Have you ever heard the term

 

There is a fine line between love and hate. ?

 

 

It gets tossed around quite a bit.  And once you are familiar with it and ever in the position to understand why anyone would even say it – it makes sense.

 

To me it always made sense on a basic level even before I felt it.  But I see the world in color and the color of love and the color of hate are only separated by a few shades of gray.  Everything is to me.  Between black and white is a whole spectrum of color and they are all varied by the amount of gray.

 

So on a visual  level I understand the fine line, but on an emotional level it took a little longer to really get it.

 

Today’s Mental Moment…

 

 

is about the fine line, shades of gray (no not the book) and love and hate.

 

Some might say the opposite of love is hate.  The opposite of love is indifference.  When you could care less and don’t even think about the person that you loved for eternity just a few days ago, when you can honestly say that it makes no difference to what they do or how they do it or if they win the lottery or end up ….how they end up, that is when you say you no longer love.

 

The line that divides love and hate is what we think.

 

Both are emotions of extremes.  Deep, passionate, consuming.  The physical reaction is equally similar and what labels it as love, or hate is what you think about whatever or whoever it is causing this reaction in you.  Negative thoughts are hate, positive love .

 

How many of you have ever been in an argument with the person you consider the love of your life and were so mad at them and so frustrated or hurt that you blurted out  I hate you ?

 

Never?

 

It’s not because you aren’t capable of hating that person, because if you can love them with all you heart and being, in the right, ok wrong circumstances, you can hate them too.

 

Consider This:

 

Think about all the characters in literature that started out antagonists.

 

In reading or watching a play or a movie , it is sometimes clear as day to the audience that these two people who quibble and harp and sometimes even hurt each other or go to great lengths to make each others lives difficult are really attracted to each other.  And then of course there is the opposite where there are in unending love and end up hating – War of the Roses Comes to Mind.

 

You watch these two people and how they try to destroy each other and you just want to say but …but ….. you love each other.

 

The common denominator is passion.  Whatever it is you think about this person, it invokes strong emotion, and you throw your energy into them.  One way or the other, passionately

 

So what does it mean if someone who loved you, and you loved tells you I hate you?  Not just the passing hate you like the casual love you sometimes given on the phone or with people who know you love them but you just want to remind them – like your kids when they go to school.  Bye love you…

 

I mean with feeling, vehemently with foot stamping, possible tears from the overwhelm of emotion going on I HATE YOU!

 

Well it means we are still passionate about each other.  It means it still matters.

 

If it still matters is it worth trying to come to the middle?

 

I can fathom a love/hate relationship.  Same side of the color spectrum, a few shades of gray in between the  passion, depth, limitlessness,  expansiveness the feeling it – the commitment to it.   The words are just to make it easy yet they make it hard.

 

A disorder of the emotions, being ruled but how you feel and having that change unexpectedly at any moment, being on a roller coaster and the ups and downs of it,  and loving someone who has their own issues that make love and hate normal,  can really give you a new understanding of a love hate relationship.  There is nothing weird about it.

 

I try to not act on the bad feeling when I feel it, as in not blurt out the I hate you, because it will pass.

 

I probably, because of that, don’t say I love you enough.

 

It doesn’t do the feeling justice.  Sometimes I love you just isn’t enough.

 

I feel you…would be weird but a more likely explanation.

 

My mom once told me when I was little girl that it isn’t love that determines the success of a marriage, it is commitment.

 

Commitment is what allows you to, when you wake up one morning and look at the person next to you and say “what the hell am I doing with the this person?”  to not act on those bad feelings, the gray areas.

 

Commitment is what keeps you there, and motivates you to find the middle.

 

How many people, acting on the gray area, the crossing of the fine line have tossed in the towel  only to be devastated when the thoughts swing back to love.

 

It’s when the feeling stops that there is no more care.

 

Love me or hate me, if they come from feeling me, I am ok with it because it  means I matter.

 

To You Mental State, Whatever it may be,