The Poison You Drink Yourself.

I was 50 when I realised I'd never actually experienced true hate before.

A spinal injury at work brought my life as I knew it to a screaming halt. I'd worked for that particular employer for over twenty years. To say I went above and beyond for them is a fucking understatement. Three sick days in over two decades. I was proud of my work ethic. Proud of my loyalty. It was part of my identity.

After three weeks of tests and scans, it was confirmed that I'd need surgery. I was told I'd most likely never be able to do the trade I'd been doing since I was fifteen, ever again.

Instead of any reciprocal loyalty or understanding, I was made redundant. My position was no longer available.

That was a kick in the guts that I didn't see coming. And it was the start of a downward spiral that became the worst few years of my life.

Those years were a blur of medical appointments, money-hungry lawyers, and dodgy insurance companies. They also included my soulmate being struck with an illness that landed her in hospital for eight months, and then passing away. They ended with homelessness.

After spending my whole life as a pretty optimistic, easy-going, glass-half-full sort of guy, I was fucking bitter on the world. It was an absolute clusterfuck of emotions to try and process. I was angry. I'd lost my patience. I was snapping at the people I loved, which was completely out of character for me. But at the time, all thoughts and feelings were just one big blur that fell under the darkness of grief.

The thing about grief is that it's a fog. It covers everything. You can't tell where one feeling ends and another begins because the whole landscape is just grey. So I assumed the ball of fire in my chest was part of that. I assumed it was grief, or anger, or the stress of watching my life fall apart in slow motion. I assumed it would pass.

But as time went on and the fog slowly began to lift, the ball was still there. Undeniably there. A physical weight I could feel in my chest. It hurt. I couldn't name it, but I could locate it... right there, behind the sternum, like something hot and heavy had taken up residence.

Then I started to notice little things.

Every time I drove past or near my old workplace, the ball of fire would intensify. Not in a psychological way. In a physical way. My chest would tighten before I'd even registered where I was. The body doesn't need a name for something to react to it. It just reacts.

The same thing happened every time I spoke to someone from there. Or had to repeat the story of what happened to a new doctor, a new lawyer, a new insurance assessor who pretended to care.

And then one day, out of the blue, it dawned on me.

It was a ball of hate.

Which also made it dawn on me that I'd obviously never actually experienced the sensation of hatred before. I thought I had. I'd been mighty fucking pissed off with certain people over the years. But this was different. This weight I was carrying around with me, that I could actually feel in my chest, was pure, unadulterated fucking hate. It was something I had never experienced before. And I despised the way it made me feel.

I thought I knew what hate was. I'd been angry before.

That's the thing most people get wrong. They use "hate" and "anger" like they're the same thing at different volumes. Like if anger is a 3, hate is a 10. But that's not what it is. Anger and hatred are not on the same dial.

Anger is a flare. It burns hot, it wants something... resolution, an apology, a fight, a change. And then it either gets what it wants or it burns out. Anger is a reaction. It's designed to move through you, not set up fucking camp.

Hatred is a slow burn. It doesn't want resolution. It doesn't want an apology. It wants the other person to suffer. And it takes up residence. It moves into your chest and starts paying rent with your own energy.

Anger is a reaction.

Hatred is an investment.

You spend time on hatred. You replay the story. You imagine the confrontation. You check their social media to see if they're doing well or badly. You wake up at 3am and the first thing your brain serves you is their fucking face. You're spending hours of your life on someone who has already forgotten you exist.

I spent months thinking about people who had moved on. I was the one still holding the rope.

There's that old Buddhist quote about hate being like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I'd heard it a hundred times and never really felt it. Now I was the guy holding the glass. Tasted about how you'd expect.

Before I could understand hatred intellectually, I had to admit something more basic: I could feel it.

The ball of fire was not a metaphor. It was a physical sensation. And once I started paying attention to it, it became a kind of diagnostic tool. It flared in specific situations. Driving past the workplace. Talking to certain people. Repeating the story. The body was keeping score in a way my conscious mind hadn't caught up to.

Here's what's happening when you hate someone. Your amygdala, the part of your brain that handles threat detection, doesn't know the difference between a physical threat and a person who wronged you. It just fires. Cortisol floods your system. Your body prepares for a fight. That tightness in your chest, that heat, that weight... it's real. It's not in your head. It's in your fucking bloodstream.

And the body pays the tab for what the mind refuses to let go of. Sleep goes to shit. Digestion goes to shit. Your immune system takes a hit. You're less present with the people you actually love because you're spending your energy on some c#nt you don't. The body keeps the score, and hatred runs up a debt.

The ball of fire in my chest was costing me. Not just emotionally. Physically. I was paying for the privilege of hating people who didn't even know I was hating them. They weren't getting the bill. I was.

So what is it? What is this thing I could feel in my chest?

Most people think hatred is the strong version of dislike. That's not what it is. Hatred is an obsession with aversion. It's not that you strongly dislike someone. It's that you can't stop thinking about them. They've taken up residence in your head, rent-free, and they're not leaving.

That's the paradox at the centre of hatred.

The person you hate has more control over your internal state than the people you love.

You're giving them that control. Every time you replay the story. Every time you imagine the confrontation. Every time you feel the ball of fire flare. You're handing them the keys.

