So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part three in my blog about hate. We left off last week with a moment of realization: Hate is not built into the situations where I feel hateful, the seed of hate lies in my heart. So, the question DeJour is a repeat of last weeks question, asked again, with greater wisdom, as the starting place:
If it hurts so bad, why do I gotta be such a hater?
Once I saw it was me, myself, that was creating the hate, it was time to go back and re-ask, why oh why do I do this hating when it hurts soooo bad? What are the hidden benefits? What is my self thinking?
So, one of the problems of getting all out of order in this Interruption of Our Regularly Scheduled Program is we have skipped over a few big contemplations that serve as building blocks for this hate clarifying moment. So we do need a little pre/re-cap:
A while back I was contemplating a question: Why do I create a self anyway? What does it accomplish? I decided that my sense of self helps me sell a lie, smooth the narrative of this world over a bit, it whitewashes, chooses what facts to include and which to ignore. The self is like a storyteller, and it is usually telling stories where I am the hero…
How is my storyteller self making me a hero this time?
I started thinking about those stories you hear sometimes — about gay people who are homophobic, black people who are racist; I feel like they must hate something in themselves to tell these types of stories. I live in this city, I am a New Yorker, but I hate New Yorkers. I am in the same boat. Maybe something I hate in myself is at the root of my hate for this city and its inhabitants.
I see this city, and its people, as rude, careless, inconsiderate, violent, vengeful, self absorbed. All those traits on clear display at just one traffic light, with 100,000 horns a’blaring. But what happens if I look inwards? If I internalize?
The truth is I am way worse than those honkers. Honkers hurt strangers and passerbyers, for a fleeting moment, with their carelessness, inconsideration, violence, vengefulness and self absorption. I have been careless and inconsiderate with my flesh and blood (see blog about my brother or this one about my Mom ), family who feel the sting of my actions so acutely. I have been violent to neighbors (I once locked my nextdoor neighbor in a rabbit’s cage for trying to steal my brother as a playmate, blog to come) and vengeful with friends (see this story about Candy and our cycle of abuse), people who have cared for and supported me. I have been too self absorbed to see the pain of people in my own community (see this blog about a store owner in my old hood), shirked responsibility in the most intimate corners of my life (see blog about my ex lover).
This is my darkside, the Alana I don’t want to be, the stories I rather not tell myself. So I tuck these personal tidbits away and I do the easy stuff from day-to-day. I act cool and friendly in shops, always give cars ahead the right of way, I never ever honk; self ignores the little nasties and builds ‘evidence’ of that sweet, kind, go lucky Alana, the hero I want to be. Hero needs an anti hero, and who better than the pushers, honker, litterbugs, ya know all the stuff I’m not. They are the monsters — the careless, inconsiderate, violent, vengeful, self absorption fuckers out there. No need to look inside, to scratch the veneer off Hero Alana.
But this city puts a spotlights on those traits in myself, the dark ones I hate. When I am in SF, surrounded by warm, considerate, easy going people, it’s easy to be those things myself. That is the Alana I want, so I act the result, put myself in circumstances where I can be hero Alana. But here in NY, with each shove, honk, sneer and eyeroll — each perceived slight — my heart burns with thoughts of vengeance, destruction, and punishment. And as I imagine publicly whipping the the offender, it’s hard not to catch glimpses of carelessness, inconsideration, violence, vengefulness and self absorption in myself.
The mechanics are so simple really, how could I have hidden the truth from myself for so long? I create standards of hero-ish behaviors that flatter myself at the expense of others. But, my storytelling self needs more punch to sell the hero alana pitch. Enter hate, to really punctuate the difference between myself and the villains, to make sure I don’t become one of those villains myself. But, don’t my murder/whipping/fire from the sky fantasies prove I have become the villain? No, no, my mind, my self, can’t handle that story, so I add another dash of hate, it has worked before. Then I add a pinch of delusion, that my rage is righteous, to protect the city, and others, I am a punishing angle not a violent, shoving thug…
As much as it hurts, hate’s deep, dark, hidden benefit is that is hides the truth about myself, of my own darkside that I don’t want to see. But, I do see. Like a bully that has been stood-up to, like a night light to illuminate the shadows, somehow with just a glimpse of the truth, my chest became lighter and I could literally feel the weight of my hate beginning to subside.
So is it over? Hate-filled alana dead and gone? I don’t know, really only time will tell. I still want to go home to SF, I still rather not live in NY, but the hate, for the moment anyway, seems to have lost its bite. Afterall, even if I have a long way to go, I actually do want to be a ‘good person’, and in the cold, harsh, light of day, can I really believe being a hater is going to get me there?