On Hate #It'sOn

Calling someone names, hurling insults, partaking in ad hominem is a form of self-hate. It belies a spirit so filled with loathing it needs an outlet much like a valve bursting with unbearable pressure. It blows its top, spewing toxins in all direction, in a desperate attempt to hone in on the object of its wrath. Itself. In an attempt of self-preservation, it finds instead a self image, a lookalike, a doppelgänger. It is quite a sad thing to behold in life. That is not a scathing indictment or a flippant observation. It is quite a profound statement actually, if I do say so myself. Lately, I have been the subject of the most inhumane level of abuse from none other than my own family. My flesh and blood. Much to my surprise, my chagrin, it turns out my sisters don't think well of me. I had no idea. All these years, I thought we were close, a unit, a safe zone of refuge. I was patently wrong,  dear reader. Not only do my sisters not feel the same way about me as I felt towards them, they hate me. There is a big difference between love and hate. Hate is a strong word. It is reserved for the highest order of crimes against humanity; the nazis, the Hutu of Rwanda, the reclusive militias of American backwaters. On the news, we are encouraged to hate terrorists like Isis, and Hamas, who "hate our way of life". The irony is we don't need to go far to encounter hate. It is close by and ever-present. It was staring me in the face, hidden in plain sight. I just never saw it. Maybe I didn't want to. I was willfully ignorant perhaps. I was so consumed with saving my family, including my hateful sisters from destitution, I didn't have time to observe their distasteful ways, their unbecoming gaze. Much less the space to grieve the passing of my Dad at the tender age of 23, right before I finished graduate school. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It takes your breath away. How can I be so blind? How did I let this happen to me? Why did my loved ones, family and friends, not move to stop it? How can they stand by on the sidelines and watch me suffer day in, day out without so much as a reprieve? What do I do now? I did what any sane person would do.True to my generation X ethos,I fought the machine. Heck, I am still fighting. I cut out my family like a surgeon removes narcotic tissue. I must save the healthy limbs, the cosmic heart. I proceeded then to examine my friends, collected over many years since childhood like found treasure. Guess what, dear reader? They have become corrupted. Like a poison that seeps under the skin and hits the circulation, they are dead to me, stricken with sepsis. I dropped them, too. Perhaps more for their sake than mine. Don't trust, verify. Right? In this case, my friends are unverifiable. They have become a closed-sourced system, cryptic, guarded and psychologically demented. No amount of super-prompting yields a humane response. Just sputtering of quips and nonsense. The machine at work. I don't know about you but I cannot live this way. I will not succumb to hate. On this hill I will die. I am battling the great forces of evil, hoping against hope to save myself and my son. I am Bitcoin, he is Lightening, I tell myself. We must live, we have to survive. The fate of the world depends on it. No pressure. Wish me luck.