident way;

a public hanging way.

I feel shame

I didn’t know could exist in a person.

Uncontainable, uncontrollable shame.

Shame without an end and without edges.

This violation of trust feels in many ways worse than all the others. Friendship and ROI’s and medical oaths and privacy acts: a breach of confidentiality I can never get back and it has left me quietly skeptical and sadly fearful of even the closest humans to my heart.

I feel distressingly broken, even after talking it through ad nauseam.

There was already so much grief, how can I take on more?