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Scapegoat

December 13, 2004

I�ve always had a scapegoat, one person in my life who with no rational cause, I loathe. Usually my scapegoats are people who I don�t know at all or who are tangentially involved in my life, people who I can hate with seething, blinding passion but without really hurting anyone.

This person is never someone who I know very well, and has ranged from the girl with the annoying laugh in one of my classes to a boy my last roommate dated for a while. The existence of this person allows me to channel my frustrations with people in general and concentrate it at one target. Typically the object of my hate isn�t aware of my hate (or sometimes of my existence). Usually I am aware of who this person is and I don�t just direct my hate unaware.

Recently I�ve started to think that maybe I�ve gotten over my hobby of hate, but yesterday I realized full force that the hate is there, and this time it�s burning too close to home.

Saturday night before I went out I paid a visit to my upstairs neighbor, who�d had an emergency appendectomy the night before. She asked me about my plans for the evening and the mix of characters it involved, and I launched into making catty remarks about Dirck�s other girl. Of course I couched it in funny terms, as I�m wont to do, made jokes about scratching her eyes out et cetera, and didn�t think a damn thing of it.

As I set out to walk to Dirck�s place, it hit me: she is the focus of my hate. Why? For stupid reasons, mainly �just because.� And I decided: this ends now, because it�s absurd, damaging and just downright bitchy awful and unfair.

So I�ve vowed to banish that hate (maybe I�ll find a new object of my hatefection*), refocus and try to build a more positive relationship with her � which is to say, any relationship at all. Although typically when I�m around her I act nice, I am definitely acting, and perhaps even overdoing it. As soon as her back is turned I make comments like, �she looks like melted butter.� Why would I say such a thing (and what the fuck does that mean anyway)?

From here on in, I�m trying to rock the genuine niceties. Especially since she�ll be going to the same university as me come spring. If I can get along with exes and handle peculiar situations to the max, I can work at building a relationship with her that doesn�t have to be of the best-friends-forever ilk, but is more than me defensively saying to Dirck at the end of a night, �But I complimented her haircut!�

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*Hatefection: a feeling that utilizes the same sort of emotions that go into affection, except laced with hate, like an infection in my brain.

Posted by Dacia at December 13, 2004 11:38 AM