Saturday, June 03, 2006

The first thing I wanted to do was to hurt him back. With words preferably, since it's my strength. If I want to, I could make you bleed inside and lose all sense of self-worth and self-esteem. I know this because I have done it to myself over and over again. My words drip with poison or nectar, as and when I desire it to coat itself. I am my enemy, my punisher, my angel and my devil. But I didn't say a word to him. It was all swallowed down, the little alphabets swallowed down one by one and the blasting fire that came along with it as well.

I don't know what you do on impulse when your feathers are ruffled. Most people do what I do I should think- when people hurt me, I just want to hurt them back. I want to make them hurt as bad as the pain I'm feeling or even worse if possible. I want them to break down and disintegrate, to crawl on all fours and beg with wet red eyes for my forgiveness. I want to feel the magnitude of my power linger on their skins with pleasure as they writhe with agony before my very feet. I want them shamed. I want them weeping and gasping with despair. I want them cut into pieces after pieces and be unable to piece themselves into something whole ever again. Yes I know I'm a very vengeful and emotional person. I believe most of us are so in our imagination and what it can be capable of. But lately I see another reason for such behaviour and rationality (if it is even rationality) other than simply stupid anger which begets an appetite for revenge.

You see, we hurt others not just because we are angry with them, but because we love them. I know I know, it sounds disgusting already. No I am no psycho killer, but you know as well as I do that polar opposites sometimes serve to bring out the other and vice versa. This allows them to come alive even more intensely. When antagonized by the ones we love, there is a struggle between the co-existence of love and of anger- emotions which oppose each other. The contrast and conflict leaves us blowing hot and cold and messed up in our heads.

Do we hurt them out of anger alone? No. If we are talking about a stranger hurting another stranger, I would say "Yes". But I'm not referring to that. I'm not referring to just any stranger walking down the street, but to an individual who is special because he or she is greatly and deeply loved. I'm not referring to any ordinary pain which can be healed like the scratch marks caused by furnitures, but to pain which burns infinitely inside a person's soul. You need more than mere anger for that kind of pain. Anger comes in short fiery spits. It explodes without warning, paints everything black and red, and then leaves instantly. Anger alone, is not enough to accumulate that seething intention to inflict the most sadistic of cruelties. You need love as well, which is powerful and compelling enough to do anything it fancies.

I think we love them so much that we want them to feel the pain that we feel. We want them to, at least in the area where pain is concerned, be on par with us. In this way, we exist as one on the exact same level. In this way, we are identical. I am you, and you are me, in a mirror. Pain, becomes our connection with each other. It is a rope which bonds us as much as it tears us apart. It is beautiful, and it is tragic.

13 comments:

moo said...

but if you really love someone,you wouldn't have the heart to hurt them.seeing or knowing how miserable they are would only bring you more pain (because you love them,you only want what's best for them..you only want them to be happy),and wouldn't knowing that you're the cause of all that misery just bring added afflictions to yourself?
love constitutes pain but love does not constitute inflicting pain on others.i think it is selfish to want them to feel the pain we feel.love is not selfish.

Miao 妙 said...

Well-said. The desire for others to feel pain as we feel them is a weakness we often succumb to. But I wouldn't call it unconditional love though I wouldn't entirely dismiss it either... Perhaps it is love, just that we love ourselves so much more than we love others, just that our feelings of love for these other people are so relatively insignificant that love for ourselves easily truimph over it, to the extent that we want to inflict pain on them so that we are bonded on the same level. My opinion at least.

Damon said...

FTE: "I am you, and you are me, in a mirror. Pain, becomes our connection with each other. It is a rope which bonds us as much as it tears us apart. It is beautiful, and it is tragic."

And that my friends, is the essence of the human experience. Most people don't want to be human, so they come up with alien concepts like "world peace", "unconditional love" and the ilk, but you can't stray far from your idealism when you're made of flesh, blood and emotions. There's a lot of instances where you can see that tension come into play, but I suppose your suggestion that love highlights it is true. After all, love is a very selfish and delusional emotion.

QM-pest said...

Ahhh...Yeah. I get what you mean.XD

Miao 妙 said...

Agree wholly with Damon.

Anonymous said...

mIaOx sOunDs lIkE U R maRKing GP EsSaAY...
HAHAHA

Faith said...

oak:

"if you really love someone,you wouldn't have the heart to hurt them". But you see, you don't even have to physically and realistically inflict such pain on that "someone" you know. I think just thinking of it as a morbid fantasy or wanting to do it impulsively is common enough- saying a mean word during a quarrel, telling a lie, etc. Come on, you mean you've never been in that kind of circumstance before?

