The intimate intersection between love & hate
On drunk texts, the sentimentalization of being toxic, and why when I look at her all I see is myself
‘You might tell me to go and fuck myself but do you want a drink tonight? Fair enough if you want to tell me to go and shove a pole up my arse though’ I typed as I fell into the wall at Tottenham Court Road, burger sauce blushing my cheeks as I choked down an £18 burger from Soho. My superfluous and outrageous display of immaturity resulted in me sweating and shaking in my local coffee shop the following day; I thought I was past this stage of my life but evidently not. A shamefully normal message for me to send half cut, and no amount of head bashing will prevent me from sending something similar again. Desperation dressed up as reaching out, an act I should’ve wrapped up in my teenage years is depressingly following me into my late twenties. I have a fundamental inability to behave in front of people I’m emotionally undecided on with maturity and grace. I will be firm and unmoved in my boundaries, only to see the bottom of my glass before talking myself round to a drunk olive branch on a Friday night. Will have a measured and appropriate encounter during a run in at a party, only to start provocatively dancing for attention a couple of hours later. I am Carrie Bradshaw, turning up on the doorstep and uninvitingly lecturing them on what I actually meant, plastering my behaviour with apologies, and then sending attention-seeking emails with my eyes closed before slamming my laptop shut and smoking a cigarette to romanticse my instability. My unrestrained desire to foolishly reconnect gets me into trouble a lot, but only with the people who don’t want me. Once I cut someone off, they’re off. I’ve been dropped by friends for being too absent and avoidant, called out for being cold & callous, and ignored heartfelt paragraphs from exes trying to sort things out. I can be bitter, blithe, and cruel beyond measure, so why am I so performative, pathetic and persistent when it comes to the Mr Bigs of my world?
Why can I not be myself?
I remember when I was 8 years old I fell out with my best friend Ella and my mum came into my room to talk about it. My first memory of being truly upset about a relationship breakdown, something that felt like more but I didn’t understand what. I tried to ignore her, instead I started crying and shouting when she asked how I felt, I stood up onto my bed and threw my stuffed toy dog as hard as I could across the room and cried ‘I don’t care, she’s stupid and horrible!’
‘You’re upset and crying, which means you do care Lol, you care a lot’.
I’ve had many an embarrassing adult style ‘dog throws’ over the years; kicked a traffic cone and nearly broke my foot, yelled out the side of a yellow before throwing up all the way home, fought in a club toilet and wrote profanities on a front door in lipstick only to feel bad and wipe it off as the sun came up. My mum’s words have always stayed with me when I’ve tried to unpick my shameful behaviour; why am I pushing someone that I care about away when I get hurt? Yet I only behave like this with people I feel emotionally unstable around. I thought it was self-preservation, hating them outloud and fighting back means they can’t hurt me, but I think that’s just my therapist talking through my keyboard. I think the intersection between love and hate is a mirror; an intimate gap of can’t live, can’t live without, sandwiched between admiration and distain. A mirror of people in whom all I see is myself.
I’m drawn to people like me, those who are peculiar and sharp, creative and broken, but mostly those who are angry. Who went from throwing stuffed animals across their bedrooms to chairs and wine glasses. Those who throw, shout and cast hate, I can’t help but stand in the firing line and watch it explode like fireworks against the black sky that is life. Hate can be full of colour & life, encompassing and enthralling, a mask for all the emotion we can’t feel, say or admit. At 8 years old I kept crystals by my bedside because I liked the colours, now I keep people. The love I had for people that I’ve shattered by destroying the mirror as I hated seeing myself in them and how they hurt me, I’ve since picked up the shards and put them under pressure in an attempt to turn them back, like lab farmed diamonds. Maybe that’s why my life feels so artificial sometimes, because I take reflections of the past and apply pressure to the people I think I want, rather than digging in the mud to find one that truly sparkles. I think it’s all in an effort to fix myself, but I get more dopamine fixing someone else.
If I follow the invisible red string through the past years of my life it drips in adoration and animosity, blood all beaten from the same heart crafted from life’s ying & yangs. Those I like and dislike have no stops on the string’s path, only those I loved and hated so much they destroyed me. They’re not stops, rather wreckage sites preserved as tourist hotspots for my readers to visit in my work.
I believe in the last meeting theory, that you will continue to run into someone until your intended storyline runs out, that the universe will smash you together until you have fulfilled the purpose in one another’s lives. I don’t see my old best friend anymore despite living 5 minutes from one another, nor my ex-boyfriend who lives next to my local coffee shop, yet I always see the reflections in every glass window and shimmering puddle. Maybe because I am still so childish the stars are waiting for me to learn my lesson and to stop making such a fool of myself. I don’t have to look up at the stars, but I do because they make me feel free. Free to run as far away from my life as possible, but I know that if I see her in my reflection I’m still close to home.
Everytime I go to close the intersection, I am faced with the reality I will have to stop looking in the mirror. Lose the people that have my eyes looking back at me and make me feel less alone. I don’t like being the only one who sets off fireworks, there’s a subconscious comfort in hearing them explode in the distance. Maybe I keep these people because they make me feel better about the worst parts of myself. I love them to comfort my flaws, and hate them to hold myself to a higher standard.
I suppose that’s also why they keep me. I feel I’ve sentimentalized toxic relationships, or explained them. I can’t stay away because all I see in them is myself.
LB X
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