Thin Line

First, some lyrics:

It’s a thin line between love and hate
It’s a thin line between love and hate
It’s five o’clock in the morning
And you’re just getting in
You knock on the front door
And a voice sweet and low says
Who is it? She opens up the door and lets you in
Never once asks where have you been
She says are you hungry?
Did you eat yet?
Let me hang up your coat
Pass me your hat
All the time she’s smiling
Never once raises her voice
Its five o’clock in the morning
You don’t give it a second thought
Its a thin line between love and hate
(repeat)
The sweetest woman in the world
Could be the meanest woman in the world
If you make her that way
You keep hurting her
She'll keep being quiet
She might be holding something inside
That’ll really, really hurt you one day
I see her in the hospital
Bandaged from foot to head
In a state of shock
Just that much from being dead
You couldn’t believe the girl
Would do something like this, ha
You didn’t think the girl had the nerve
But here you are
I guess action speaks louder than words
Its a thin line between love and hate
(repeat)

We were talking about a couple, let’s call them R and E, who really don’t deserve the two beautiful children they have because they are so busy being angry and hateful and vengeful with each other that they can’t see past their differences to be civil – even for their kids.

Poor little T is only 9 years old and feeling the brunt of it. A new chapter was written this weekend involving a late visitation, a power-hungry, hypocritical mom, a butthole dad, and a couple of kids that basically got squashed in the middle of the drama.

At one point in the story, I turned to the storyteller and commented that A) I don’t know whose side I am on because I dislike both of them for different reasons, and B) it’s a thin line between love and hate. Only too recently have I been exposed to many folks who “don’t love each other anymore” and who are trying to move on in their rather advanced years. It seems to me there are fundamental prideful problems with each of them. How can they attempt to find love again? How can they try to sever deep ties with home and family and kids and lives without wrecking all? What makes them think their single offering is so desirable that others will want them?

So, I have decided to open a butthole-gone-single aging-meat-market (BGSAMM) dating service. I will list their real qualities –
1) Strong determination to walk away from responsibility
2) New-found desire to improve self and look good
3) Ability to forget past (accomplishments but not faults)

and their imagined qualities –
1) Thinks they are better off
2) Have more to offer to their pursued new relationship now that they are free

I think most of the BGSAMM participants think the opposite of love is hate. They could not be more wrong. The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of love is ‘I do not care.’

It is the inability to think objectively and rationally that I don’t get. Why not fall in love with the person you were in love with before? Is that so hard? If you hate them now, you aren’t far away from loving them. Cut yourself a big slice of that humble pie you avoid so fervently and fold up the selfishness you hold so dear into a small wad and stick it under the table of reconciliation. If you look under there you find that many others in your situation have already done that. Gross, isn’t it?

Plus, you know what they look like naked so there won't be a 'third-nipple surprise.'