A Filing Cabinet Full Of Tolerance

I haven’t been able to write lately. I would like to say it’s because I’ve had writers block when in all actuality it’s because of the things I want to write about are mostly depressing lately.

So why not write about them? Part of me says that if I write about them then they might come true, or be more real than they already are, and part of me is just fkkng tired of even thinking about them.

Trust and Forgiving.

Shit.

Just typing those words makes my stomach roll. They have both played or tried to play a role in my life for so long and just recently have hit home so hard it would make anyone want to puke. Besides it brings up my least favorite saying, “Forgive and Forget.”

Who came up with that? (Usually I would Google that but I’m afraid if the person is still living I’d find them and well…)

Trust. One definition is: confident expectation of something; hope.

Forgiving. One definition is: tolerant.

At birth we are so trusting. We depend on and hope our caregivers love and care for us with the expectation  of food, clothing and shelter. We continue to be trusting into childhood. So much that we are told by adults to not talk to strangers or take candy from them. We are so trusting that we get ourselves into trouble. Like we trusted our brother or sister to not tell that we took the last cookie. Then they do. That’s when it all starts I think. Little by little we start taking that last cookie without telling anyone. We can’t even trust our siblings not to rat us out! I mean, really we still trust them and that is probably not the best analogy but it’s certainly a trust thing. They promise not to tell and we believe them and then they do and now we don’t trust them. Sad actually. In my opinion though that’s where it begins.

We stay trusting through childhood although the cookie snatching stays a secret, sometimes, then onto adulthood. Ah, yes, adults no longer can be trusted now either.

Your teachers say, “You can do it!,” “You’re so smart!” and then you fail the exam. What the hell? I thought you told me I could do it? You lied. You see there? It’s the beginning of a vicious cycle. Someone telling you something or projecting an idea and you believing it and then it doesn’t happen that way. What they didn’t say is, “You can do it, if you apply yourself and study hard. You might fail but you can try again.,” and other little anecdotes like, “IF at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”

We become tolerant. Not in the dictionary meaning of  “forgiving” though. We actually become tolerant of being lied to. We expect it. At this point most of us are still trusting and we just kind of brush off the words of others and say somewhere in the back of our mind, “Yeah right. Whatever.” We go on.

Throughout these years though, even though we are tolerant of this behavior, which to many seem like meaningless lies, the filing cabinet of self-doubt is filling up. Until that one day.

For me it was when I told my ex-husband I wanted a divorce. He filed the last paper in my filing cabinet of  bullshit tolerance and I called a lawyer. Filed for divorce and five years later in another relationship now, I’m finding it hard to trust that good things deserve to come my way and I should be tolerant of all the things my ex-husband did and said to me. Just as it should be easy to trust, and it is most of the time, it should be just as easy to forgive but it’s not. Therefore any little lie told to me by anyone I trust, expect good things from, becomes a new filing cabinet of lies. Tolerance is the key to unlocking those cabinets but I can’t find it.

Because to me, the definition of forgiving, tolerance, is the wrong word. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to forgive. To forgive would be like “Oh yeah! I tolerate your bullshit. No problem. Remember the good times. They outweigh the bad. No problemo friend. I am TOLERANT.”

I’m not.