Aliyawanders

Have you ever felt such hatred for someone?

I’m not a perfect person, and I’m much too familiar with this feeling.

Every time I have to drive almost an hour for my doctor’s appointment.

Every time I have to pay for my medications.

Every time anxiety hits me out of nowhere.

Every time I have to take my meds and remind myself that healing is not as simple as wanting it enough.

The anger comes back.

Every time he talks badly about others.

Every time he makes himself look like the good person in front of the very people he spoke badly about.

Every time he quietly paints himself as the victim and me as the one who hurt him.

I remember this one time.

He asked us not to come on the actual day of a big festival and to visit on the eve instead because he already had plans with his friends.

Then the next day, when his family called and asked who he was spending the important day with, he said he was alone.

He said I didn’t visit because I had gone back to my husband’s hometown.

And somehow that hurt more than I expected.

Maybe because it wasn’t just the lie.

Maybe it was the ease of it.

The way reality became whatever version made him look better.

The anger is apparently still here.

Even after five years.

And sometimes I wonder if what I’m carrying is even hatred anymore.

Maybe it’s grief.

Grief for the time I lost.

For the version of myself I lost.

For the income I lost.

For the money spent chasing a glimpse of hope that one day I’ll get better and finally stop needing these medications.

I don’t know if forgiveness is possible.

But I do know this:

Some wounds don’t stay because we love the pain.

They stay because a part of us is still mourning what was taken.

And maybe one day, healing won’t look like forgetting.

Maybe it will simply mean remembering… without it hurting this much anymore.