Hand Me Anger, I’ll Take Hatred

Hand Me Anger, I’ll Take Hatred

In the midst of shame, a knowing faded in from blackness – I confuse anger for hatred. A heartbeat instant later, of course, I begin to wonder why. That is how the dawn of a mourning is sometimes. It is not my own, this anger or hatred, but that of another, of few others, but some in my life and it is pointing at me. All I see is a long, bony finger protruding from a black shroud. There are words, but I can’t hear them, they feel only like the movement of sound waves of the continuous beating of a heavy club on its kill, pushing the air molecules aside to somehow let me feel its wrath. Sadly, they reach me and I resonate, now vibrating within me that wrath. That is how hatred towards me feels.

But perhaps it is not hatred, but anger. What are you, hatred? Can you show your face to me once so I can see you next to anger? But no, hatred would never appease me. So I dive into the deep pool of my mind and swim to the bottom and open the drain and I squeeze myself into the pipes where the only thing I ever meant to have live there were those things I filter out. But I know they are there still, clogging the circulation of fresh thoughts and there I dredge up some feelings of anger and hatred. Some are my own but most are those of others, why I’ve kept the latter is a mystery, but perhaps I saved them for now.

I try each of them on – there are four really – my anger, my hatred, anger towards me and hatred towards me. I try on my anger and my hatred, just to keep me honest, I have no problem discerning those two. But the other two, they have me befuddled, they are certainly different, yet they often feel the same. Both are upset at me, I have done something wrong – blaming me for your upset. Both want to punish me, or maybe, anger only sometimes wants to punish, but hatred always wants to punish. Punishment is repentance. Except, not with hatred. Have I finally seen the reflection of hatred? With hatred, there is no repentance. Oh hatred, you blame me for the upset within you, you want to punish me and no amount of punishment will ever be enough to be forgiven.

I have carried the punishment of others’ anger and hatred towards me. The burden is the confusion. At least with anger, I can sometimes get the glimmer of hope of letting that burden go. Not so, with hatred, the burden we can never rid ourselves of. I have accepted these burdens in the false hope that the more burden I carry the more it frees the other person up to find some love for me. In that, I have nearly deemed myself as unforgivable by others. Even sadder, when someone was handing me anger, I was accepting hatred.