A CONVERSATION: FROM LOVE TO HATE

GENDER ISSUES. THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES IT TOOK ME TO WRITE THIS, ASKED BY A FRIEND WHO WORKS FOR RAINBOW IDENTITY. SENSE TO JUST BE GENUINE IN MY WRITING WITHOUT CONTEMPLATING THE BEST.

A  CONVERSATION: FROM LOVE TO HATE

My mother has always said to me, “Hate begets hate.” Self love is the one thing I've come to learn builds a strong personality in each and every individual. The process to achieving self love never actually begins with the individual; society cradles you, family cradles you, from the day you are born to the day your awake to the challenges of being part of the bigger picture. The bigger picture being the society you have to become a part of, not out of choice but because that’s just the way the world turns.

 

Oh yeah, ‘From Love to Hate’, what inspires such a curious subject? Think back to your childhood; we have all lived through a time when caring was all that mattered, we never saw the difference in each other. Being a child is such a beautiful thing because all you know is to love and be loved. A child is taught unity, support, care, love and so many other multitudes of positive values and norms. Is not amazing how actively we go out of our way to teach these positive values. We communicate and reinforce them in so many different ways with various mediums. We deliberately teach love to our children, but hold on, there is a catch... In the same way we uphold this immensely desirable value, we also contradict it with the hate we teach. Let’s see, the idea you are taught to love from childhood is to carry this value through a lifetime as a skill to everything possible, is it not?

 

Let me share a personal experience to just provoke thought.

I have a friend, well, once upon a time! If only I knew where to find her today. She was the best thing to have ever happened to me then, I was 8 years and she was 9 when I last saw her. We had the best of times. But then my aunt one day came at us as we kicked a soccer ball and just got furious in a way we thought she was about to spew fire from her mouth with fury. “This thing is sick, get out! If you play with her again you will catch her demons.”

 

Now let’s correct something here. See my friend; my best friend was never a ‘she’ to me or to the many other friends ‘he’ had. Yes we all knew she was biologically female. Still, in our eyes she proved to be a loving boy who really knew how to make the gang have epic great times. My aunt, the woman who told us God loves all his children had deterred me from being with my friend. She told me he was evil and that he was an evil seed. That is when I first learned hate. See my friend here acted like a boy, played with boys, sounded like a boy, really nothing about him suggested anything besides that he WAS a boy.

 

Nothing stayed the same since, actually everything changed. We; my other friends and I had just learned to hate and hate in the worst kind of way. We didn’t want to sit in the same chair he did, we didn’t want to eat with the same utensils, we were afraid because of what we were told. That fear became hate and rage; we scorned him, called him names and made his experience on the playground traumatic. It gets worse; we felt good about it. There was a time I dared him to take off his pants and show us what he had in between his legs. I know, awful of me right! A friend of mine once, now all he was reduced to was scum under my shoe.

 

My ‘different’ friend had to learn society was no place for him. We all turned him away. The one community that he is supposed to associate with, the only society he knew, his true origin, yes we taught him to hate himself because he was wrong in every way and we were right. His family taught him to hate himself more; he was told to start acting like other girls, as it would be expected. ‘Expected’! Huh! Maybe that’s where it all goes wrong.

 

‘From love to hate’, we were best of friends. Suddenly I learned that people had colour, disabilities, accents, nationalities, sexualities the list is endless. In learning all these, the same people who taught me love also taught me to hate in accordance to differences. The hate begot betrayal and that in turn built self hate in me for the hate I had for others. My society taught me to hate. This is true for everyone else who hates; hates others, hates themselves.

 

We went on to junior school and I never saw him again. I have never forgiven myself, and I still think about the whole horrible scenario. I find myself smiling at the good memories we have but they are almost always overshadowed by the terrible person I have been to my friend and so many other people. Yes I hate myself as a result. I learned to love to hate.

 

Everyone knew love as a powerful element that drove all things positive from relationships, interaction, and success among others. We then were taught to notice that we were ‘apparently’ not the same, which in my opinion forged the hate that brought about war, violence, murder and all those other terrible crimes to humanity. Everyone now hates themselves and they don’t even know it because they are not what is expected or considered better, prestigious and normal.

 

Some would say transgender, others intersex, white, Hindu, royal, female, able bodied, poor, middle class, married, should I go on? I know two things, I love, and we are all human; we are the same.

 

Stop preaching hate!

 

Ludo Kitso Senome (Mr.)

Author's Note

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO OPENLY REVIEW AND COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE

Reviews

[sonnie ibadah]

well, this is very thought-provoking. i believe we all have those moments in our lives when we just sit and reminisce the past memories we had when we were younger...so innocent and full of life. we were so simple minded but happy. the world was an endless rainbow of colors through our eyes and not the seven shades of grey we now see. Our smiles were genuine and our love was pure...like you and your friend, we all believed we were the same regardless of our skin color or gender, social class or tribe or any of that bullshit. But somewhere along the line (although some of us can't remember when exactly) the curtain was drawn open and everything just changed. And now ere just these sad resentful creatures that questions every act of good intent and oh-so full of cynicism! i don't know about you, but i sometimes wish to go back to those rainbow days. thanks for sharing ;) p
ps; please don't mind my looooong blabbing :)