//------------------------------// // Highly Illogical // Story: Trust Once Lost // by Greenhorne //------------------------------// “You remember your parents?” “Well, they’re not my parents.” I explained, “They’re not ponies, and they’re not in Equestria.” They were the human me’s parents, the pony me had no parents since I’d been brought into the world fully formed. Well, almost fully. The much taller, fully grown ponies gathered in the room looked at me expectantly, and I felt very small. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “That’s all right Green,” Dayglow noticed my discomfort and wrapped a wing around me, “You’re being very brave, you can tell us about that when you’re ready. You don’t have to talk about it in front of everypony.” Having fur sucks. It turns out, not all of my vomit was on Applejack - I got some of it on myself, and it couldn’t just be wiped off. While I did have magic now, it still wasn’t up to the delicate task of cleaning myself. Soothing Melody - my trainee nurse minder - was tasked with giving me a shower. I was worried that Melody would be cross with me for giving her more work, but she actually seemed to be enjoying herself. I got the sense that she was treating me like one of her dolls; she put so much care into styling my mane and tail - all without standing me in front of the mirror or asking what I’d like. I can’t really blame her for treating me like a doll when that’s how I was acting. Melody helping me in the bathroom was uncomfortable. She was a female, close enough to my age as a human, and she didn’t have the sense of professional detachment that Redheart displayed. I knew, intellectually, that the looks she was giving me were just because I was a cute little filly that she got to play with, but my human mind was interpreting them in a very different, very creepy way. That type of female attention had always been frightening to me. I guess I should explain. In my life as a human, I had good people skills... professionally. Personal relationships, however, ranged from exhausting to terrifying. I like things to be predictable, I enjoyed the fact that shifts had routines and a procedure manual that I could study so I would know exactly what to do at all times. People are unpredictable, but at work, there were very clear boundaries and expectations and, most importantly, I didn’t have to trust them. I always had it in the back of my mind that they could suddenly snap, spit in my face and cuss me out, make false complaints about me, or try to stab me with a pen; So, when they did, I wasn’t angry with them. Their irrationality was just another symptom that had to be managed. Most often this type of behavior was the result of dementia or mental illness; For the rest, while being a complete dickhead isn’t technically a mental illness, it might as well be. I can’t turn it off. I don’t have another way to interact with people. Some of my earliest memories are helping my mother with her mental illness, I couldn’t blame her for being irrational; and caring for my baby brother, who was as irrational and impulsive as you would expect from a six-year-old. My dad really tried, but he never managed to understand how to deal with anxiety and panic attacks. I didn’t blame him for trying to be assertive and snap Mum out of having a panic attack by telling her forcefully that she was being irrational and spouting nonsense. He honestly thought that would help. If you know anything at all about anxiety, you can probably imagine how well that went. For anyone left wondering, not well. It’s possibly the most counter-productive thing you could do short of actual violence. I didn’t have the words to explain it to him at the time, and to this day he doesn’t really understand, though he has at least stopped attempting it. I know my family better than I know anyone else in the world, I love them, I would do anything for them - but I don’t trust them. I’ve never really trusted anyone. They’re not even my family though, are they? Am I a terrible person if that’s a relief to me? If it feels like a burden lifted? It’s not like I was abandoning them. The original was still there, and, by virtue of us being essentially the same person, he was actually, for the first time ever, someone I could trust to see things my way. Too bad we’d never meet. Not trusting anyone, being afraid of new social situations, being afraid of people being irrational... can you see where this is going? I was terrified of having a girlfriend. That didn’t stop me from having one. A girl asked me out. I wanted to say no, but I was too afraid to turn her down in case she and her friends retaliated against me. So I said yes. We dated for three months and the furthest we went was a kiss on the lips, which only happened because my Dad told me I should do it because it was cruel to string her along. I felt nothing but fear; she was ecstatic and literally skipped back to her father’s waiting car. She broke up with me a couple of weeks later, said she would hate me forever and threatened to have her dad beat me up. It was cruel of me to lead her on, but being honest and telling her I never felt anything for her seemed even crueler, so instead I pretended to be sad about it. Since then I’ve made sure to be clear about rebuffing romantic or sexual advances towards me. Most of my colleagues have taken the hint and assume I’m gay. While this would be a handy excuse for why I’m terrified of female sexual interest, I don’t actually like men in that way either. It terrifies me because I have no idea how to respond. From my experience, rebuffing these types of advances is something that makes people completely irrational, and reciprocating is equally bad, if it’s not done correctly. I knew, with reasonable certainty that Melody wasn’t going to try anything weird, so I just sucked it up and stood there with a blank expression, complying with her requests to raise each hoof, stand, or sit. She was efficient with her work, and despite taking time to style my mane and tail we were finished up within ten minutes. Most of what she’d done for me had been accomplished with magic, so it was a shock when she touched my hind quarters with a hoof to direct me out of the bathroom. With the thoughts going through my head at the time, I about jumped out of my skin. I squeaked and wrapped my tail around where she had touched. An involuntary shudder ran through my body, interrupting my breathing exercise. I took a new breath and controlled the exhalation over four seconds, waited another four seconds, then returned to breathing normally. “I’m so sorry,” I apologized, my face flushed red with embarrassment. “I wasn’t paying attention and you startled me.” Melody didn’t answer immediately, and when I gained the courage to face her, I could see why. She had recoiled away from me, holding the hoof she had used to touch me tight against her chest. Her coat was somehow three shades lighter, her pupils were pinpricks, and I wasn’t entirely sure she was breathing. “Are you okay?” I asked with concern. “I-I’m going to get the nurse.” She mumbled before beating a hasty retreat out into the hallway. Looking at the bed I noted that it was raised up too high for me to safely climb into it without help; I just lay on the floor and waited for my caretakers to return. My broken leg was throbbing again, but I couldn’t tell them about it; I needed a clear head to deal with whatever nonsense I was wrapped up in now. Why does this keep happening to me?