Hate Sees Only A Part Of A Being Laura Labno   © Copyright 2026 by Laura Labno

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

‘I look like her, right? We have a similar face, and mouth right? Do you think we are similar?

There was something intense in the way he asked, as if he wanted to insist that they were similar. As if it was important, and maybe even crucial for him to be reassured of the similarities between them. It was as if he was searching for himself in her. Or for her in himself. Sarah felt sadness for him. She felt deeply that she wanted to know who this women was and why she abandoned her son. She wished she could know what kind of person he would become, had she not left him. Had she loved him his whole life with her presence. There was no judgement towards his mother in Sarah. But there was a bizarre desire in her to know this women’s story.

‘Am I similar to her?’

‘She is very beautiful… so I will say, yes.’ Sarah heard herself saying. The sentence spilled out of her mouth very genuinely, without much thinking. He was beautiful. She saw a gentle expression passing through his face, letting her know he was satisfied with her answer. If the expression she captured signified pride at all, it was sensible enough to not repulse her.

‘Your hair is similar too’ – She said. His mother had thick, long black hair, and although his hair was cut much shorter, it was thick and black too. She really liked his hair and thought it was a shame he tended to bride it or cover it with his gangster bandana. In fact, it was the moment when he first showed her his hair when she suddenly felt more at ease with him than ever before. With his hair loose he looked softer, cuter. But he didn’t like himself like that.

‘My face looks better with my hair tied, right? – He asked then. Sarah denied promptly, saying she really liked his hair loose. But perhaps looking soft was too vulnerable for him. His façade was rough, masculine, yang. Maybe it wasn’t only a façade, maybe to a degree he really was like that. Yet, she was certain that there was a softness within him which was buried, and protected by layers of defenses which he has never shed light upon. Just like within her there was sexual passion and aggression which she didn’t want to allow to come to the surface, even when they had sex.

The night when he showed her that photo was Light. The tarot card that represented it was the Green Woman. She felt him as a living person, with soul, for the first time out of all the times they’ve met before. She felt lust too more than ever before towards him. She still wasn’t able to embody herself completely, in the fulness of her confidence and femineity, but she got closer to this ideal. She wished she could know what was the meaning of the beauty and connection she felt during that night? If only a little over a week later she was meant to grab his hand so tightly and penetrate his eyes with hers, asking if she could trust him.

There was a sense of something crumbling within her. When ones ideals show up as a potential naivety, the soul hurts. But perhaps the ideals aren’t the problem, as much as the people who use them as naivety? Was he one of those people? The complexity of his soul felt perplexing, yet the frustration she felt was also because she knew all too well – It wasn’t just about his soul. It was about her soul too, maybe even more than about his. The struggle she felt was because she couldn’t know whether the darkness she noticed in him was only her own? Whether what she saw in him on a night a week after the beautiful night, was only a projection of her own fears and wounds. Or whether he had illicit intentions, to use her naivety in the most humiliating way?

The night a week after the beautiful night was…

‘It was… insightful’ – She said to her flat mate who entered the living room as Sarah was writing down her thoughts.

‘How was the date night?’.

‘It was… insightful’ - She couldn’t lie too well, she couldn’t fake ‘It was nice’. She didn’t want to say ‘I got too high, got really paranoid, and mistrustful towards him and at one point had a sense that he wanted to use my vulnerable state to trick me into giving him my bank details’.

But insightful was true. The night was insightful.

Sarah really couldn’t know whether her feeling about him was because of the paranoia induced by smoking or whether it was true. He did really mention something about his bank account. He talked to her about a few things to ‘bring her back from her bad trip’. But her mind interpreted it as him trying to get something out of her while she was confused. When reality becomes blurry a person skilled in manipulation will know how to use it.

Yet she also knew that her psyche had a lot of suspicion towards people in general. Importantly, life gave her countless proofs of her fears and projections having little to do with reality in most cases. She knew too that deep down she was suspicious of him from the start and smoking could only magnify it. She had some grounds for being suspicious and he understood it; After all his gangster persona and ‘I left home when I was 15 and lived on the streets for some time’ story-line unsurprisingly conveyed the message ‘Be cautious’. Yet there was still the possibility too that he was that genuine and brave person who just followed himself his whole life and preserved his good heart despite of the hurt lived through. – As she saw him a week earlier.

Light or Dark? Was it too simple? Was it even right to create this duality? Instead, could she accept that there was both in both of them? And for her own sake, should she not most of all accept that there was darkness within her?

• It’s because you are Yin and I am Yang – He said to her when she was too high to know if he really said it. Regardless of whether he said it or not, she sensed an important meaning in it. He was her darkness which she did not want to accept. And she was the love he did not want to feel.

It is easier to not feel love when we don’t want to be abandoned by it. And it is easier to deny darkness than to face the possibility of being consumed by it. It’s simple yet not true at all in the truest sense because it is easier only up until a certain point in our journeys - When duality has no more right to prevail. Is this the I-Thou Martin Buber talked about? The Real Life is Meeting. It is meeting the Other as much as it is meeting oneself.

She kept staring intensely into his eyes, holding his arm tightly and he stared back, trying to convey to her with his whole being that she could trust him. ‘What you see is what you get with me’. He said it a few times through their short lived relationship. And she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she struggled to believe that it was possible simply because she wore a mask for most of the time.

Tarot said they will meet Balance.

Buber also said ‘Hate sees only a part of being’.