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.
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love