Bdelygmia (del-ig’-mi-a): Expressing hatred and abhorrence of a person, word, or deed.
“I hate your guts,” I love that saying. But, I didn’t know what the “guts” were that I hated. Was it your kidneys? Your lungs? They were plural, so it might be them. But, maybe “guts” could be made out of a single organ, or hating more than one “gut” at a time, even to the point of all your guts. I feel like I hate all of your guts. But, what is it about your guts that I hate?
I Googled it: “‘I hate your guts’ is an American idiom conveying an intense, absolute dislike for someone. It suggests hating a person to their very core, using ‘guts’ to represent the innermost, fundamental parts of a person, rather than just their surface behavior.”
This is it! I hate your guts! I really, really hate you. Hate, hate, hate! You, you, you. What do we do with people we intensely hate? Spank them? I don’t think so. Instead, we need something fatal. Drowning? Too complicated. Too physical. I’m no athlete. Shooting? Stabbing? Too messy. Push down a flight of stairs? Too iffy. Overdose of prescribed medication? Mom takes “Tangelo” for her depression. Perfect! I’ll pour the whole bottle in her hot cocoa. Presto! She’s gone. My hatred will become a thing of the past. I will fade into normalcy and live happily ever after. I did an evil man laugh: “Moo hoo ha ha ha.” I was surrounded by rainbows and sunshine, and sitting on a big pink cloud. Free at last, free at last, tonight I will be free at last!
You may be asking yourself how I could hate my mother enough to want to kill her with her medication. Well, it started when I was 5 and she gave me a piece of shit wrapped in toilet paper for Christmas. I asked her what it was and she told me it was the best thing my father had ever done for me. Dad stood up and started laughing. He said, “Honey this is the funniest thing you ever did.” Then, he gave her her gift. It was a used condom. He said to me, “Son, this could’ve been your brother or sister” and laughed his evil laugh like Vincent Price. Then, Mom gave Dad his gift. When he opened it, it exploded and blew a hole in his chest. Me and Mom got minor shrapnel wounds, but Dad was dead. His lungs were hanging out.
Me and Mom tried to make a getaway, but the car wouldn’t start and the battery ran down. That’s when I started hating my mother, for botching our getaway. I hated her guts because now I’d have go to Meadow Lark Reform School—I was judged a juvenile accessory to Mom’s crime because I didn’t warn my father that “some shit” was going to come down. I stayed at Meadow Lark for 10 years and became deeply mentally disturbed. When my mother got out of prison, she moved in with me, and all I wanted to do was kill her, and I did. She went to sleep and never woke up. The cocoa cupful of Tangelo hit her like a crowbar on the back of the head. Her death was determined a suicide and I am living happily ever after.
Boy, did I hate her guts!
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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