“There is a very thin line between love and hate”
Those contraries are the essence of our existence.
How easy it is to jump from the first to the latter, somehow interchangeably.
I was 13 the first time those two emotions were put in one sentence.
A note was given to me by my Chinese classmate, and on it was an unknown script to decrypt.
What does it say, I asked.
His voice still echoes in my head, almost 20 years later.
I love you and I hate you, he answered.
Completely surprised by those words, I laughed and asked how that was even possible?
He loved me, but hated the part that didn’t love him back.
At that early stage in life, he knew and understood what most of us live and die without even touching.
Understanding that two complete opposite emotions can exist at the same time and towards the same person.
At that moment I made a promise to myself. Never to hate in the name of love.
I knew I would love and respect those who loved me but also respect those who couldn’t.
We live for love, or at least I know I do. And another point that I’m also sure about is that I’m incapable of hate. It eats me up to be upset for even a few minutes. It feels like my bones shrink and crumble.
This taught me to let go of my ego and never hold grudges no matter the reason.
Something I thought I was very proud of until it dawned on me that somehow along the way of learning to lose my ego, I also lost myself.
I am always the one to say sorry regardless of the fact that a lot of times the mistakes were not mine.
I never waited for a call I always made it!
I never awaited the hello but always initiated a conversation knowing that it would lead to good friendships.
I was the one to try to fix things and thus always always tried harder.
I never let go of an issue or a person before understanding the full picture.
I need to know why that bond broke.
Why that perfect energy disappeared.
Why love turned cold, and worse into a raging volcano of hatred.
I always keep on trying, stay connected, refuse to let go for I have learned to manage that self-destructing thing called ego.
But maybe here again I’ve stretched the line.
In my quest to conquer ego and destroy it, I managed to destroy myself for I no longer know where to draw the line. The line between love and hate, that of life and death.
As love and hate coexist, maybe the ego and the self need to coexist too for a balanced life.
A life that is not built on mere sacrifices for somehow not everyone deserves it.
Some people need to be hurt to understand how badly it feels.
But that just isn’t me, and I hope it never will be.
What I have realized today is that I am hurt, deeply, maybe even to the point of no return.
I don’t know who I am, what I want, and somehow even lost notion of who I used to be.
I had dreams and ambitions.
So many theories that needed testing and ideologies that needed spreading.
Now I’m blank. No ink stains me, nor paint colors my existence.
Just a clean slate, with no ego nor a self.