Trust

When we first got Orion as I stated before he was afraid of us.  He would run away from us, hiss at us,and whenever we would try to pet him his ears would fold back and he would squint his eyes shut as if he was waiting to be hit or something.  In short, he did not trust us to keep him safe from harm.  Even now several months later he is still a tiny bit afraid.  He doesn't run away from us as much and allows us to both pet him and hold him without him hissing or having his claws out ready to attack.  He is slowly learning to trust  us.

How often in life do we encounter people that we do not trust?  Whether it is because of a painful past or that weird feeling we get from that person.   No matter what there are times when we do not trust people.  I think in a way we all respond the way Orion responded to us.  Not in the sense of attacking every person we do not trust or running away at the mere sight of them.  But we do proceed with caution.   When we are dealing with someone that we do not trust we put up a sort of wall to guard ourselves and give us the safety we need.   Like Orion keeping his eyes on us all the time, we keep our eyes on the person we do not trust, watching their move while they are interacting with us whether it is in real life or on a social network such as facebook.  The more the kitten gets to know us and realizes that we won't bring harm to him is how we respond to those we don't trust too quickly.  We take time to learn about the person and get to know them and how they operate.  Once we feel they can be trusted we open up and allow them into our lives.  We begin to allow ourselves to be comfortable with them.   As he gets used to us Orion allows himself to fall asleep on my lap or on my chest.  He is learning to trust.

Too often when we are hurt in the past it effects how we react to the future.  It effects how we react to the new people in our lives, new relationships even.  Sometimes we allow ourselves to let our guard down only to scare ourselves and run.  Sometimes we feel the need to pull up all guards and keep others out of our lives.  Other times we feel the need to fight and handle things with claws bared.  We don't allow anyone to get close to us and try to fight them when they try to do just that.  Our sweet little kitten is beginning to allow his guard to be down and allow new people to shower love on him.  Once we learn to trust after being hurt we open the door to letting someone shower  us with love and friendship.