a thousand miles

i wish that this post was going to be step-by-step directions for how to eradicate a cloud of black hatred in your heart, but it's not.

i have an overabundance of hatred inside of me. for many things -- there's the justifiable hatred, for people and things that are easily defined as very very bad. the ones that make you feel good because you hate them. i have a probably less than (or more than?) healthy degree of self-loathing. i get that particulary new york blend of madness when it comes to the tourists who get in my way when i'm late for work, people who walk in front of you slowly, weaving back and forth like drunkards so you can't pass them. loud, obnoxious, pretentious hipsters, with their fedora hats and 80s vests.

most of my hatred these days, though, focuses on one person. i've tried everything to talk myself out of it, pretend that it's all her fault, that i'm blameless, that she drove me to it, but the fact remains -- as a friend once misspoke, "i hate her with the white hot intensity of a thousand miles." i know it's irrational, and i know it's too much, and i know i should just put her out of my mind. i always think it will make me feel better to tell people about WHY i hate her, the horrible, inane, ignorant things that she does and says, but it generally just makes me feel nauseous and ineloquent and crude.

why do i hate her? i think you must know that feeling -- someone you would rather have never even met. you think that the two of you can't be more different. you pride yourself on being their polar opposite. and then they say something -- 'oh, that's MY favorite movie too!' it's more than a cringe, it's like an emotional seizure. you don't want them to like what you like, you don't want them to have even HEARD of the things you like. those are YOUR things, not theirs. i hate hearing her talk about MY things in such possessive, pseudo-intellectual tones, thinking no one will notice that she's quoting straight from the new york times movie review. she passes herself off as the things that i'd like to be, and when i hear her say them out loud, i want to run up and pull away the curtain, expose her as lying and preening and flattering and most of all...less than me.

that's what makes me ashamed. i want it proven. i want to win. i want a certificate that says i'm better. i try to convince myself that i want good things for everyone in the world, but i don't. i want her to fail. i want her to fail. and i want to succeed in all that she failed in, and then succeed in things that she would never even try.

it's a horrible way to live. and it's a horrible way to be, to feel all kindness and generosity in you is corroding like a smoker's lungs. i'd like to think that someday she will not even cross my mind, or, if she does, that i will think kindly of her. but if my soul is a pair of smoker's lungs, then i am still smoking a pack a day.