Trust

Trust is a very fragile thing.

You don’t really figure that out until you have one of those epiphanies where you realize how little you trust other people. Even the people that are closest to you. Suddenly you find yourself telling little white lies to get out of telling the truth and why? Because you don’t trust the other person with the truth. As though the truth is too much for that person to handle.

What’s sad is that in our society, it is becoming more and more acceptable to do this. With the rebellious teen culture not only being promoted but propagated through movies, music, and media in general, its becoming more than just a societal norm– its becoming a fad. It’s suddenly normal to lie to your parents and family because you’ve done something that they don’t approve of, and you feel awfully guilty about it. Instead of purging your guilt, you shelter it, and push it into the depths of your mind without ever letting it resurface.

Or at least that’s what I do. It’s a personal habit of mine that has suddenly started to take a toll on me as a person, and on my relationship with the people closest to me.

But if kids are suddenly behaving more the rebels, parents are behaving more conservative. I know that in many cases, my actions were not rebellious in spirit, but honest mistakes that I felt I could not tell anyone because no one else would understand that. My rebellious nature paved a road for actions grounded in the same ideology, but like all teenagers, I’m a good kid at heart.

College is certainly a forum where all this becomes exposed. I have so many friends here at Tulane, each with totally different relationships with their family and closest friends. I have a friend who hates his mother, because she could have a mental illness that manifests itself in irrationality and instability. I have another friend who is best friends with her mother, and they share an uncommonly strong bond. Most kids are like me, somwhere in the middle. But I’m a unique situation. Since coming to Tulane, my relationship with my parents in Russia has become more and more strained, for less and less obvious reasons. We’re 8,000 miles apart, and I find that for the first time in my life, I’m having a lot of trouble talking. I wish I could just go to them, and they wouldn’t be angry when I make a mistake, but they just aren’t like that. Perfection is what they demand, and that’s an awfully hard standard to ever maintain. So I pretend life is perfect . . .to perfection.

Why? Because I’m honestly afraid that they can’t handle the truth. I’m a college kid, just like every other college kid, and Tulane fosters a certain type of lifestyle. We are responsible kids, but we work hard and play hard at the same time. I do the same thing, and for some reason, this is a bad thing. Especially if I make some sort of mistake in the process.

But here’s the bottom line: the whole point of college is not to live away from your parents and get away from all those problems with trusting them. The point is to live in a community as an adult, and as a young adult, begin to see why those problems exist and work on bridging the gaps. My exposure to others’ relationships with their families here at Tulane has become monumental in me trying to repair mine. Trust me guys, I know what its like to be far away from your family, and if you’re going away to college for that reason, its just not worth it in the end. At some point, you’ll figure out that as an adult, you have to tell them the truth. And just hope that they trust you enough to understand.

And until that point occurs…

Oh the web we weave.