People Who Trusted Loved Ones - Trust vs Vigilance Memoir

I want to tell you about the difference between suspicion and vigilance, because I learned it the hard way. Suspicion is loud. It announces itself. You feel it in your chest, you can name it out loud, and — importantly — you can usually talk yourself out of it if the person you're suspicious of is someone you love. That's not a flaw in suspicion. It's just how it's built. It's meant to be argued with, which means it's also easy to argue away. Real vigilance is quieter and much harder to fake, and much harder to talk yourself out of, because it isn't asking you to feel a certain way about someone. It's not a feeling at all. It's a practice — verifying, checking, following up, even when everything in you says you already know the answer and the checking feels almost insulting to bother with. For most of my adult life I had tremendous suspicion reflexes, honed over years of a career built on reading people, and almost no vigilance practice at home. I trusted the people closest to me completely, and I mistook that trust for safety, as if believing hard enough in someone was the same thing as actually knowing what was true. It took a long time, and a lot of unwinding, to understand that good faith without verification isn't a virtue. It's a door left open, and it stays open exactly because it feels so much like love to leave it that way. I'm writing a book about walking back through that door, and about what I found once I finally did. If you've ever noticed that gap in your own life — strong instincts everywhere except the place you needed them most — I'd like to hear it, whenever it feels right to share. More soon. #Trust #Vigilance #Memoir #PersonalGrowth #CharleyMerrow #SafetyFirst