Trust is a verb.
An acting verb, an ongoing verb. I hate the platitude that the gods will provide, that they'll just hand out what you need to fulfill their will if you close your eyes and jump off the cliff. I hate it even though Mara and I really do have that kind of relationship, the kind where something always comes through in the end.
Does it seem unfair, that I hate other people talking about what I have?
Too often I see people talking about it like it's a switch you can flip in your head. Flick, boom, trust, problems solved. I hate to say that I trust Mara to make sure everything will work out because it sounds like a simple platitude. It sounds like I'm saying this is easy, and it's obvious, and everyone should do it. Trusting Mara doesn't work like that for me, though. Sometimes it's easier, and sometimes I really have to grab it and sink my claws in.
I've talked about this before; it's where my philosophy to just keep walking comes from. None of the things I feel is constant. Faith, belief, trust, all of these things ebb and flow. I think everyone feels this, but it's hard to tell from the way some people talk. Even when I'm not sure in this moment, I move forward, because I don't have a choice, do I? I reach for trust, I rebuild it, I recreate it.
Trust is a sandcastle. Sometimes I'm winning, and it's tall and solid and elegant. Sometimes the tide is winning. That's the way of things. That's mental illness. That's physical illness. That's just the uncertainties of life, good days and bad.
I fight to trust her, because my trust pleases her. Scraping up that trust on a hard day, when I'm panicking, when scrupulosity is rearing up, that's a kind of devotional act too. When the brain raccoons tell me she's going to destroy me and everything I love if I'm not perfect, I have to trust. Because nothing else is going to get me through it. Just trust and her grace.
I'm trying. Gods know I'm trying. (Oh yes, you are very trying, goes the joke.) I fight myself, I fight the raccoons, I fight just to lay my hands on the barest hint of that trust. The more of it I have, the more I can build, but when I need it the most, it's hardest to lay hands on.
When I have nothing, no light and no earth to support me, only the empty (void), that's when Kuan Yin finds me and leads me back. When I find myself lost in the void, I trust that she is coming. I trust that Mara is waiting, with open arms. I trust that everything still exists, even when I am too close to the nonexistent to remember what existence felt like.
Sometimes trust is all I have. Like a muscle, I exercise it. Like a verb, I keep doing it, and hope that muscle memory will carry me through.