Hate

     "Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me; Neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause." Psalm‬ ‭35‬:‭19

     My name is Henry III.  Since my family disowned me, I don’t see the need to add my last name and give any credit to my genetic lineage.
     My story really starts when I was in the fifth grade.  I didn’t know how the other kids could tell that I was gay, it wasn’t like I walked around with a sign posted on my forehead.  Heck, I really didn’t even know I was gay at the time.  I knew I was attracted to men, I enjoyed looking at men more than women.  Maybe that is what gave me away, I didn’t fully understand at that age though.
     I lived four blocks away from my school, I lived in Lexington Kentucky and every day I would walk to school or home.  These guys named Chris and Larry would push me down, not lightly at all either.  They would push me so hard I would always walk away with bloody elbows or my pants tore at the knees and my knees bleeding.  They called me faggot and would taunt me and call me gay little Henry.
     I always went home feeling alone and sad, I had no friends.  Home wasn’t much better, my mother and father told me all the time that they didn’t understand why they had to have a faggot for a son.  Well, my father said “faggot”, my mother didn’t use that word but it was clear she felt the burden.
     I think my mother loved me but you could tell she thought in her mind if she loved me the right way she could “fix” me.  Like I could just be magically “cured”.  To be honest, I tried so hard to act like I was not attracted to men.  I wanted to be loved so bad.  It’s hard on a child to not be himself because he knows his parents will hate him and Dad never did believe the act anyway.  He always gave me a hard time, and he really only tried to get along with me because of Mom.  I don’t think he knew what else to do with me.
I have no brothers or sisters, I have no friends, and my parents can’t stand me.  On birthdays and holidays, they didn’t ever get what I liked.  They bought me stuff that was really “manly”, and that would be perfectly fine if they did it out of love.  They did it in an attempt to drop not-so-subtle hints that I should be playing ball or hunting.  Just another way to let me know that I don’t measure up.  I’m not sure if they thought that because I’m gay that made me dislike “manly” stuff so giving it to me was a punishment?  Or maybe they thought that “manly” stuff would “cure” me.  It really baffles me that here it is the 21st century and with all that has been learned in this world, people still don’t understand homosexuality.  I’m no different than any person around me; I laugh and play and run and hurt and love just like everybody else.
     Chris and Larry moved on from pushing to punching when we moved up to the eighth grade.  Not a single day went by that I didn’t have a busted lip or black eye.  The beatings were bad but worse than that, I had to hold my piss in school all day because the other kids refused to allow me in the bathroom.  I learned that lesson the hard way.  Early in seventh grade I went into the bathroom and three kids from my math class were in there.  One was at the sink, the other two were at the standup toilets.  The two at the standup toilets didn’t say nothing until the one at the sink started saying I came in the bathroom to check them out.
This got the other two kids’ attention, then all three started calling me faggot, they grabbed ahold of me, picked me up, and dumped me head first into the trash can.  There was all kinds of wet paper towels and snot rags in there.  The snot rags stuck to my hair and face.  The three kids just laughed at me, they told me to expect the same every time I come into the bathroom.  After that, I tried to go back a couple times when I thought no one was around.  Turns out some kid, or kids, put messages on the stall door:  “Henry Sucks Dicks” and “Henry = Faggot” and “No Faggots Allowed”.  Every time I went in there I got some type of bad treatment so eventually I just learned to hold it.
     All because I’m attracted to the same sex, people hated me and taunted me.  I never hated back though.  I was more confused than angry.  What I didn’t understand was why is what they did to me okay but just being me isn’t?  The haters hide behind a god but where in their book does God say they needed to hate me?  My parents can hate me and it’s okay because I’m gay.  They’re not monsters at all, same for the kids that beat me up for no reason.  They all can do this and everything is cool, the world doesn’t judge them.  Where in that book does it talk about “hate”?
    Since all of them were hiding behind God, I decided I’d see for myself.  I looked over the bible my whole 9th grade year.  I couldn’t see anywhere in the whole book that God told people to hate.  I mean, there was a lot of smiting and whatever in the Old Testament but they never said they killed them for being gay.  Besides, Jesus speaks in the New Testament.  Isn’t that supposed to be where the good news is?  And all he talked about was loving your neighbor as yourself.  I did find many passages where it says not to judge others, like Mathew Chapter 7, Verse 1 “Judge not lest you too be judged”, but I guess folks feel like they can take what they want from the Bible and leave the rest.  Christians judge and point fingers all the time.  But it’s not only the Christians, the Muslims treat their woman like toy dogs and spread more hate than love.  I don’t know a lot about other religions but it seems like that’s all religion is, an excuse to judge others.
