Living Under A Reign Of Hate

As I sit here searching for inspiration, to no avail, I let my eyes wander a while. It is then that I realise my inspiration is sitting right before my eyes. This inspiration is being drawn from long-held feelings of anger, hate, bitterness and resentment towards one specific individual. One person I severely struggle to be civil with at the best of times. Maybe I should “get over it”. Maybe I should let go. But what if it is beyond me to ever forgive this person? Surely for all the blood I have spilled I am allowed this one exception. One person that stimulates every fibre in my body to stiffen when our eyes (very, very rarely) meet. Am I not owed at least that?

My loathing of her is seeded so deep within me that it has stemmed a whole new meaning of the word ‘hate’. This is not a word I merely use for descriptive purposes, no. This is an emotion so over-powering that I can no longer disguise it on the outside. She knows I despise her. And there will never be anything she can do to change that. No “sorry” will ever account for what she stole from me – my innocence. The pain she caused my family and I is insurmountable. This is one reason she will never be forgiven. Perhaps another cause of my austere alienation is that an apology on her behalf is implausible.

Why is one always expected to forgive endlessly? It’s not always a rite of passage, although some seem to think it is. Everyone is capable of forgiving, I know that. But to forgive someone is a choice; to receive forgiveness is a blessing. Blessings should be earned, not thrown around freely.

I sometimes wonder “Why her?”. Out of all the people I could hate and all the people I should hate, why her? It wasn’t her fault, what happened. She didn’t hurt me initially. Maybe if she did it wouldn’t be this hard to let go. As I said, she didn’t hurt me. But for months instead she stood there, shoulder to shoulder with the perpetrator, watching as I slowly broke into tiny fragments, shadowing the pieces as they fell, ensuring my pain remained in the darkness for as long as possible. An act which, to me, is completely immoral and repulsive.

To have the capacity to hate someone is a horrible trait. No words I ever write could justify the ruthlessness involved in hating someone. It is consuming and can plague your every thought. It can alter a mood within a brief moment. Maybe it is wrong of me to think so poorly of someone who, in her position, is so well-respected. But how can I respect someone that never showed an ounce of respect towards me? My words were twisted and manipulated so much so that the truth became tainted by the lack of belief in what I was saying. And how could I expect anyone to believe me when I didn’t even believe myself?

So what does it take to ignite this immense, indescribable feeling within us? I don’t believe we, as a race, were born to hate or hold grudges. It is not a gene which develops as it passes from generation to generation – we do not all have the ability to hate. People often abuse the word ‘hate’ in very pathetic circumstances. For example, today I received a surprise English test and exclaimed to my mom “I hate my teacher!”. That was a ridiculous exaggeration and a complete fail at attempting to use the word successfully. I believe that to feel hate with all that it entails you must first have experienced the most severe form of pain. Hate is not simply an external feeling; it is one which must be felt deep within before it ever surfaces.

We hate people for a countless number of reasons. We hate because we have been deceived. We hate because we have been betrayed. We hate because we have been stripped bare of our dignity and our self-respect. We hate because people we knew have changed. Conceivably sometimes we may even hate because someone we once knew has changed us.

Regardless of the background information, the results of these feelings remain the same. We are blinded by this reckless passion, and we then find ourselves drowning in this unprecedented rage which burns through our once thick skin, right to our core. The birthplace of our hate, our bitterness, our resentment and our torment. To hate someone is to concentrate negative thoughts and feelings towards them, and doing this so forcefully, in turn, has a negative impact on our own frame of mind. An underlying hint to us all that maybe we should learn to always forgive those who do us wrong. Not for their sake; for our own.