I don't hate. Hate only hates the hater.
I dislike music.
I want to say I hate it, but hate only hurts the hater.
It started in grade school when I played the clarinet. Perfectly. Beautifully. Absolutely. So well, in fact, that I couldn't progress into the sixth grade band without private lessons we couldn't afford.
So I gave it up.
I love my family. All nine of us that struggled the same race.
I made it through the many intervening years by listening, but never playing. Distancing myself from life and the living.
Four years ago my then boyfriend and I were having problems. Problems with drugs and music. Problems with control. Problems with each other.
He promised to take me to a concert on my birthday.
I want to say I hate my birthday.
All through-out the month he led me on, while "hanging out with" his ex behind my back. When I found out on my birthday... he pretended it didn't matter. When I hung up, he took her. Out. Home.
Even wrote me an email to shove it in my face that he'd lost nothing the day I lost my sense of self.
I dislike my birthday. I don't have one. I have a date of birth I don't celebrate any more.
To this day he pretends it didn't happen.
That it doesn't matter how I sit in silence, afraid to turn the radio on. Afraid to turn on Spotify. Afraid to turn to youtube.
Afraid to be triggered.

It was my sisters birthday a few days back.

And I am triggered.

Into feeling I am nothing.
Because as he said once to me, "I've had you. I don't need to have you."