What I Hate—and Why It Matters

I got hit with something today that I didn’t expect.

It was the strong feeling of:

I hate this.

I hate what happened to me.

I hate that I was violated so terribly by a person I loved so deeply and gave myself to so intimately.

I hate that I have a blog full of writing about it—

detailed accounts of the lies, manipulation, abuse, the discovery,

and the slow, painful act of creating gold

from the most emotionally and psychologically painful experience of my life.

I hate that, for my own self-respect and protection,

I had to weld the door shut on someone I genuinely enjoyed.

Someone I laughed with—easily, naturally, in a way that felt real.

Someone I shared real moments with.

Not surface-level, not passing time, but moments that felt like they meant something.

Someone I hiked 107 miles in the remote wilderness with—

step by step, mile by mile, in a place where you don’t get to fake who you are.

Someone who made sure I crossed treacherous, snow-topped mountain ridges safely.

Who walked beside me in places that required trust.

Who I trusted with my physical safety, not just my heart.

Someone I experienced life with in a way that felt grounded and alive and true.

And I hate that all of that had to become irrelevant.

Not because it wasn’t real in those moments,

but because it existed alongside something that wasn’t.

I hate that I don’t get to keep any version of that.

That I don’t get to separate the good from the harm and hold onto it cleanly.

I hate that the same person who showed up in those moments

is the person I had to close the door on completely.

I hate all the times he did terrible things and I stayed.

I hate how I turned the doubt onto myself—

questioned my instincts, my intuition, my needs—

and kept choosing to believe in him.

I hate that there is absolutely no way to go back to even a casual acquaintance relationship.

I hate that the timing of everything coincided with my dad’s death.

I hate that I am a point of reference for someone who was complicit in causing me so much pain.

I hate that this all happened to me.

I hate the injustice of all of it.

And I hate that I feel this hatred for the situation,

because it’s an emotion that feels unfamiliar in me—

and unwelcome.

It doesn’t make me bad.

It doesn’t mean I’m going backwards.

It doesn’t mean I’m holding an unreasonable grudge against someone.

It means I am human

in an inhumane situation,

still integrating the layers of pain I was fed that were disguised as love.

And nothing about me or how I showed up

was deserving of what happened.

No one is.

And after I let myself feel it—really feel it,

acknowledge it, honor it—

the feeling passed.

Not because it wasn’t real,

but because I didn’t fight it.

And I don't live there.