Do you ever hate someone you love? Someone you need or who needs you? I do. I always have, for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to keep myself awake nights, punishing myself for whatever sin I’d committed during the day (usually beating up my little brother and then lying to my parents that he was crying because he’d fallen down) by telling myself my mother was sick, my mother was in the hospital, my mother was going to die. Basically, I think now, I was hating my mother and hiding it from myself that way, because hating your parents as a little kid – scary thing.

Where does this shit come from?

Is it the Id being bad? Or what?

Wherever it comes from, I respect Gamma when she tells me that she doesn’t love me; she says it when she’s mad, and she usually says, “I don’t love you right now” or “I’m not going to love you for a while.” Then she gets over it and we’re okay for a while again. I think it’s important to support her in this, being honest about her feelings. I used to lie about mine as a kid, and I still catch myself doing it, and it doesn’t help anything in the long run.

On the contrary.

For instance Gamma’s mother is away this week on business and Gamma’s unhappy (as unhappy as such a sunny little person can be, anyway). Gamma has headaches and other aches and pains because she misses her. Yesterday morning she told me her heart hurt. I’m sure it was emotional and it went away soon. But for an instant, I caught myself imagining the whole thing, just as I had with my mother as a little boy – Gamma going to the hospital, getting sick, dying, the funeral, life without her. Free time!

It’s awful. How could I think such a thing? Where does that come from? Do all parents do this? I suppose so. Usually I can shrug off the frustration and pressure with this “sitcom dad” thing, say “sheesh” or “ack” or “gah” or “feh” and joke and it’s okay. But people depending on you, people needing you, it’s as bad as needing people I guess. It’s not all sunshine. There are some creepy fish swimming around down deep in the ocean, where it’s dark.

I think something negative loses strength when you talk about it, and grows stronger the more secret it is. Parents kill their children every day, they gas them or shoot them or drown them in the tub or locked in a car they drive into a lake; this is to be avoided in my opinion. It is good, I think, to admit that it’s not always easy; that great love and resentment can co-exist, that this isn’t the devil telling you shit, it’s your Id.

Or is that the same thing? Maybe it is. Id, Superego and Ego; the bad guy, good guy and the face we show the world. Or something. What do I know?

(I was considering posting this to Raising Hell but thought I’d try it out here first…)