I don’t hate you

I can never quite understand the concept of hate

How could you have such a feeling,

A feeling as strong as hate towards someone?

I don’t get it

I’ve only every said that word out loud a minuscule amount of times in my life

And I don’t think I truly felt that way towards the people I said it to,

I was frustrated, I was angry, I was confused

But I never hated you,

I’ve heard that word, hate, thrown around in such a casual manner too many times,

But that’s just it, hate isn’t a casual word

It isn’t a word you toss back and forth

It isn’t a word you add to a sentence, then pretending to force that emotion out

It isn’t a word you should take delicately

Because maybe you don’t hate them, maybe you just don’t understand them

You pretend to feel hate because you don’t know how to react

You don’t know how to respond

But maybe you do hate them with a burning passion, with a searing incentive

Maybe they really did hurt your feelings, they twisted you from the inside out

They made you feel all of those feelings you didn’t want to feel

But you didn’t know it was hate that drove you to push them away,

Because maybe hate really is a genuine and authentic feeling,

Maybe I just haven’t figured out what hate means to me yet.