Hate: I Don't Get It

I understand hatred from a logical, psychological standpoint -- how it works, reasons as to which people might have it -- but not from the deeper recesses of understanding.

I'm no stranger to hatred; the better part of my life has been spent as the target of it. I watched my father slowly and systematically be literally destroyed by it; hatred of his powerlessness, hatred of my gender trangressions, hatred of his job and the reason he had to have that job: his family. I saw the looks of hatred in the eyes of people I passed because they couldn't pidgeonhole me into one gendered box or the other. I felt it in the physical and verbal blows they deal me. I felt it as I watched my own blood swirl around a shower drain, exactly like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Psycho" except different...this was in color. It was real life. The blood was mine, a red chaser to the physical pain. This all taught me to hate one thing: me. The hate had the sharp, bitter metallic taste of blood. I learned to hurt myself so much worse than they did, to begin to follow in my footsteps and destroy myself just like my dad did; like father, like son. A chip off the old block.

That was then. This is now. I finally picked myself up from the depths of despair, learned to stand on my own two, feet, stand up for myself, and say, "STOP!" It rang from the very eaves of every house and strip mall in this town I grew up in, this cancerous place that eats its own. I took measures to correct the physical defect, purge myself of the ambiguity I never asked for, overcame insurmountable odds and did all the things everyone said I was too stupid, too worthless, too subhuman to ever do. Despite my learning disabilities, I got into my dream college & was at the head of my class. Despite being morbidly obese my whole life -- at one point over 600 lbs -- I became handsome & able to actually see that. Despite my fear of anything social, I learned how to speak and began to educate & motivate others. Despite never having known healthy touch for thirty-two years, I learned to allow it, crave it. Despite the abuse I survived I learned to love myself, others, and let others love me. Despite the many obstacles in my life, I turned each one into an advantage.

Hatred was forced on me. When I came into this world, I didn't have a chance. Hate was all I knew; it was the very blood that ran through my family & the town I live in. I have since learned otherwise. I see people now embracing hatred in all it's forms -- sexism, racism, ageism, classism, ableness, heteronormativity, gangs -- and feel for them an overwhelming pity. How bad they must feel! I remember it feeling like being mired in molasses on a cold day, struggling, how much energy it took, how it colored everything I saw like looking through, tasting, smelling a perpetual nicotine cloud. It takes an incredible physical toll but worse than that, rapes them of enjoyment of life. To hate the very thing in life that I find so fascinating: difference. To be so scared and hide their overwhelming fear of what they don't understand in hatred.

Since I let my hatred go & learned to love the very thing I hated (me), my eyes have been opened to just how beautiful this world is. I see it through the eyes of a child, everything so fresh, so new, so alive! I marvel at the smallest things -- sunsets, sunrises, kids laughing, rollercoasters, sushi, mud squirting up between my toes like oil from the Earth -- and people marvel at my innocence. They ask me how I could never have done that before, seen that, tasted that. Sometimes it's not that I never had done it before, but that it was the first time I had experienced it; hatred is the difference between doing & experiencing, existing & living, jaded & innocence, bitter & gratitude.

Yeah. Hatred. I just don't get it.