My faith in people rises and falls like my constant mood swings. Sometimes, it's hard to tell just which is affecting one or the other. The more I want to open up to people, the more I realise that people are constant source of my emotional problems. Yet at the same time, some part of me still believes that people are the key to my salvation and redemption. It's just a long hard road with more failures than there are successes, but there is no other way to find good people whom you can rely on than sheer trial and error.

It's not to say that I'm pointing fingers at everyone except myself. I more than understand that you are solely responsible for your own happiness, but there is a catch to that truth. For you to be completely responsible, it would also mean that you would have to be a social hermit, which is the one thing I can know I can never be. I am responsible for my own happiness, which means I am responsible for deciding who to trust and who to open up to. Something I often screw up in the hopes that the people I place my faith in are the people I can share my life in and not have them run away.

Of course, when I think about it, the reason why I say people are the source of my problems is that people lie. They lie about themselves, they lie about what they are capable of doing, they lie about the promises that they never keep in the end. Everybody lies, but when relationships between people are built upon those lies, when the truth comes to light, everything just crumbles away, as does my faith in them. As much as I try to be honest with the people I am with, omitting the finer details of my life until I know if they can handle it, having someone say they'll stand by you through it all, then have them abandon you at some random time because they feel like it is pretty much a stab to the beating heart.

For the more cynical of you, I know shit like this happens all the time. I know that better than most, but it doesn't stop it from hurting any less. It doesn't stop me from trying to find someone I can open up to all the same.

So I keep trying. I keep looking at everyone with a sense of skepticism and doubt and I'll keep trying to find ways of opening myself, sharing my thoughts and feelings to someone who seems nice enough to stand by and listen. As hurt as I am that people don't try hard enough to keep a good thing going, I can't blame them for who they are. All I can do it hope that one day, they'll come around to realising that good, decent, honest folks in life come far and few in between. What they make of themselves and the consequences to follow is their choice.

I like to hope that when they realise that, I won't have become bitter and vindictive enough to return the last thing they gave to me.