on being scared of me

the opposite of love isn't hate or indifference, it's just fear. so when my mother says she gets scared of me sometimes, what she means is that there are moments where i make it very difficult to love me. & i can't hold that against her. unconditional love is an unhealthy fiction.

i remember in my first year after moving to college, a lot of my friends also began saying this to me, that they were scared of me. i had a pretty textbook case of what they’d call anger management issues, which many would say i inherited from my mother, but again, i think anger is more fundamental than that. maybe, if anything, it is in fights with my mother that i practiced expressing my anger.

i have always been quick to judge, cocksure, & a blind servant to every gut feeling, every intuition, & really, every faith of mine. & although i may be pathetically performative, i still hardly know to pretend. i’m pathologically honest. but if people don't always know what i’m thinking, that's likely because they're not clocking some sarcasm, or because i walked out of the room.

so if i am expressing my anger with you, it's probably because i expect better. i’m angry because i want you to change, & i know we all say love is taking someone as they are and all that, sure, but also, who do we want to change except the ones we love? what is love if not partaking in the making of one another?

but people have their own pace. so when my mother or my friends tell me that sometimes, i’m difficult to love, i have little choice but to understand what they mean.

in college, i also found my people. there were the few that saw me in my misunderstanding & reminded me that, in a lot of ways, when someone says they're scared of me, it's a refusal to talk, to engage with what i’m trying to bring up, & to be changed.

to this date, i get along best with the most confrontational people. just talk, man. there's nothing more miserable than a person who doesn't want to change. the capacity to change is probably one of the few parts of being human that make the whole deal kinda worth it.

honestly, some of you should be a little scared of me. otherwise i’m doing this wrong.