Hate

The worst thing in the world is to deny yourself of hate.

I look at that sentence and think, oh god, what did I just say? But it's true, regardless of what I think or what anyone else thinks. Try it on again:

The worst thing in the world is to deny yourself of hate.

How'd it sound the second time around? I think that it sounded worse. But then again, I'm guilty of it, so I really can't be an objective witness here.

Hate burns. It's not pleasant. It takes control of your body. Yet, at the same time, hate cleanses. It allows; it is.

In denying your hate, you deny yourself; you deny your feelings. You make yourself live in a world that does not exist, but rather in one that is propelled by lies, by deceit. You force yourself to smile, when you feel like spitting. You force yourself to speak when you feel like screaming. You force yourself to go about your day to day business as if nothing bothers you; as if nothing's wrong.

In that sense, then, hate and fear are brother and sister; both require that you deny yourself in an effort to control the overwhelming feelings that are churning around you.

So how do you answer hate's call? Do you say to yourself, "no, I do not hate?" Do you say, "no, I will not hate?" Do you say, "It does not bother me? I am fine? Everything is good?"

What do you say to make those feelings go away?

Of course, what I am speaking of is the simple acknowledgement of your hate. I am not telling you to grab a gun and go kill all of your coworkers. I am not saying that.

I am merely speaking of the act of actually admitting that hate to that inner voice inside your head.

For example, there's this girl at the place that I worked last who hated me. But she wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even herself, because it conflicted with her idea of who she was; she didn't think that she was capable of hate. And yet . . . and yet she hated me. I could tell, because sometimes, just sometimes, I caught her looking at me with this look. And then other times, she would be fine one moment and then icy towards me; just me. I don't think that I can explain it, but I could feel it.

I hate my computer. There, I said it. It never works right; it's slow and it freezes up a lot. I avoid saying that I hate it by telling people that it's special, but truly, I hate it. It annoys the piss out of me.

I hate it when I make stupid mistakes in front of other people.

I hate not having any money. I hate wishing for things that other people can just go out and buy.

I hate being unsure of myself. I hate telling people in band to hush, even though it's my responsibility as section leader and they should know better.

I hate the blindness of other people--how they miss everything that I see. I hate it so much that I don't even talk about it to other people anymore; I just pretend that I don't see or hear all the rest of the world.

I hate that my supervising teacher (when I was student teaching) always made me feel like a dunce no matter what I did. I hate that I could never do it right and I hate that I hate it.

And most of all, I hate that when I get up in the morning, I am never quite sure how I'll feel or how big the empty space inside me will be that day. I hate the empty space. It feels almost as though my outer side will cave in on itself someday, because something was scooped out and left in that student teaching semester that can never be retrieved--only replaced.

And if I end replacing that space with only hate, I'll hate myself for the rest of my life, I swear to god.

It's almost as if a bright center composed mostly of confidence, energy and self-worth was stored there, only to have it ripped out . . . leaving me nothing more than an empty shell that still looks the same and acts the same, but isn't.

So I admit that I hate that empty space. And I hate that bright center for leaving--forcefully or not. I think the worst of it is that it wasn't ripped out so much as it just merely shrivelled--drying into dust. It shrivelled, leaving me a shell. And the worst part is that no one at the school that I student taught at noticed that shrivelling.

And I Hate that most of all.