From a professor publicly shaming me to fake “friends”. Maybe these experiences are why I can’t trust.

I Don’t Trust

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this plenty of times in past writings, but I have had a lot of issues with trust in recent times.

I am always expecting the worst of others.

Even simple tasks like sending a message can take hours to do, because of the fears that this mistrust had evoked in me. In many different scenarios, I would be terrified of what would come after the message was sent.

Maybe my question was stupid. Or I was sending too many messages. They would surely start yelling at me for how much of their time I was wasting.

Even when they were the first person to initiate conversation, I would still be afraid of providing the response they were literally asking for. So it would still take some time.

And the longer it took, the more I worried about how long it was taking. Now they were probably going to yell at me for taking so long. It’s a relentless feedback loop.

All of this does make me wonder where this mistrust came from.

Thinking back on what has happened in my life, I can think of at least a few reasons why I may have become this way.

Online Interactions

I’ve had a lot of experiences interacting with people online during my early to late childhood. But when I see what someone has said online, I am only seeing a very small slice of that person’s true self.

Therefore, my perception can change dramatically based on what information they decide to reveal about them.

I’ve played a lot of games where there are multiple people in the same virtual space. Some of them seemed to be nice initially, others not so much. However, that was only the initial impression.

When I was like 12, someone in some Minecraft skyblock server talked me up, and we decided to have a trade. Then, after I gave them the items first, they publicly announced in chat I had gotten scammed and made off.

MY MONEY

I guess they felt bad since they returned the items after. But yeah, I could definitely see how repeated instances of this would make me more cautious.

I should write an article on my Minecraft days.

Or in DOTA 2, there was a lot of toxicity in chat and with team members. Of course, that isn’t to say I didn’t have any good experiences. But more often than not, there would be someone mouthing off and complaining.

I added someone who seemed cool at first after we completed a match. However, in the subsequent match we played, they began flaming others. I tried to intervene to keep it peaceful, but then they turned on me.

After that match, I immediately unfriended them.

Maybe it was my fault for putting any trust at all into people I had just met. But it really showed that I could never really know what the real person behind the name was.

Honestly, I had some pretty poor choices in gaming communities to stay within. All that yelling and screaming and drama had to affect me in some way.

I definitely was a little… rascal sometimes, I won’t lie.

I’m not innocent at all.

But I could see how having these negative encounters on a daily basis could have made me assume the worst in the long run.

Friend, Enemy, Friend, Enemy

There was someone in elementary school who I thought was my friend. I’ll call him “P”.

“P” would always be hanging around with this other girl “L”.

That’s honestly all I can remember about him.

We became “friends” at some point. He would do things like give me a snack and talk with me.

However, every once in a while, he would completely flip on me. Suddenly, he was cold and mean. Not in a cruel way, he wouldn’t beat me up or anything. But his demeanor toward me would completely change to something more… aggressive.

We had become enemies, somehow.

Eventually, after some more time passed, he would revert to normal. Any apologies that had to be made were made, and we would be back to being friends again. I would forgive him.

At least until he returned right back to being my enemy again, anywhere from a few days to weeks later.

But then he would turn back to a friend once more. And I would forgive him.

And then he would be my enemy.

And then he would be my friend.

Enemy. Friend. Enemy. Friend.

I think it took about 7–8 times of running this cycle before I realized maybe he wasn’t actually my friend. Friends were never supposed to treat each other this way at all.

A few mistakes or moments of anger, sure. But this many?

I was just being toyed with at this point.

Maybe I was a little naive back then.

What is really strange is that I cannot recall anything specific that he did or said to me. All I can remember is that this definitely happened to me, where he was mean.

It kind of makes me feel crazy and doubt myself.

Like, did I just completely make all of this up in my head?

I remember, for absolutely sure, that this happened.

But I can’t recall any details. It’s so freakin’ weird.

In any case, the memory still exists. And due to it happening at such an important developmental phase in my life, I could certainly see it as a contributor to later trust issues.

Professors Are People Too

Here’s another unfortunate memory from relatively recent times.

I was in my first semester of college in the Autumn of 2018. At 17 years old, it was a brand new, big scary life. But I also had a lot more freedom compared to high school.

Not only that, but I had heard that professors were a lot more chill than teachers in high school. From what I was experiencing, that postulate was holding up to be true.

