January 21st 2019
I asked her once, in a hotel by the river, to promise me something: to tell me the truth. How she really felt. I think I've finally worked out why. It's because the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate is what love becomes when the vessels of love themselves change, when the self moves on and the other no longer tessellates, whereas indifference is the residue of love exhausted, dissipated, inchoate and chilly as heat-death.
That's why I asked her to promise to tell the truth of what she felt. Because I can leave being hated, I can leave being disregarded in indifference, and there's much pride to be salvaged from either. But being hated or disregarded in indifference but buttered up is insulting, patronising, graceless.
Joy and pain are both acceptable, but not eternity as a wet Thursday afternoon.
I asked her once, in a hotel by the river, to promise me something: to tell me the truth. How she really felt. I think I've finally worked out why. It's because the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate is what love becomes when the vessels of love themselves change, when the self moves on and the other no longer tessellates, whereas indifference is the residue of love exhausted, dissipated, inchoate and chilly as heat-death.
That's why I asked her to promise to tell the truth of what she felt. Because I can leave being hated, I can leave being disregarded in indifference, and there's much pride to be salvaged from either. But being hated or disregarded in indifference but buttered up is insulting, patronising, graceless.
Joy and pain are both acceptable, but not eternity as a wet Thursday afternoon.
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