Being Honest With Fiction.

I agree when people tell me that hate is taught.
Yes, I agree and I can see what these teachings do for us.
Look around. Can you see it?
Hate is everywhere.
So is love but one would have to learn how to look better and how to differentiate between the two.

I believe that hate is a learned science.
Absolutely.
There are times when I find that perhaps I have learned too much, or too little.
But this all depends upon our perspective, I suppose.

I remember coming to the conclusion that if I can hate so much then I can love even better.
I came to a moment of awareness and realized that the span of my hate can be equaled and outweighed by the depths of my love.
But this is something that takes growth and maturity to pull off.
I am sure of this.

Learning to understand and decipher between love and hate is another science that I am trying to learn. However, sometimes the worst in me gets the best of me.
Sometimes my shortsightedness and selfishness can blur my vision.
Sometimes, I am just mad because I failed myself and hence, hate is an easier outlet than looking within and accepting the changes that need to be made.

Then again, I am only human which makes me complete with faults and flaws and character defects, biases, unfair judgments, traumas, and the list can go on from here.
I’m sure.
There are beautiful things in this world.
I am sure of this too.
There are beautiful people from all walks of life.
I know there is.

And so . . .
Here I go.

If hate is either taught or a learned behavior, then it would also be true that hate can be untaught and unlearned.
This means that you and I could learn to live differently.
If we choose to.
No more rage.
No more fights.
No more useless arguments.
That would be great.

I admit to my past and the hatred that was around my neighborhood. I admit to my own ignorance and the belief in lessons that I learned from inaccurate and poisonous teachers or from people with their own personal vendettas.
I agree that hate breeds contempt and contempt breeds animosity.
I see how hate works.
Animosity leads to unrest and degrades our thinking with ignorance and assumptions.
This only leads to a deeper unrest which are both personal and civil, and social and again . . .
the list can go on.

Hate multiplies –
hate blinds us.
Love does too –
but one feels much better than the other.

I was told who my enemies were.
I was told about the difference between black and white.
I was told about my heritage and why my religion was hated and blamed for the destruction of our society.

I was told why I was an enemy.
I have seen hate, up close and personal.
I have seen swastikas in red paint and left behind at crime scenes.
I have heard the chants of “White Power!” and witnessed burning crosses on front lawns
.
I was told about the curse which are my people.
“The Jews”
I was told why they were the enemy.
Yet, I was labeled okay because I was not like them . . .
I was a good Jew.
Or whatever that meant.

I was told about hate and the differences between race, religion, culture and creed.
I was told about the fags and the queers ad how there is a warm spot waiting for them in hell.

I was never sure why this was supposed to be true.
I understand that stereotypes come from someplace.
I also agree that steroetypes are devised to both amplify and and magnify our cultural traits to keep us separate.
Or perhaps I should use the word, “segregated.”
This is used to keep hate alive.

But at the same time, it is what it is.
White is white.
Black is black.
Asians are Asians.
Spanish are Spanish
Middle Easterners are Middle Easterners.
I am me.
You are you
and we are all free to hate whomever we choose.
Right?

There is a line between us all.
Or so, I was taught.
I was told about who shamed and degraded our so-called society. I was told about our civil responsibilities to stick to our own and to protect ourselves from certain intrusions and invasions, both foreign and domestic.

I learned about this in my younger life.
I saw this, firsthand when I was about maybe six years-old.
Someone lit a cross on fire in the front yard of my neighbor’s house.
She was a nice woman. And the man who lived in her house was kind.
He spoke with a thick accent and he was somewhat old, and perhaps hard of hearing.
This may be why he yelled as often as he did.
But that was not his crime.
That was not the reason for the cross burning on the front lawn.
His name was Mr. Praus.
And Mr. Praus was black.
This is why they lit the cross.

I was too young to know what this meant.
I was too young to know anything about the history of the burning cross.
I was too young to know about slavery or lynching, or the riots, or Civil Rights, or anything like this.

I knew that there was hate.
I knew there were differences because I was taught this.
I remember being a young boy and an older boy told me that I was a “Heeb!”
This happened while I was fishing in a pond at a local park.
I don’t know why he said this.
I don’t remember how the topic of religion came up.
Maybe the subject of Sunday school came up or something about church came up and perhaps I explained that I don’t go to church.

I asked the older kid, “What’s a Heeb?”
He told me to go ask my Father.
“He’ll tell you!”

I never understood why there was such an urgency to hate people.
But I learned.
I found out.

