Love and hate are not opposites

It's hard remembering who you are

Sometimes the only way to survive is to focus on our passion. Life is just a series of well placed distractions, a billboard, and a tragedy here or there. The only way to make it in this island is to distract ourselves long enough to forget about our own fundamental insignificance. We build these little distracting devices throughout our lives; these things like work, or cars, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

So when it comes to relationships and love, it's not very surprising that we develop coping methods:

"You know, it's not you... It's me"

We further develop phrases that become so cliché, so as to avoid telling people that we just don't care anymore:

"Ah... I love you, but I'm not in love with you."(let them down easy)

So you see, we are creatures of habit, and we will therefore rely on our ritualistic methods to get us through day-to-day life. When we encounter something difficult like breaking up with someone, we tend to fall back on these instinctive distractive habits.

Hate, is only a different form of love. One can't really say the opposite of love is hate for the same reason you cannot say that the devil is the opposite of God. Different ends of the spectrum, yes indeed, but not polar. Because we cannot accept the fact that the significant other has gotten over the relationship, we channel the love we have for that person in the form of anger. "Why won't you love me??" So as to not look unsophisticated or weak, the hate comes out of the individual to mask the love that burns deep within their heart. The shift to the opposite end of the spectrum only denotes the deep love that one really has for someone.

Apathy, however, is a totally different story. Apathy is truly the opposite of both love and hate, alike. The capacity to not feel animosity towards someone – the capacity to not feel a burning passion for someone… That is truly the opposite of love, is truly the opposite of hate.

I realized the title of this node was true in my sophomore year of high school. I have a hard time sharing things unless I am sarcastic, so here we go.

I don't know if it would be considered love, but a certain someone I deeply cared about fell out of favor. She was my John Kerry; fit for the job but fell frustratingly short. It was spring time and we had avoided eye contact for a while. The texts that said "I don't care" piled up. When I laughed uncontrollably, I could see her face and stop. Then I realized what I had been denying the whole time, I'm in hate! The rains brought new life and I grew more and more smitten with hate. Oh the feeling of young hate; so new, so fresh! Every time I saw her face I cringed. Every time she walked by I so desperately tried to repress my feelings so I wouldn't punch her in the face. The games we play to show each other that we care less and the backhanded insults we tell in earshot of the other were unlike anything else. The conversations that I had with myself, "Why did you have to go out with that guy? He was 21, thats like a 6 year difference. That's not legal, even in West Virginia. I hate you, I hate the way you walk, the way you talk, and especially the way you raise your hand like a queen in a parade waves."

In seriousness, love is not the opposite of hate. They are both passions that you can not easily stop. Apathy is the opposite of both. It's strange wanting to be hated by someone, but it showed they cared in the first place. It reminds me of what the great Jack Terricloth said about grudges, "All the people that you hate are the people that you know the best. Years and years from now, who's going to remember you real fake name, who's going to remember how to spell your fake address? It's not your lover, it's not your best friend, it's the person who hated you the most."

My final comment is the more I hate, the more hope I have. It's a bad feeling, but it's a passionate one. If I'm so passionate about hating someone, than I can be just as passionate loving someone. That's how I know they aren't opposites, because they both share the same capacity to care.