There are people who say hatred is taught. That it festers in the places where love was supposed to live. But that's not true for me. Mine has always been there. A quiet hum in the back of my head, not loud, not unbearable. Just… consistent. Like a faucet someone forgot to turn off.
I hated people before I knew what the word meant. And by the time I understood it, it already fit me like a second skin.
My name's Grey. That's what they call me. No one really bothers to ask what I want to be called. No one really asks me anything that matters. Maybe that's part of why I hate them. But I think it goes deeper.
It started when I was four. Or maybe that's just the first time I remember it. I was at a birthday party, someone else's, not that I remember whose. There were streamers. Plastic tablecloths printed with cartoons I didn't care about. Laughing kids, all sticky fingers and running noses, bounced off the walls like they were made of sugar and helium.
And I remember thinking: I don't want to be here. I don't like any of you.
It wasn't like I wanted to cry or run away. There wasn't fear. It was worse. It was boredom. Disgust. A sort of quiet rage that none of them could feel, but I could. And it never left.
By the time I was six, the adults were already worried about me. Not that it was much of a surprise, considering they never bothered speaking to me in the first place.
"He doesn't smile," one teacher whispered to my mother. "Not like the other kids."
I heard her; I always hear them. Every cruel word spoken by every person. Like all humans, talking behind another's back because they're too much of a coward to say it to someone's face. Pathetic.
That year, I stopped trying to fake it. Stopped pretending I liked the other children, or wanted to share crayons, or play with toys I didn't care about. They called me distant. Antisocial. Detached. Inhuman.
I didn't see the problem.
A boy tried to bother me during quiet time, snatched the dark toy car I was messing with, not because he cared, just because he could. I didn't yell. I didn't cry. I just stared until he walked away. People noticed. They always do, eventually.
They never say it directly, but I know what they're thinking. That I'm cold. That something in me doesn't work the way it's supposed to. They might be right.
People think a child's supposed to be soft. Open. Curious. I've never been those things. I came into the world with my fists already clenched. And it's not because someone hurt me, not back then. Not yet. I was just born this way.
Dead-eyed.
Heavy.
Like I was carrying a weight no one else could see. A boy cursed to hate the world, the people, and the way everyone acts.
The other kids noticed it too. They kept their distance. Or they poked at me like I was some kind of animal in a cage, trying to see what would happen if they pushed hard enough.
I never gave them what they wanted, other than the occasional stare-down.
One called me a freak. I stared right through him.
Another said I looked possessed. I told him maybe I was.
He cried. Shocker, I didn't.
They tried putting me in counseling. I sat in a beanbag chair while some wide-eyed woman with a notepad asked me how I felt.
"How do you feel when other kids say mean things?"
"Like you after your husband gets home from the bar."
She didn't laugh.
She wrote something down and handed me a sticker I didn't ask for. They tried everything, or so they claim. But no one ever really listened, let alone bothered to try.
Because what I wanted to say, what I needed to say, was that I'm not broken. I'm not confused or lost or misunderstood. I see the world exactly as it is. Cold. Brutal. Loud with lies. And I hate it. I hate the scum that walks the planet.
That's the truth of it.
I hate people because they pretend. All the time. Pretend they're happy, pretend they care, pretend they're good. But underneath, they're all the same: Self-serving, loud, oblivious, egotistical, pretentious, all of the above.
I just don't pretend, so they do the one thing that makes sense, as all worthless humans do: They call me a problem.
They call me dangerous. But really, I'm just honest. Almost brutally so, some could say.
There's something else, too. Something hard to explain, even now. I've never quite fit into my skin. Like I'm wearing a mask that's glued to my face, not because I want to hide, but because I don't know what I'd look like without it.
People say I glare. They say my eyes are too still, too dark. That I don't blink enough.
A teacher once tried to describe me to the school counselor. I heard her outside the door. She said I looked like I was waiting for something.
Not like a kid waiting for recess. More like a wolf waiting for meat, more like a snake waiting to strike at a rabbit's throat.
I liked that. It's the only compliment I've ever kept.
I turned seven a few months later. My mother forgot the date. She never really paid attention to details like that. Always too busy working, or pretending to work, or drinking the parts of herself she didn't want to deal with.
I didn't blame her much; I didn't quite like dealing with myself either. No shame in admitting it.
I never expected anything, but something in me twisted that day.
I watched the cake burn in the oven because she fell asleep on the couch. I scraped the blackened crust off with a spoon and ate it anyway. My fingers got covered in soot. I licked them clean. A little charcoal taste never hurt anyone.
That was the first time I said it out loud.
"I hate everyone."
There was no audience. No tantrum. Just me. Sitting on a cold floor in a too-quiet house, talking to myself like I was the only one who'd ever listen. Maybe I was.
Once again, my name's Grey for those who forgot to pay attention. And if you're looking for some redemptive story about how I learned to love again, some story on how I grew out of my ways, you're in the wrong damn book.
My truth is simple: I've hated your species since the beginning. I see what others refuse to, I see the injustice, the filth, and I fight against it, not ignore it like the rest.