I hate liver.

No, really.  I can’t eat liver.  Or smoked oysters.

I get those foods into my mouth, take a couple of chews, and the flavour and texture make me gag.

I hate prejudice.  I hate that even though I hate prejudice, I suffer from prejudices that I have to rail against on a daily basis.  There are ideas so ingrained in my psyche that when they come up I make a snap judgement, sometimes I catch it before I put my foot in my mouth, sometimes I don’t.

I hate that standing up for what is right sometimes means doing things that are scary, means confronting things that make me anxious.

I hate that doing the right thing means hurting physically.

Hate is a choice.  Being hated is not.

Wearing being hated as a badge of honour is stupid.  Thinking that being hated means you’re doing something constructive is stupid.

I hate being stupid.  I’d like to think that I’m not stupid, but I have days.  Oh, do I have days.

I hate that labels create ideas that make the difference between someone feeling safe and someone feeling threatened.  I hate that tradition is sometimes safer than creating truly safe spaces within and without.

I hate the perplexity I feel.  I hate having difficulty with pronouns, with having to trip over people’s abuses of the english language and basic grammar.

(And I hate that I may have offended people with my own.)

But……

I love that people can change, when they want to.  I love that change itself can, with time, not be a dangerous or threatening thing.

I love that diversity can in fact make people stronger.  I love that people are strong enough to accept diversity.

I love that people can resist the grooves in their psyche to relearn modes of thinking and identifying.

I love that beautiful things exist in the world that can be seen, or seen better, or appreciated in a stronger, deeper, more passionate way.

I love that labels can be just labels, that labels of an intellectual sense can be peeled off or written over just like paper labels.  I like how some things are person relative, like how one identifies, but how some other things are intrinsic, consistent, solid.

I love how when you feel out of sorts something happens that just puts a smile on your face, like a $100 cheque that magically appears in the mail out of nowhere.

Or your boyfriend’s Christmas shopping that is now taking up more space under your bed than your own Christmas shopping.

I love how a dog pawing your face can turn from a desire to need more sleep to a soft, warm, fuzzy alarm clock.

Canada Post just showed up with more parcels.  I’m going to have to find another place to put my boyfriend’s Amazon parcels.