"Yep," I say spinning around.
"Did you hear about Mark ...?"
She's someone I once worked with, still does the same job although we both live on island occasionally running into one other.
"No," I say uncaringly.
In every life hate sometimes appears.
Mark certainly hated me and went to incredible lengths to prove it.
I work every hard to develop a relationship with him which is akin to beating my head against a wall because he had no interest in anything other than hating me.
He does his best to get me fired meeting with the President of my Board and making his best case why I should be terminated immediately.
He steals money so we sue him ending up in court where he snarls full of cold indignation.
He uses every opportunity to berate, belittle and build a coalition of people to also hate me.
He leaves me utterly confused and frustrated.
"To hate somebody is to be diminished and drained by it," says Frederick Buechner. "Theirs is the ultimate consuming passion."
"He has cancer," she continues on a hot day in front of the Post Office, "it's the fast kind. He's been moved to his family in Pennsylvania ... his wife moved to another state ... will you pray for him?"
"We didn't get along," I honestly reply.
Startled, she repeats ... "But will you pray for him?"
A long, dreary, sad and exhausting sigh fills my soul.
"Sure," I say before spinning around to get the mail.
In many ways Mark got everything he wanted.
I left the job ... he won the day in court having to pay back what he hadn't spent ... and his coalition grew.
I retreated into a smaller world, finding loving happiness and have been forced to slow down enough to save myself.
In the end, haters simply loose themselves.
Lovers finally finds love and, in doing so, themselves.
But hate's a hard thing to overcome once it's bitten you.
I'm still pumping myself up for that prayer.