The Buddha called hatred one of the three poisons. He didn't call it a poison because it's unpleasant. He called it a poison because it destroys the person who carries it. The poison metaphor is literal. You drink it. It damages you. The other person may never know you're drinking it. They may not even remember you exist. But you're still swallowing the shit.

Hatred is also a form of attachment. Which sounds a bit fucking backwards, because hatred feels like the opposite of attachment. It feels like you want to push someone away.

But think about it.

You're attached to the story.

Attached to the grievance.

Attached to being the person who was wronged.

You can't stop thinking about them. That's attachment. You're chained to the thing you claim to despise.

I didn't come to Buddhism because I was looking for enlightenment. I came to it because I was looking for a way to stop hurting. The philosophy found me at the bottom, not the top. And the first thing it told me was: that ball of fire in your chest? There's a name for that. People have been studying it for 2,500 years. You're not broken. You're just human.

The Stoics had their own version. Control what you can, accept what you can't. I couldn't control what my old employer did. I couldn't control that my soulmate got sick. I couldn't control the insurance company or the lawyers or the fact that I ended up without a roof over my head. But I could control, eventually, with work, whether I kept drinking the poison.

And the Buddhist framework added something the Stoics didn't emphasise enough: everything changes. Your pain will change. Your anger will change. Even the ball of fire will change. The question is whether you let it change on its own timeline, over years, while it slowly eats you from the inside, or whether you actively work to put it down.

The Buddha said hatred is a poison. But he didn't say much about what hatred tells you about the person who's hating.

Here's what I learned, slowly, painfully, over years of carrying that ball of fire: hatred is a confession. It tells you almost nothing about the person it's directed at, and almost everything about the person doing the hating.

The company that made me redundant didn't hate me. They didn't think about me enough to hate me. What they did was reveal what they valued... and loyalty wasn't on the list. That's not a statement about me. That's a statement about them. I just happened to be standing in the way when the truth came out.

People don't hate you because of who you are. They hate you because of what you represent to them about themselves. Their existence is a mirror showing you your own unlived life. And the sight of it is unbearable. So you attack the mirror.

The person who resents your success is telling you they wanted success and didn't pursue it.

The person who mocks your vulnerability is telling you they're terrified of their own.

The person who calls you delusional for trying something new is telling you they gave up on their own ambitions a long time ago and watching you try makes them feel the weight of that choice.

Carl Jung called this the shadow. The parts of yourself you can't bear to look at, so you bury them. And then you project them onto other people. Hate them for it. Attack them for it. When really you're just attacking a mirror.

The guy who made me redundant wasn't thinking about me at all. He was thinking about the bottom line. He was thinking about what was convenient. He was revealing what he valued. And what he valued wasn't loyalty. That's not my problem. That's his. I was collateral damage.

When you understand that hatred is a confession, you stop taking it personally. It's not about you. It was never about you. It was always about them. You just happened to be the mirror they were looking into that day.

And here's the part that stings. The part you have to sit with. The mirror cuts both ways. If you're carrying a ball of fire in your chest right now, aimed at someone, the same logic applies. What are they mirroring back to you? What are they confessing about themselves? And what are you confessing about yourself by still holding the rope?

That's not a comfortable question. It wasn't comfortable for me either. But it's the question that changes things.

So what do you do with all of this?

The first thing is to name it.

You can't let go of what you can't name. The feeling in your chest... that weight, that heat, that thing that flares when you drive past a certain building or hear a certain name... that's hatred. Not anger. Not righteous indignation. Hatred. And it's a poison you're drinking. Naming it doesn't fix it. But it stops you from pretending it's something else.

The second thing is to stop feeding it.

Every time you replay the story, you feed the ball of fire. Every time you imagine the confrontation, you feed it. Every time you check their social media to see if they're doing well or badly, you feed it. The practical move is interruption. When you notice the loop starting, you interrupt it. Not with toxic positivity. Not with "just breathe." With something real. A walk. A conversation with someone you love. A task that requires your full attention. You starve the fire by denying it fuel.

The third thing is to understand what you're looking at.

When someone attacks you, the question is not "what did I do wrong?" The question is "what are they confessing?" This re-frame is a practice, not a one-time insight. It takes repetition. But every time you do it, you reclaim a little of the energy you were spending on the fire.

The fourth thing is the hardest.

Let go without forgiving.

You don't have to forgive the person who wronged you. Forgiveness is not a requirement for release. You can put the poison down without excusing the person who poured it. Letting go is not saying "it's okay." It's saying "I'm not carrying this anymore." The weight belongs to them now. You're walking away.

And the fifth thing is to know what you're choosing.

If hatred is a poison, kindness is an antidote. Not performative kindness. Not "good vibes only." Kindness with a spine. The kind that sees clearly, names what's wrong, and still chooses not to become the thing it's fighting.

You can't find peace if you don't know how to let go of hate.

And you can't let go of what you can't name. But once you name it, once you understand what it is, where it comes from, and what it's costing you... you have a choice.

You can keep drinking the poison.

Or you can put the fucking glass down.

I put the glass down. It took years. It wasn't tidy. There was no single moment where everything clicked and the ball of fire vanished. It faded slowly, like a bruise. But it faded. And the space it left behind was lighter than I remembered.

The way you move through the world matters.

The way you speak about others matters.

The way you speak to yourself matters.

And everything changes. Your pain will change. Your anger will change. Your identity will change. Even the ball of fire will change.

The storm isn't the whole sky. But you have to look up to notice.

Peace, Love, and Profanities