Two Sides of the Same Coin

Love and hate usually flow from the same muddy emotional pool. It's hard to muster up the psychic energy for one without the other.

Tim O'Brien captured this phenomenon perfectly in his Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried. He described a soldier who realized one day that the young woman he had been pining for didn't share his feelings.

She signed the letters Love, but it wasn't love...He hated her. Yes he did.
Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love.

I sometimes struggle with this same kind of confusing emotional muddle. Hate is far too strong a word, but I'm not having very kind feelings about Bob, my adopted dog who bit me really damned hard during what turned out to be the last hour of his life. My hand is puffed up like a balloon and I have to take antibiotics for the next 10 days.

At the same time, I'm grieving his death and missing him terribly. I was really fond of the old fart even if he was a mental case. He was part of my weird little manufactured family, and the space that he occupied feels strangely empty right now.

My feelings about Dear Husband are also conflicting and jumbled, but far more complicated. I have anger, sorrow, pity, loss, loathing and longing all knotted into the same emotional clusterfuck. Could I be this pissed off if I hadn't loved DH so much? Would I feel this sorry for him if I had never glimpsed his vulnerability? It's hard to identify where one emotion ends and the next begins.

Feeling these types of feelings was a novelty to me once - I spent nearly two decades ensuring a kind of emotional flat-line existence so I wouldn't have to experience the least little bit of pain. But even though my head has been clear for nearly 12 years, I sometimes feel I'm no better at navigating this emotional minefield than I was back then.

But even though feelings can be hard and hurtful, I'm glad I have them. While trying to smother everything painful in a haze of drugs and alcohol, I stifled my capacity for joy. I also disabled my ability to grieve. Today I can experience grief and loss without trying to obliterate them, and that's a great gift, even though it sometimes confuses the hell out of me.

I miss you guys. Both of you. Adieu, Bobby. Bon chance, DH. I hope both of you are on your way to better things.