Putting Your Trust into a Stranger
October 14th, 2025
Writer: Emmylou Ethan
Editor: Sophia Wohl
The first few weeks of freshman year are some of the most uncomfortable days of college. You barely know anyone, they don't know you, and you barely know yourself. You’re expected to jump headfirst into this entirely new life, without any guidelines.
So you start to trust, a little awkwardly at first, then, because you have to. You trust the girl on your dorm floor to show you where to pick up your packages. You trust your roommate, the one you might’ve handpicked over Instagram dms but still don’t really know yet. And slowly, you feel yourself start to loosen up. You let your guard down, you laugh a little louder, you let your bubble stretch just enough to let new people in.
It’s funny how much faith we place in people we’ve just met. If you take a step back from the constantly evolving relationships you’ve worked so hard to build, you start to realize, every connection begins the same way. Before the Dancing with the Stars binge nights and the inside jokes that aren’t funny to anyone else, there’s always one quiet moment where you choose to trust. When you give that person the chance to see the real you. And after that choice, the world starts to feel a little less strange, and a bit more familiar.
With that trust come the little things, the quiet gestures that are proof you are loved. The friend who hands you the red Sour Patch Kids because she knows those are your favorite. Or your roommate who doesn't watch more of that show you two share until you are side by side. These moments aren't proof of friendship, yet they are tiny reminders that someone has been paying attention, the person you chose to let in at some point in your life, still cares.
Yet it can be scary, handing someone the fragile parts of yourself and hoping they’ll respect them, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people leave before we’re ready to let them go, and sometimes, we’re the ones who have to let them go, even when it hurts. It’s happened to all of us, those moments that make us question everything, wondering if we made the wrong choice by letting them in at all.
But no, we learn so much from every relationship we have. We grow from the ones that fall apart just as much as the ones that last. How else are we supposed to know who belongs in our lives if there's not a few bumps along the way? That’s the quiet beauty of it all: each relationship we have built, no matter how brief or lasting, teaches us something about who we are and what we need.
Every person is a different chapter in our story, providing us with the kind of relationship we need at that stage in our lives. And each time we take the risk to open up again, to trust, to love, to let someone see the real us, we’re choosing hope over fear, and that in itself, is something to be proud of.
