Dear Roger: There is Only One Person I Hate

Hate is a powerful word to me, it means that you wish horrible things upon a person, that you revile them to the point of wishing them dead. I don't like the word Hate at all and I try to discourage its use, much like I try to discourage much of the hostility and vitriol I see. I don't know when I became such a semi-Buddhist, peace loving, pseudo-hippy, but I have found myself being the one who has in many situations been the person calling for a measure of calm and a reduction in the number of expletives flung about. Its not that I'm worried about being sued, Hell! anyone who sued me would find that they would need to get in line behind my student loan debt, the house the ex let foreclose,(I was still on the note, even with the quit claim), and all the general bills and BS I have facing me each month. It would be like suing quicksand.
No, its that in the grand scheme of things, I don't see why the hate is being rolled out for things that are ridiculous,irresponsible, and mean-spirited, but not hate worthy.
People are hurting in my small little microcosm, they are worried about people who mean a lot to them and they are looking for someone to blame, but adding fuel to the fire via hate is only making the quagmire of horrible emotions thicker and more negative.
I spent nearly 30 years hating a person. He never knew it. He never even knew who I was and I could not have picked him out of a line up, but I knew what he did and the repercussions of his actions changed my life and me in ways that you cannot even fathom. But, I felt my hate was justified at the time. This person had killed someone important to me and I had to face the end result of that every time I went to school and home for years. It haunted me. It was a big reason I became a cop, a big reason I carried anger in me for drunks and a big reason I carried the burden of hate, and he never even knew it. He went on and lived a long, most likely happy life and died just recently a very old man.
My hate aged me, ate me from the inside, twisted me and took years of happiness from me. I never realized it until I some little hippy chick counselor I got sent to for PTSD (after I went off on the Chief of Police in a meeting of the Domestic Violence Action Committee when he said that battered women don't really want a way out)scratched open a wound that had been festering for close to 30 years and got it bleeding.
The thing about wounds like that, sometimes you have to open them up and dig out the bad to get them to heal, and when I left Arizona, I was still festering. I came to Portland with it still bleeding, angry and hurting and without direction, my hate beginning to eat away at me again, and then we had our day in the sun... I found some direction. My little girl smiled. My son began to be a little less angry at me and the world in general and we had hope. We found a small little light in the darkness and I followed it. I  found a direction and a reason and a focus. I also found a role model for how to handle my grief in someone who had made changes in the world because of his.
I have lost many people in my life that I loved more than anything, not only to death,but to ended relationships where I was cheated on and then unceremoniously dumped on Valentines day, left with a little boy who did not understand why his Bear was no longer coming to see him after 3 years of being there for him. I've had to come to grips with the fact that a man I loved heart and soul and who I would and did sacrifice everything except my children, for, just did not love me. Yes, he cared for me, yes we have a bond, but he doesn't love me like I love him and realizing that hurt like hell. But I don't hate them. I made my peace with them and we still talk and have friendships.
My ex, the one I sent to prison for taking a straight razor to me? The albatross who cant manage to support himself much less his kids? I don't hate him. I may not like him very much and I may not have much in the way of kind things to say about him, but I do not hate him.
"Hate is a poison that consumes the vessel that contains it" is a very old quote that I find to be very true. Its the same with anger. Sometimes you have to just take a deep breath and look at all sides of things and stick to the positive and that is what I intend to do because anything to do with hate is just as the hippys would say,"Bad Karma".
The world I live in used to be a very happy and silly world with monkeys bouncing about, bright eyed boys that made us laugh and sigh and songs we all know by heart. Its changed lately, as worlds tend to do, and change is hard to deal with, but with the change some have tried to bring hate into it and I have watched as one of our bright-eyed boys has begun to suffer more and more and I worry as the light around him dims and becomes faded. Hes struggling and it scares me. Watching the pollution that hate has brought into our little world slowly choke out the bright light around him and everything that was good and sweet and silly  and I am saying that the hate needs to stop. I may not agree with what has gone on. I will not support a person who openly and unashamedly followed a vile hater and who made not so veiled threats,(in my humble opinion), but I do not hate any of my boys and I cannot hear any one speak of it.
When my little girl sees a picture of a certain young man who has always in a way kind of freaked her out, and she says."Oh no! he looks soo sad I want to draw him a monkey and give him hugs until hes all better." Then I think its time to bring some love back into the whole mix of things.