I Hate You, But I Hate You More Now That You’re Gone

Words: Alice McCloskey (she/her)

I cling to my moments of hate; they’re a reminder of the forgiveness of a love that was once close, once constant.

I always hated those beetroot sandwiches. Sitting in the crowded canteen, hemmed in by the chorus of screaming children and hovering teachers, I would rip them slowly into chunks beneath the long rickety tables. Squirming uncomfortably in my plastic, rounded chair, I would quickly put them to my mouth and swallow, wincing at their sweetness. I would watch my dad in the evenings before school as he pressed hunks of bread together with an assortment of vegetables and big chunks of cheese, his pink beetroot-stained hands leaving a firm imprint of shame on them. I would cringe knowing that another day of childish questions on the strange colour of my sandwiches would ensue.

Behind him, as he stood in his black, stained apron, a pot of bubbling pasta would stand beside him – splatters landing on the stove. We were more likely to eat it if the vegetables were blended into an unassuming, ambiguous sludge. The radio would be playing Radio 4, or, even worse, Radio 3, at an obtrusive volume that grated against the clanging of the household and cacophony of my siblings, scratching each other against the claustrophobia of shared rooms, shared beds, shared lives. 

We even shared the same clothes. I despised the days my brothers or cousins would grow out of their “Nana knit,” and I would be given a beautiful, but desperately scratchy jumper – I would smile forlornly as my Mum pulled it over my head. Their itchiness almost rivalled the scratching polyester of my sickly brown and yellow secondary uniform, which would cling to me in hot, stuffy classrooms surrounding the gossiping, languid mouths of bored teenage girls. Once, to my delight, my Nana knitted me a new cardigan. It was long and purple, with shiny, polished buttons running down its pearl knit. Begrudgingly, I let my sister wear it to a party. She arrived home with a party bag, but not my new cardigan. Hatred consumed me in its hazy fog. 

I was too scared to tell my Nana it was lost, so I avoided her when I saw her that weekend. Instead, I watched the plumes of my Grandad’s cigarette smoke as he sat in his sagging chair, even though it made me cough. To my horror, he took big, biting chunks out of my ice cream. Sometimes when I stayed over in their creaking, sleepless house, my Nana would tuck me in so tightly that I felt I couldn’t breathe. But perhaps my uneasiness wasn’t really caused by that. I could never quite watch as my parents drove away for a much-deserved getaway, my heart trembling in my chest. That feeling of absence, I think, was the one I hated the most. 

I still remember the cavernous feeling of that absence after my first boyfriend and I broke up. I think parts of us had grown to hate each other, and, embroiled in first love, I had grown to hate parts of myself. Hate that I had thought love would always be lasting and biting; a salvation for my ails. But when I think of it, think of that hatred so bound up in love, and once again feel its twangs, I think perhaps that love is lasting. I think it will last as long as my hate does.   

I still feel grief when I sit on my Grandad’s chair and eat a full, uninterrupted ice cream, watching my Nana’s gnarled, arthritic hands twiddle a scratchy piece of wool that will never be made into anything whole. I miss the variety of a “vegetable-assortment” sandwich when I sit in the library with my ill-prepared cheese one, and feel the deficiency of noise as I return home to a cold tenement flat, arguing with sisters over messenger instead of lying next to each other in a sweaty, laughing bed. I miss the claustrophobia of our school library; joy found in nothing, in our shared dislike of classmates, and our schoolwork. We used to lament a future that we now reside in separately. 

I cling to my moments of hate; they’re a reminder of the forgiveness of a love that was once close, once constant. They’re a souvenir of memories, of people passed. They are festooned with ephemeral feelings, with forgotten sounds, with obsolete tastes. As I look around now, look deep into the corners of life that I hate, that make me angry, make me feel the ache of loss, I wonder which I will mourn. I strive to appreciate them with every droplet of hate I have. After all, we only miss things when they’re gone, and if life has taught me anything, it’s that we never know when they will be.