My Hater, My Lover (Book One)

Chapter 10 - Hatred is a Disease which spreads (Eron)

As long as I could remember, I was easy to be loved by others. Mothers would tell my mother, she was so lucky to have such a handsome little boy. 

In school, all the girls tried to get me to like them, and all the boys did whatever I wanted to get my friendship. I felt I was entitled to anything I wanted. After all, the whole world kept offering it to me.

I still remember the day it changed. I was in grade 5 and my father had over a business associate. 

The business associate had two older daughters and they were cooing over how handsome I was.

"He's going to break all the girl's hearts," One of the girls cooed.

 My father had a hearty laugh. "Now now, he's still too young to tell," he said proudly, although he already knew I was going to have an easy life. I had his face, after all.

 "Or the boys, too!' I piped in. There was an awkward silence. I felt uncomfortable. Had I said something wrong?

My father's face quickly changed to a look I had never seen. It was anger, embarassed, disgust. But just as quickly as it came, it was masked over.

 "Boys just say the darnest things, don't they?" He laughed. My father's business associate laughed awkwardly, and both of the two daughters looked smugly at me, as if they knew a dirty secret about me they were delighted to have discovered.

 That night after our guests left, I still remember vividly. My father waved goodbye to our guests and closed the door.

My mother looked at me and him, uneasily.

"Honey, dear, he didn't mean it..." she began, nervousness and fear in her voice. She pushed me behind her.

My mother and father were both from well to-do families. They both happened to be mixed British and Chinese. I would later come to realize half of the reason for my father's cruelty was because their marriage was loveless, it was arranged, a political marriage.

My father ripped my mother from in front of me, raised his hand and came down hard across my face.

I tasted blood, and I could hear my mother screaming, begging him to stop. It was the first time he had struck but would not be the first. It was the night I lost favor with my father.

He continued to strike me, and my mother tried to stop him.

"No son of mine will be a damn faggot!" he roared. I didn't even know what it really meant, back then.

 My mother tried to stop him but he turned his anger on her as well. He started to hit her. I watched in horror, paralyzed.  

 The next day, my father refused to allow me to go to school. He wouldn't allow the other students to see what a mess he had made of my face.  I didn't leave my room except to eat. It was horrible and miserable. My father wouldn't even look at me. My mother was silent during dinners but sometimes I would hear they yelling from down the hall in their bedroom.

After a week, my face was finally healed and I was told to tell everyone I was sick with a fever.

When I was back in class, I saw all my classmates worried about me, expressing their concern, saying how much they missed them.

 They still loved me.

 I would work hard to ensure I would never lose face in the public eye. It's all I had left.

 Afterward, my father would express disapproval or become easily upset if I brought home my male classmates, so I stopped.

 The stark contrast between my father's disgust with me and the adoration from my classmates started to disturb me.

I especially hated it when my guy friends started to act too close. I felt easier to place the blame on them for what had happened to me. 

I started to have resentment toward my guy friends and I started to develop the habit of being cruel to them. And it was so easy to get away with it. I became just like my father, except I used others to do the damage rather than my own fists.

By the time I reached high school, my appetite for cruelty had grown.