I learned that hate is contagious.
I learned that hate is equally viral, and that hate is equally aggressive.
And yes.
Hate in any form is equally guilty for the contributions of violence, murder, death, unfairness, and yes, even suicide.

I say this because I know too many people who hated themselves to death.
Literally . . .
Quite, literally, in fact.
I learned alright!
I learned that hate spreads faster and can be more deadly than any sickness.
And yes. Absolutely, hate has killed more people than any of the pandemics in our history.

And so,
I say that both unfortunately and admittedly, I followed the plan.
I believed that since everyone hated me and my ancestors, and that since even my own ancestors perhaps hated me for how I lived, and since hate is the main topic and the biggest character on the stage of life; I would have to learn to hate everyone back.
I would have to hate more.
I would have to hate everyone back, even more than more.
I had to learn to hate people, perfectly and coldly and above all; I would have to do this unemotionally.
No feeling.
No touch.
No care for the glass eyes that go from frightened to lifeless.

I would have to be cold to the touch.
Or in my best analogy; I would have to reach a certain level of detachments.
I’d have to be like the butcher and the fisherman.
A fisherman is unemotional about the death of his catch and a butcher has no feelings about the meat which he slaughters.
There could be no thought or feeling, no energy, and no emotion or otherwise when it came to the punishment or the discharge of human life.
There could only be hate, contempt, outrage, and violence.
Pure and simple.
Otherwise, the enemy wins
Including the one within.

This had to be me.
Otherwise, I would be open or susceptible to being the victim.

I followed the leader.
I submitted and showed disgusting people a form of loyalty that they would never dare to show anyone else in this world.
Let alone me.

The funny part about all the above is this –
Mathias saved my life.
His skin was dark as night.

There was a man who lived his life as wino, a hobo, and he travelled the southwest, homeless and drunk on long freight trains.
He and I met at an unfortunate time in life.
He pleaded with me to change my direction.
He explained what it was like to grow up poor, or to not have anything.

He never owned a brand new pair of jeans in his life.
Not once.
They gave him a pair while he was in treatment with me.
His eyes teared up when he explained this to me.
“I never had a brand new pai of pants.”

I was just a stupid kid with a junk habit and bad mouth.

The man gave me the jeans.
He told me it was the greatest feeling he ever had.
He never held a brand new pair of jeans in his hands.
Not once in his life.

“I want you to take this,” he told me.
“That life you’ve been living ain’t gonna miss you.”

“I don’t want you to end up like me or anyone else in here,” he said.
He handed the folded jeans, compete with tags and labels,
“So, you take these jeans and you go wherever they tell you.”
He said, “You do whatever they tell you to do, son.”
Then he said, “Because every man in this place would do anything to have your chance to get away from this kind of life.”

I remember the dark blackness in his skin. I remember the redness in the whites of his eyes.
I felt the sincerity of his story.
I felt his pain which he conveyed like an older brother would relay to his youngest brother.
“That life ain’t gonna miss you.”

White or black.
Tall, big, strong.
All five of the above are irrelevant because whatever kind of man he is (or was,) I am not as good or as big, as strong, or as decent as the man who I was told, taught, and convinced that he was my so-called enemy.

Dear God,

I have listened to the lost and I have been lost myself.
I have given up more times than anyone else and I have taken my blessings for granted.
I complain.
I fight and argue.
I bitch too much.
I fight way too much.

I scream and spit about the money I lost and the property that no longer belongs to me

I do this while sitting in my home, be it ever so humble.
And I do this while sitting in the comfort of a chair, in front of my trusty computer with a large screen.
I just gulped the last of my coffee.
I have food.
I have clothes.

But yes, the stack of bills are high and the people who call me are often calling for money.
I have challenges ahead of me. I lost everything I worked for. I lost the love of my life.
I lost my dignity for a while.
I lost friends.
I hurt good people. And yes . . . .
I hurt one of the best I have ever met.
I am sorry.

The men who dared enough to show me what manhood is are dark skinned.
They were never my enemies but saviors in different clothing. 

I need to dig back and follow their advice.

And to you, Mathias.
I never forgot what you said.
Maybe you can send me a sign from above and help me.
Please.

And to you my love.
Please be patient
I am only a man
But I promise to rebuild everything back and to build this bigger than anything I have ever built before.
I don’t want to hate anymore. I don’t want to lie.
I don’t want to fight.
I don’t want my life to be some awkward piece of fiction because I was too insecure to stand and be me
.
You are the only person who makes me brave.
I swear to this

So help me, God