There is a particular kind of hatred
that does not arrive like fire.
It arrives quietly.
A name appearing on a screen.
A familiar sentence
wearing a different coat.
The room changes.
Someone stops laughing.
Someone checks the time.
Someone begins measuring
the distance between a voice
and the edge of something.
And there it is again—
that old black animal
dragged into the room
and left at everyone\'s feet.
I know that animal.
I have fed it before.
I know the shape of its ribs,
the sound it makes
when it scratches at the door,
the strange intimacy
of knowing exactly
how dark a mind can become
when it turns against itself.
Perhaps that is why
I cannot look away.
And perhaps that is why
I am beginning to resent it.
Not the sorrow itself.
The repetition.
The way despair can become
a ritual performed in front of witnesses,
until everyone learns their part:
the frightened one,
the reassuring one,
the one who stays awake,
the one who says please,
the one who pretends
not to be afraid.
Meanwhile, the darkness
sits comfortably at the table.
It makes jokes.
It learns the names
of the things that frighten us.
It discovers
how much silence can hold.
And I remember being there—
how easy it is
to believe your pain
is the only thing in the room.
How difficult it is to notice
the faces reflected in it.
That is the thought
I cannot make peace with:
how suffering can become
so enormous
that it begins to cast shadows
over everyone else\'s lives.
How one person\'s storm
can make an entire house
forget what sunlight looked like.
I have survived storms of my own.
Not gracefully.
Not heroically.
Just stubbornly enough
to still be here.
And sometimes I wonder
if that is where the bitterness comes from—
from having once stood
at the same precipice
and looking back now
to see how many people
were standing behind me,
quietly terrified
that I would fall.
I wish I could say
this has made me gentler.
Instead, something colder
has begun growing in me.
Not hatred for the wounded.
Something worse.
Hatred for the way
wounds can become weapons
without ever being meant as such.
Hatred for the invisible tax
of loving someone
who keeps disappearing
and leaving everyone else
to search the dark for them.
Hatred for the part of me
that still understands.
Because understanding
does not make me kind.
Sometimes it only means
I know exactly
what I am looking at.
And I hate that I know.
I have spent years
learning how to survive the dark.
I did not expect
to one day resent the people
who keep bringing it home.