Between Gravity and Air

When Trust is Torn

There was a time when I thought maybe I was starting to feel tethered to something safe.

Not safety itself — I’ve never truly known what that feels like — but the hope of it.

A small thread I tried to believe in. Something that said, maybe this time it’s different.

Then it broke.

And now I don’t know how to describe where I am. It feels like I’m floating — untethered, disconnected, somewhere between survival and nothingness. But it also feels like I’ve hit the ground so hard that I can’t move. It’s both at once: weightless and crushed.

People talk about rebuilding trust like it’s a staircase you can just start climbing again. But when the betrayal comes from the place that was supposed to hold care — the space you tried to believe might finally be safe — it isn’t just a loss of trust in one person. It’s a collapse of the small piece of you that dared to believe safety was possible at all.

How do you trust again when the harm didn’t come from a stranger, but from the place you finally stopped guarding yourself?

How do you reach out when every cell in your body remembers what it felt like to risk it and be proven right — that you were never really safe to begin with?

The Shattered Tether

I’ve always scanned for danger.

Even when things looked calm on the outside, my body stayed alert — waiting for the shift, the silence, the thing that would tell me connection wasn’t what it seemed.

Therapy didn’t change that.

It just made me want to believe it could.

So when things broke there too — when the words didn’t match the actions, when care turned into distance — it wasn’t just pain I felt. It was confirmation. Confirmation that the world is exactly as unsafe as I feared.

And the tether that snapped wasn’t safety itself. It was hope.

Floating and Falling

There are days it feels like floating — like I’m watching myself from a distance, unanchored.

And other days, it feels like the opposite — like I’ve crashed into a bottom so deep it swallows sound.

Maybe that’s what trauma does when it comes from the place you were told was for healing. It confuses gravity. You don’t know which way is up anymore.

I can name what happened. I can write it down. I can make sense of it logically — but my body still reacts like it’s proof that safety is a myth.

Even when the new therapist says something kind, my chest tightens. My brain says you’re fine, but my nervous system doesn’t believe it.

What Safety Used to Mean

Before, I thought safety might mean being understood — being able to stop performing and still be met with care.

Now, I don’t even know if that exists.

Safety, right now, just means not being punished for existing.

It means being able to name what’s true without being labeled disrespectful or difficult.

It means surviving the session without shame.

Maybe that’s the best I can do right now.

Learning to Stay

Trust feels impossible. But I keep showing up.

I sit in the room, sweating through the session, my heart racing the whole time. My body stays ready to run. My mind reminds me I’ve been here before. I feel disconnected. I don’t feel safe.

But I go.

Because somewhere beneath all that fear — under the exhaustion, under the grief — there’s still a small, trembling belief that maybe something could shift.

And if I’m being honest, it’s not just hope that drives me there.

Part of me goes because shame tells me I’m a monster — that I broke something too big to ever repair. Another part of me whispers that maybe if I fix myself, I won’t feel so disgusted with who I am.

So I go. Even when it hurts. Even when I hate myself for needing to.

Maybe that’s all healing is sometimes — showing up for reasons that don’t make sense, holding contradictions that can’t yet coexist: the wish to disappear and the longing to stay.

So I walk into the room, again and again.

Not because I trust, but because I want to.

Because some small part of me still believes that if I keep showing up, something might change in me — that one day I’ll feel tethered again. Not to false safety, but to something real.

A Fragment of Hope

Maybe I still carry a small fragment of hope from the last place I let myself be known.

It wasn’t easy — it unraveled in ways that hurt — but the care was real. The love was real.

Even when things fell apart, there was still protection in how it ended — a kind of gentleness that said, I won’t let this destroy you.

And maybe that’s what keeps a small part of me believing, even now.

Because once, someone held my story with both hands and didn’t turn away, even when it was heavy.

Maybe that memory — of being met with care, not abandonment — is the thread that keeps me trying.

Not because I trust again, but because I remember what it felt like to be protected, even in goodbye.

That kind of unselfish love changed me — both the love I received and the love I still carry.

It taught me that love like that doesn’t disappear when it ends; it becomes part of you.

It’s what keeps me showing up now when I walk into the therapy room —

not because I’m searching for something the same,

but because I know what it means to be met with care,

and I want to believe that something good can still grow from that knowing.

Author’s Note

This piece continues the story of what happens after the rupture — the long, lonely stretch where trust feels impossible but you keep trying anyway.

It’s about the ache of wanting to heal while also wanting to hide, about showing up when every part of you says it’s pointless.

I don’t have answers. I’m just learning to stay, to keep walking into the room even when my body trembles and my hope feels thin. Maybe that, for now, is enough.

Disclaimer

This piece reflects my personal experience with trauma, betrayal, and the struggle to rebuild trust after harm. It is not meant to generalize or advise, but to give language to what healing can feel like when safety has been shattered. If you see yourself in these words, please take care of your heart while reading. Everyone’s journey is different, and nothing shared here replaces professional mental health support.