Gina and I are currenty watching Homicide: Life on the Street and the episode we saw the other night has thrown me for a bit of a loop.

In an earlier episode this season, Detective Bayliss (Kyle Secor) shares with his partner Frank Pembleton (played the brilliant but definitely gone too soon Andre Braugher) that he had been sexually abused by an uncle when he was a child. The admission, like everything about this show, was written and acted just perfectly, and it was deeply affecting to me.

In the season 5 episode we just watched, “Double Blind” Tim visits the home of his uncle, who is now older and disabled, and obviously distressed by Tim’s appearance. Tim enters the house and after asking if the uncle remembers him and knows who he is, he sits down in a chair, looks at his uncle and calmly asks “Where do I put my hate?” and the episode ends.

I have no interest in confronting my abuser directly, in fact I have done everything I possibly can to ensure as little contact with him as is absolutely necessary. But that question Tim asks, “where do I put my hate” has been haunting me for days now because I don’t think I ever realized how angry I am, or just how much hatred I have for my abuser, and the havoc he created in my life.

Growing up, I navigated the abuse like my family taught me to do with anything uncomfortable, just pretend everything is ok, family is very important and we take care of each other, and even though I knew it was all an illusion I went along with it for years.

Now that I have removed myself from my family as much as I possibly can for my own mental health and safety, and as I work in therapy processing the abuse and the effects of it on my life, I often find myself overwhelmed with anger and a level of hate that I have never felt before.

I don’t consider myself a hateful person, but the level of extreme hatred I feel towards my abuser is strong and I don’t know how to process it. All I know is that it is a very heavy weight to carry (and I think I have been carrying it for a really long time without realizing it) and I want to rid myself of it, set it down somewhere so it doesn’t feel like the tremendous burden it is, like this whole experience has been to me, a life long struggle to unpack and process experiences that no one should have ever have had to deal with, and the continuing effects those experiences still have on me fifty years later.

I hate what he did to me, and I hate him for doing it.

So I ask, please, anyone, where do I put my hate?