Your personal Tumblr journey starts here
Normalize hating the things you love. Normalize loving the things you hate. Existence is complicated, emotion is complicated. It doesn’t have to make sense, not to you nor to anyone else. Things can be objectively bad and make you happy. Things can be objectively good and make you sad. The only thing abstract concepts like “hate” and “love” are defined by is how brave you are, how willing you are to challenge the way that people use language, and the ways that emotions can oppose each other even within the same host.
My favorite show is, admittedly, awful. The writing is bad, the characters are bad, the art is bad, it’s awful. But in the same breath I say that, that it is so objectively terrible and that I hate to associate myself with it, I can say that I love it. It’s like a warm hug on a cold day and even if the source isn’t great, the warmth is, and I love it. Even things that hurt you, that you hate for hurting you, you can still love. I love the smell of cigarette smoke, it's warm and tangy and I’ve always loved the way fire smells in all of its forms. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, it killed my grandma and still filled her room after she was gone, it almost killed my dad too.
I love that I’m figuring things out, that I’m trying to heal. I also hate it. I feel like a feral cat in an alley and even though I know the hands reaching for me are just trying to help, all I know how to deal with, anticipate, is harm. I love that I’m not in pain anymore, but I hate it at the same time because the pain is how I learned how to function. It was my motivation, my drive, and without it, without the stabbing fear in my chest, I don’t know how to motivate myself.
Hate and love are closer than most would like to admit, barely a hair’s breadth apart. I’ve heard, before, that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but rather apathy. After all, the opposite of strong feelings is no feelings, but I feel like that doesn’t do their closeness justice. It’s hard to describe, but both feel like drowning, just different. Love is peaceful, it still hurts but it’s willing, painful and pleasant, suicidal. Hate is anger, it’s thrashing in the water as you fight for your life, you don’t want to die but you’re not strong enough to break the surface. Both are painful, both can be deadly if you fall too deep, but from the outside both are the same.
Emotions are fickle things, even the strongest changing with the tides. When I’m with my friends I hate my parents and love myself, but when I’m with my parents I hate myself and love them. It’s complicated, and hard, but life wouldn’t be nearly as colorful if not painted with our emotions. I’m not sure why I wrote this, just, understanding I assume.