I had a course in English in my first semester. It was a pretty small class of no more than fifteen people. And the professor was really cool. One of those professors that went out of their way to be funny when lecturing.

For example, when talking about the process of writing, he drew out how you should go about revising what you’ve written. And he scribbled a squiggly line all over the place.

Eh, I’m not paying for them (the markers).

He also made a pretty bold joke when a student was saying in a hyperbolic, comedic way that they were touched by the professor’s speech. He responded…

“Yeah, I try not to touch my students.”

The class found it pretty funny. Overall, it was a pretty good time in this class. Never a boring moment.

Anyway, I needed to get a copy of one of the readings. I ended up finding a digital version online just by searching the name. And for free, at that.

Some time passes. Maybe a few weeks. My English course was today, and we had an activity that involved pairing up.

I was still the same socially awkward, dead anxious person I was four years back. So I was already stressed about this whole situation.

The guy I was partnered up with saw that I was using my laptop to access the digital copy, and asked me where I had obtained it.

I answered truthfully, in my shaky voice, that I had searched the title of the reading online and it was just the first result that came up. I was probably barely audible with how weak my voice was. He responded.

“Wow, I wish I had just done that.”

…my partner said. That’s when the professor, who was standing over us, did something.

“I just want to say something to everyone.”

He went off on me, in front of the entire class. He went on that some people may have had financial issues, but he had worked very, very hard to provide affordable class materials for everyone.

None of it felt real. It was probably the longest 30 seconds I had experienced in my life.

He then turned the topic directly to me, pointing a finger and exclaiming how a digital copy was not a physical copy of the book.

“And so don’t think you’re off the hook!”

There was nothing but silence from everyone else, as he walked back to the front of the small classroom. My partner was just staring bemusedly at me. I was sure everyone else was as well.

All I could do was shrug.

I can’t say for sure, but I was pretty sure I was making that scrunched-up, “about to cry” face. And I was a 17-year-old boy, so looking so vulnerable and weak made me feel like… what’s the word?

A b*tch.

(Ironically, toxic masculinity was one of the topics I had to write about in a paper in that class.)

I was just begging for the end of the class to come. And when it finally did, I rushed out of there as fast as I could. All the way back to my dorm.

Thankfully, it seemed that my roommate wasn’t back at the time. So I was able to release the floodgates for a bit.

What made it even worse is that my next meeting with the professor was in a mandatory, one-on-one office hour meeting in order to take a look at my essay.

And that whole session, he acted as though nothing had happened at all.

Was he really not going to even acknowledge what had happened? Had none of that actually occured? Had he already forgotten?

I was so unsure of my sanity now. Maybe I deserved the whole berating.

The professor was a fun lecturer, I thought. I thought he was one of the best ones I ever had at that time.

He was an authority figure. Someone that was supposed to teach me.

Yet he had humiliated me in front of the entire class for answering someone’s question. A conversation that was only between the two of us, for that matter.

Other people in the past had failed to obtain the readings at all, despite having plenty of time to do so. They never got berated. But I did.

All over a difference in mediums for a reading. He had lightheartedly commented on it before, but it was never conveyed to me that physical was an absolute requirement.

And it didn’t even make a difference in the end. I still was able to complete the assignments just fine.

Unlike the story about my “friend” in elementary school, I still remember the details.

Every single, excruciating detail.

Perhaps this incident is what made me so mistrustful and afraid.

I was afraid of what was lying behind the masks that all these “nice” and “cool” people were wearing. The potential for all that positive energy to be tossed in the opposite direction. And so I always waited in apprehension.

I waited for the moment the mask would come off. The moment my suspicions would be proven right.

Pending Resolution

So looking back at all, I can understand some of the events in my life leading up to all of my mistrust. I always seemed to expect the worst and live in complete fear of every human interaction I encounter.

However, it seems that I’ve been able to reverse the course for the time being. I wouldn’t say I’m able to have complete faith in everyone.

Nor should I, really.

My tendencies for catastrophizing have not vanished entirely. But I’m definitely starting to move in the right direction.

Part of that is because of all the personal experiences I’ve read here on Medium. Having somewhere to write out all of these reflections helps too.

I look forward to reading many more perspectives, ideas, and stories. And I’ll try to keep writing as well.