It happens more often than I like to admit. There’s an angry inner voice that seems to have a mind of its own.
“I hate everybody!” the voice hisses angrily in my head.
For years, I’ve joked that there’s a wide-ranging conspiracy to make me a misanthrope — and I fear it’s working. The joke has been my attempt to reconcile two things which can’t be reconciled:
— I choose to love others, for their benefit and my own.
— I hate so many of the people around me every day.
Those two things can’t be reconciled, so I make jokes about it. The more contact I have with humans, the more I feel like a misanthrope — and I hate feeling that way. It makes me feel so wrong inside, but something in me wants to lash out — needs to lash out — as though I’m defending myself.
And I think I finally understand why.
Midlife becomes big crisis when our self-deception stops working
Watching kids on a Friday night reminds me of struggle to belong
What if other people see you or hear you differently than you do?
If romantic love is mental illness, do many of us want to be cured?
Film hurts when I hear, ‘I’ve seen what we can be like together’