Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I could go on saying this all day. The mirror doesn’t lie. That’s me and I hate you. It’s not a good thing to vehemently hate yourself. Oh, the reason I hate myself is because everybody hates me & I respect their judgment. Take my father, for example. He hates me because I’m smarter than him. I can count to 1,000. He can’t get past 35. If I want to make him mad I say “1,000.” He goes berserk. Last time I did it he threw a lit cigar at me. It missed and caught his favorite chair on fire. I put the fire out and it made him even madder. He yelled “I’ll get you, you little bastard.” He came at me with a meat tenderizer. I ran out of the house and slammed the door in his face.
As you can imagine, my home life was pretty bleak. My mother hated me too. When we ate dinner, I was not allowed to have silverware. I had to eat with my hands. She called me pig boy and made me oink. If I refused to oink she would taser me and beat me with a wooden spatula. She called it the “boy behaver.” She would hit me on the ears with it, so I was nearly deaf. My ears were deformed from being beaten and they wouldn’t stop ringing. So, I was ugly. I hated that.
I asked the girl who worked in the school library if she wanted to go to the movies with me. I said we could go see “Chucky.” She said, “I don’t have to go to the movies, Chucky’s standing right in front of me.” I hit her in the face with the OED sitting on the counter. That was a mistake. They called the police. I was arrested for assault and held in jail. For some reason they thought I was a flight risk and I was denied bail.
My lawyer was a champion sleaze ball. I hated her, but somehow she was able to convince the jury I was not guilty because I was provoked by being compared to Chucky—it triggered “the Chucky in me,” a Chucky that we all have lurking in the darker regions of our souls. We are all little children with red hair wearing overhauls. Terror lurks in us all. I could see members of the jury shuddering at the Chucky image, while the library girl made a disgusted face and shook her head in disbelief
Not guilty!
The two sweetest words in the English language. I went to hug my lawyer and she told me to get my hands off her. So, I took a cab home.
My father was waiting on the front porch with the meat tenderizer poised to strike. He said, “What? Did you escape from jail?” I laughed and told him I was not guilty.
I got a job in a chewing gum factory. My job is to watch packs of chewing gum go by on the rubber conveyor belt. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for. I should probably ask, but that would be embarrassing. The woman who works next to me got the boss to make me wear a paper bag over my head. It has eye holes punched in it, but no mouth, nose, or ear holes. It impedes my peripheral vision, but it does not affect the quality of my work. However, it does affect the depth of my self loathing.
I’m meeting with a self-help group called “Self Loathers Anonymous.” The meetings consist of people taking turns telling how much they hate themselves. I have learned that there are tons of reasons why people hate themselves, from a bad experience with Santa Claus to succumbing to evil impulses directed toward a cupcake. Then, I met a girl. She actually agreed to go for a drink after the meeting. We went to “Bev’s Brews” down the street.
She told me she could see why I loathed myself—my looks, my demeanor, and my smell were all loathworthy to the max. I pretty much said the same to her about her, except I added her yellow, almost orange, teeth like a beaver’s. We sat there for an hour saying hurtful things to each other—not holding back. I felt bad about myself in a new way.
We told the truth to each other and it set us free. These were not made-up taunts designed solely to hurt, but these were objective statements that provided insight and a sturdy foundation for our self hatred. For example, my ears are ugly, but so what! That’s what they are and I don’t care. Yes, I don’t care. It still hurts that they scare people, but that is a fleeting feeling on the way to I don’t care.
We learned this together and we fell in love with the horror of each other—with the repulsive smells, and looks, and actions that disgust us. It was either that, or live a solitary existence. We share our pain and it is edifying—it builds us up and induces compassion.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 