"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

打就是疼， 骂就是爱。

The Chinese has never hit the bull's eye as accurately as this does when it comes to such paradoxes.

Sometimes, I do wonder - why do we do the things we do, say the things we say, not do the things we don't do, not say the things we don't say. I wonder why, oh why oh why is it so difficult to say "I love you" to the person that should have been the easiest to say it to. Why is it that we say the most hurting things, the most stupid things, the most ridiculous and the most outrageous things to the person who is least deserving of such abuse. Why do we always, always, always, hurt the one who love us, and whom we know, deep in our hearts, no matter what we say or do or show or tell others or write or shout or scream or cry, deep in our hearts we know we love. Not just love, but love deeply, treasured.

We contradict ourselves in this most basic of all things - love.

Why? Because we are humans. And not just because we are humans. Because love blinds. Love takes us under her arms, cover us with her shadow, and we are surrounded by the immense feeling of powerful, what you call that, LOVE, all with capital letters, that feeling of immense pleasure and security and protection from all that surrounds us, such that we become immune to anything that is NOT love. To indulge in it, to be filled by it, and then, to drown in it.

Maybe what drives us to love sometimes really isn't love itself. Imagine you are in darkness, and you see a beacon of light; what drives you to the beacon of light wouldn't be the light itself, but rather, the darkness. Or imagine you in the coldest of winter; what drives you to the fire isn't going to be the warmth, but the cold that besiege you. The knowledge and understanding of the might have been and might not have been, the possibilities, the fear. The more we indulge in love, the more we lose sight of what is not love, and the more we lose sight of what is not love, the less we realise that we are in love.

Hatred. What does it mean when we say that we hate somebody? Hatred does not come from nowhere. When someone hates another, he/she does not simply hate the person because the person is hate-able. Or simply because something displeases him/her about the person. When there is hatred, there has to be love. Love that you hope there was something more in the person, that you hope something in the person could change for the better, that you hope that things could just be different.

It takes effort to hate. In fact, it takes more effort to hate than to love. To constantly be displeased about somebody, to be agonised by this hatred, to be distracted and to be caught in between hatred and reconciliation. It doesn't feel good to hate. Why would anybody with a sound mind choose to hate people who are not even related, who he/she does not even care about? Before you can hate somebody, you have to really love that somebody.

So please know that even though I always bicker with you and make things so difficult, I love you. I love you and I hope things, these things these bad and horrible things, will only get better.