Empathy

There are times that I really hate not being able to truly hate anyone.

It seems that I am incapable of truly hating a person, regardless of what they've done. I don't think its that I've never had any really terrible transgressions perpetuated against me, for I have. I've been screwed in the past and I expect to be screwed in the future; such is the nature of life. But I can't permanently hold it against anyone.

For example, there's a friend of my roommate's coincidentally also named Michelle. This woman can be one of the loudest and most obnoxious people I know - I can't stand obnoxious people. She's also very selfish and overbearing at times; one of those people who can't be interested in anything that doesn't directly involve her. There's a picture of her in a collage on top of the stereo here in the living room: she's sitting at a slot machine (big gambling freak) caught in what appears to be an unplanned picture as she's not smiling. When I look at that picture, where I should feel disgust or maybe anger I only feel sadness. She has a pretty good life, but she hasn't always - she had a very rough first marriage. Also, although she doesn't realize it, she and her husband have a very heavy addiction to gambling that I fear will be the ruination of the both of them. All in all, she's not a bad person...so I can't hate her.

Another example would be my roommate's kid, Elizabeth. Tonight we got into one hell of a screaming match over something or another (the reasons were stupid and immaterial - things just escalated into loudness) and I ended up hiding out in my room until she went to bed. This sort of thing has happened before and I'm sure it'll happen again, as she is a very spoiled and selfish only child that is unable to take anyone else's feelings or desires into consideration as well as deriving great joy from finding the right buttons to press to aggravate someone whenever she's bored. But yet here I am, only a couple of hours later and I can feel no malice towards her despite the fact that I know this will happen again. She's fifteen years old and still hasn't hit puberty - a late bloomer if I've ever seen one. She's overweight and not particularly attractive in the common sense of the word. This combined with her social issues are going to give her a hell of a time in the next few years...so I can feel nothing but sympathy for her, not to mention more than a little affection after being here for almost six years and seeing her grow up.

My roomate's boyfriend: Another loud and obnoxious one, this guy isn't the brightest of bulbs and has disrupted the comfortable environment I've been living in. Yet I know he's had a troubled past including some jail time and is doing his best to try to make it despite being an ex-con.

My brother-in-law: Dumber than hell, gives my nephew/godson short shrift in favor of his own entertainment. Very selfish and inconsiderate of my sister. But I know he's not a bad guy and it must be rough living in a house full of women, not to mention knowing that you're just not as intellectually sharp as those around you.

Even this guy from high school whose name I cannot remember anymore: He would constantly bully me around, me being this skinny little geekboy with a smartass sense of humor and him being the big pseudo-redneck with a large group of friends. When I made the mistake of making an offhand comment about him in front of his girlfriend's mother (a friend of my mother's), he sucker-punched me in the face in a bowling alley parking lot, leaving me feeling completely impotent and humiliated as he and his friends cackled like howler monkeys. Yet looking back, I'm sure he had his troubles too - as I remember it, he was never the best-dressed of kids, plus the whole high school mentality will fuck up anyone's sense of values. So I can't even hate him.

There have been so many times that I've wished I could just be like others and truly hate someone, hate them with a passion, despise them with vigor and a raging fire of pure unadulterated hatred. But the most I can muster up is perhaps a strong dislike. I can hate concepts, I can hate ideas, I can hate actions...but I can't hate people.

Could be worse, I suppose...I could hate everyone and be a polititian.