Trust and Vulnerability

A Teenager’s Reflections

by LARISA PAXTON

It’s hard being an Orthodox teenager. These are the years of our lives when we have to figure out what it means to be Orthodox in today’s society, and what it will mean to be Orthodox adults. We are supposed to accept and love everyone, no matter what. We are supposed to forgive everyone no matter what they did to us. Loving, trusting, and forgiving were three verbs I used to pretend do not exist. But, with the help of a good friend, and of course, God, they have become second nature to me.

Like all young children, I was loving, trusting, and naive as a little girl. However, after some tough experiences in my early teens, I tried going to the opposite extreme. I kept getting hurt and walked all over, so I told myself that love is just a bunch of chemicals released in my brain that trick me into trusting people. It was a defense mechanism, a way to protect myself from mean girls and from guys who might break my heart. I slowly became detached from everyone. I could not trust my friends, my boyfriends, not even my family. I was alone.

Three years ago, when I was fifteen, I went to a church retreat in New York. I shared a room with a friend I had met at Saint Andrew’s Camp a few years before. In the middle of the retreat, late on Saturday night, I phoned the guy I’d been dating for a while. I introduced them via FaceTime. At the end of the call he said, “Goodnight, I love you,” like he did every night, and I replied with a “Goodnight” and hung up.

My friend asked, “Don’t you tell him you love him back?” as she hopped off her bunk. Maybe I sounded like some coldhearted monster, but I was not about to let some boy make me vulnerable just so he could break my heart. My friend, on the other hand, disagreed. She sat up with me all night trying to convince me that love is not a “trap” or some scary science project. She recounted dozens of stories of times when love turned its back on her. She, too, had been bullied and had been dumped by boys, but she did not let that stop her from loving her family and friends. Love is scary, she said, but that shouldn’t stop us from letting people in. She said she’d learned to forgive those who hurt her and to let go of those people in her life.

That night I was convinced that maybe the “big L word” is not so terrifying after all. Now I realize that sometimes I need to let my guard down and not push feelings aside. If I love someone, they should know it, even if I may get hurt in the end. Some people are worthy of my taking that chance. It may not make sense in my brain, but I know now that it is OK to open up and be honest. It may be hard, but if God can love everyone on this Earth, then I can at least try to love and trust the very few people I am blessed to be connected to.

Larisa Paxton is a high-school senior at the Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Science and a parishioner at the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation in Brick, NJ