"love constitutes pain but love does not constitute inflicting pain on others." If love constitutes pain, how can you be so sure that love does not constitute inflicting pain on others? If love constitutes pain, is there a possibility of that pain taking shape into something deeper and darker? If love constitutes pain, how can love be "not selfish", or at least, be not "selfish" when it should be and is to us?

I think you have such a lovely lovely defintion of love. You make it sound completely sweet and tender. But on love itself, I feel there are many forms of love. Possessive love, incestuous love, godly love... I would like to think that love has two sides to it, just as everything else contains. It's not just oh so pure and innocent as you say it is. It can be so much more. That's why it's so powerful and so dangerous in the hands of a person. "love is not selfish"? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Who is to say where love ends and where hatred or other emotions begins. Things mingle together and the layers build on. Often the lines are not so clearly marked in specific categories.

"because you love them,you only want what's best for them..you only want them to be happy". Mmmmm I can't say that most of us are idealistic or perhaps selfless enough to hold on to Korean/French ideologies of loving someone and allowing our thoughts and actions to follow through in such a dreamy course. Haha. :)

Anonymous said...

my viewpoint is that love constitutes pain in the sacrificing of yourself for the other and this is not selfish. true love will not deliberately want to hurt the beloved and would not even entertain thoughts of wanting to hurt the beloved. i do believe that true love will want whats best for the other. but not necessarily for the other to feel happy. what is best for the other person might not make the person happy but it is good and ultimately it will produce joy. regarding the many forms of love such as Possessive love, incestuous love, i would not call them love in the first place. those are stamping right out from selfishness. and yes, love is not selfish. this is not about painting idealistic pictures of love whatsoever, but in my opinion, the world today has seen so much selfish distortions of love and the justification of it as being really love until the true meaning of love is gone, or termed by those who do not understand wad real love is as being idealistic or alien concepts. love is the total giving of oneself to the beloved. wad do u understand by true love? yes, there are many forms of love, godly love, brotherly love, friendly love. but possessive love? incestuous love? do u even call these as love? love is such a precious word, holding such a pure and beautiful meaning, by putting it with possessiveness etc, just cheapens it so much so that the meaning is totally lost. maybe left with that of loving yourself to the point of being narcissistic and self absorbed. faith, i have not been this disappointed and saddened by ur entries before, esp the last paragraph. "I am you, and you are me, in a mirror. Pain, becomes our connection with each other. It is a rope which bonds us as much as it tears us apart. It is beautiful, and it is tragic."
love is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs. it does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. it always trusts, always protects, always persevere. love never fails.

Anonymous said...

anyway, that was me. dunno y just now cant put name

Faith said...

qt:

First, silly girl, let's get something clear: I wasn't talking about love on it's own. Love is too big to define. We could explore for a billion years. Go read the first two words of my entry again, which is in red, to understand.

"love is such a precious word, holding such a pure and beautiful meaning, by putting it with possessiveness etc, just cheapens it so much so that the meaning is totally lost." You're right there. I adore your mentality. But I'm not talking about love on it's own. Love is rarely on it's own in a human's mind. Take anger, take jealousy... Perhaps I'm cynical, but even sacrificial deeds are sometimes done out of a need for self-fulfilment is it not? Can you really say for sure, in today's context, which deed is a product of true love and which isn't? I think it's quite tough to tell. Everything is nearly always ambiguous. Love by itself is lovely no doubt, but even so, any power no matter how good can be corrupted.

"true love will not deliberately want to hurt the beloved and would not even entertain thoughts of wanting to hurt the beloved." But please do tell me honestly, how many of us can lay claim on the words "true love"? How many of us, as imperfect and flawed human beings, can say without a doubt that we have loved so truly and so purely? True love is rare my dear. Not all of us are angels.

Anonymous said...

lovey dovey ppl hohoho
merry christmas!
lalalala
so many anon...
i shall be anon too
BUAHAHAHAHA

debbie said...

from anonymous: "true love will not deliberately want to hurt the beloved and would not even entertain thoughts of wanting to hurt the beloved."

yes i agree. but how many people know or are capable of this 'true love'? humans are selfish, possessive, lustful, desirous, and our love will never be true. a secret part of us will always hold something unpure in our love, because we are imperfect, and the best imperfect people can do with love is to love imperfectly. true love? its a pretty thing, but have we been capable or it- and are we still?

i don't think so. we can never love perfectly. man's love will always be, sadly, flawed.

Anonymous said...

aha!! i see it now. hhaha