The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

“What I cannot accept in myself, what I cannot handle in the complexity of the world, what I fear in you, often leads me to repress you if I can.” –James Hollis

There was once a fantasy man, silent, slightly dangerous, tall, handsome, frequently masked. Yes, I was in love with the Phantom from the comics, the Phantom who lived in a place called Bengalla, in the Skull Cave, with Hero the white horse and his wolf, Devil. Unfortunately, he had a sexy, adult girlfriend named Diane Palmer whom I ignored. After all, as a nine-year-old girl whose mother cut her crooked bangs, I could not compete with the large-bosomed Diane. But then there was The Highway Man who in the poem, loved Bess, the landlord’s daughter. Bess warns the highway man away from an ambush by shooting herself with a musket but then he returns to the inn and is shot. His ghost still rides the road to the inn. I used to read this poem aloud to our cleaning ladies who found my obsession with love and death odd in someone so young and seemingly safe in a New Jersey farmhouse. And don’t get me started on vampires!

photo by Everton Vila

These fictional obsessions continued as I grew up manifesting in a penchant for nearly silent, handsome boyfriends who deep down were utterly unavailable, not dead or living in Africa but unable to return my feelings although they had no difficulty sleeping with me and frequently cheating on their wives or girlfriends to arrive on my doorstep with confused declarations of their inability to resist my charms. Yes, I explored this pattern in therapy and yes, there was my handsome, brilliant, quiet father who was always just out of reach, who helped me get sober and survive my suicidal impulses but then faded back into the orbit of my mother and his own need to separate. I loved him and hated him in equal measure, aware that his love, his terrible conditional love had branded me for life. I would spend so many years either saving or being victimized by a series of men while the ones who truly loved me were tormented until they had enough of this woman who had once believed the ultimate proof of love was despair and death.

At my current age, sixty-eight, I cannot list all the lovers, the boyfriends, the men who passed through my life, some kind and good, some sad and desperate, some mean. I live in harmony with my third husband, a retired Chicago ironworker, a strong, good man with terrible politics who loves me. This relationship is so different from the past dramas there are times I question its existence. There are times I wonder whether any of those complicated men, those driven and sometimes desperate people could have changed along with me, but I doubt it. Our cat, a huge tuxedo named Rufus, sometimes reminds me of my old boyfriends with his mixture of devotion and anger, his need to smother me with cuddles at night while biting me to make sure I understand he is not my love slave.

– Molly Moynahan