When I was in the 10th grade. I was in my locker out in the hallway, just taking my books out and putting them in my bag.  This bigger kid I don’t even know comes out of nowhere and just spits in my face.  This is the first time I felt hate! It just took me over all of sudden.  Everything I’ve been through, I just had enough.  Too many years going home and my own mother and father act like they have never seen the busted lips or black eyes or tore pants at the knees.  And I haven’t even done a homosexual act yet.
    I just couldn’t take it anymore, I’m tired of people hating me for no reason so I reached out and smacked the bigger kid dead in the face.  Everyone stopped to stare and it was quiet except for the echo of that smack down the hallway.  They all looked shocked as hell that I just did that.  The shock wore off fast though and he sucker punched me so hard in the stomach I doubled over and hit the ground. My whole body felt dizzy and my belly was killing me.  Before I could process what was going on I felt something wet hitting me in the face and all over my shirt.  After a minute, I realized the bigger guy is peeing all over me.  By the time I shake the dizziness off and put my back up against the wall, the big kid done walked off and several kids were laughing at me.
I felt so much hate inside, I can’t even explain it.  I stared at all the kids and for the first time I wanted all of them to pay. I wanted all this cruel stuff to go away.  I wanted to be in a world where people don’t hate you just because you’re different.  I wanted them all dead.  
I skipped school for the first time after that.  Threw my shirt away and washed my hair and face using a hose that in the yard of a house about a block away.  I walked to the railroad tracks and just sat there and for the first time everything came clear to me.  I hate my parents and everybody else.  Clear and simple, I hate back!
    For years I had thought maybe something was wrong with me.  I mean, I’ve never met another gay person but could a whole school be wrong and I’m right?  At least I thought like that until this moment.  Now I’m thinking if a whole school can hate me because I’m different, then why can’t I hate them for being different than me?  How can their hate be right and my hate be wrong?  Hate is hate right?
That’s where it all went downhill I guess.  I couldn’t beat the hate back after that.  Everyday more hate seemed to pour into me.  When they taunted me and knocked me down and punched me, I started doing drawings, turns out I’m pretty good at it too.  Every time a kid beat me up for no reason, my release was drawing him getting killed.  As my anger got worse towards 12th grade, I kept a folder hidden under my bed of all kinds of drawings of me stabbing those kids over and over.
    I see people writing books all the time how this college kid shot a school up.  Right off the top, people say the person that shot the school up is a monster.  How horrible the person must be.  The people that write these articles, did they ever think to ask why did this kid have so much hate?  These writers or newspaper people don’t care.  All they care about is there sales.  
    They want to blame guns for the problem.  They want to blame everything but what is the problem.  There is hate everywhere.  I’ve had to deal with it my whole life.  I’ve been picked on and beat up and humiliated all my life.  But what they’ve done to me never makes it in the newspaper or the books.  The truth is, people refuse to accept anything that is different from themselves.  There is no harmony, forget about love.
    Now I’m at college and I’ve been here for a year.  Coming here was my parents’ idea.  They were so anxious to get rid of their gay child that they would have sold their house to get me to college or somewhere.  They didn’t care where I went and after 10th grade I just didn’t care who hated me.  I began to hate everybody back.  I developed gay Tourette’s around the house.  I’d just randomly remind my parents that I’m gay just to get under their skin.  Not one of these times did they ever tell me they loved me.  That I was their son and regardless, they will love me.  No hugs and telling me they would accept me.  It is always we don’t want to hear that Henry or shut your mouth Henry or similar things.
    A year into college and I’m still in Lexington, going to U.K.  Some of the kids I went to high school with are here too.  They passed it along that I’m gay but I’ve seen some other people that are gay.  At least here I can go to the bathroom.
    I still get picked on though, and things get thrown at me and I still get beat up on the regular.  So today I made a decision.  After all the years of this, I just can’t take it anymore!  My heart is cold and I feel nothing but hate.  I don’t care if I live or die, so last week I went and bought two 9 mm hand guns.  I got eight clips for them too.  Today, I plan to be the guy that you can write your next article about.  I refuse to live like this anymore.
Before I take off and go do what I am going to do, let me ask you this: How is my hate any different than the ones that hated me my whole life?  You will say it’s because I murdered people but where is it written that there are different levels of hate?  Mathew believed that thoughts were more important than acts (Matthew 15:19-20, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”).  Will you judge those that hated me for their evil thoughts?  For the things that came out of their hearts?  I’m not innocent, I’ve hated them right back but all I’m going to do now is “eat with unwashed hands.”
You can judge me all you want.  Let me tell you this though you don’t know me at all.
    The world will never be at peace because judgments always leave someone on the outside.  Until the world figures out a solution to that, the hate will never stop!  Hate!

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