From Love to Disdain

Hey there. I know, I know; I do not care. Piss off.

Some of you might recognize the title of this post from the lyrics of a Dream Theater song titled "Misunderstood." Indeed, an interesting question: how does one turn from love to disdain?

I believe that there are two basic emotions that happen without needing any real reason: love and hate. Sometimes we love someone for no particular reason at all. There a people who call it "love at first sight;" I personally would call it "lust at first sigh," but that's just me and right now I am sour... maybe that has to do something with it. I also think there are two extremes to this watchamacallit-love thing: one is pure, hardcore, non-explainable love and the other is sexual tension. Basically, sexual tension is when you feel attracted to someone else for no special reason other than copulate... and no more. This "feeling" is irrelevant to my post. I wanna focus on the other one; the so-called pure, unreasonable love.

You see, it just happens. Literally, you fall in love; one day you begin loving the way the other person walks, yearning for the other person's aroma, a sympathy for the other's smile; the way the air brushes the significant's hair, his/her movements. Hell, you would even hug your honey-bunny's cute, chubby feces if you had the chance. But like the phrase indicates, you fall... slowly... through a vortex, little by little. It's a tingle at first and suddenly you start needing the other person to function.

The other emotion is hate. It also just happens. Maybe you hate someone for their particular hair style, their annoying voice, their smell. Or maybe just their prescence for no particular reason. But if you had the chance you would beat their living souls out of them and enjoy it with supreme joy beyond any comparison. Did they do anything to you to make you be angry at them? No, just the fact they breathe oxygen in the same world as you.

But then the relationship reaches the climax, the maximum point of extasis in which one of the involved parts' heart must be crushed. And how, indeed, do you turn from love to disdain?

You hate them. If you ever really, truly loved the other person then you know there is no middle ground; there's no "friends." All there can be is hate; from one extreme to the other, like a battery. I know it would be pretty lovely if we could just have a switch in the manner people say "just forget and carry on," but there is not - unless you are an insensible bastard to begin with. There's love and there's hate.

But in the same way you fell in love you must fall in hate, in disdain. Still you now face a more difficult task because falling in love is unconscious, it just happens; and now you must do it willingly. Learn to hate the way the other persona walks, repulse their aroma, dislike the other's smile... you get the idea... and so reach a point in which you no longer care. Complete, utter, total disdain.

Will it turn you into a cold, hearless son-of-a-gun? Yeah, but by then you no longer care.