Fear and loathing

You got no friends tonight
Except your poison
Except your poison
Now all the lights are gone
Reach for your poison
Reach for your poison

~~ "Poison" by Generation X

I really hate it that the current resident (AKA Individual 1) of the Oval Office occupies so much of my headspace. Even when I'm not focusing on the news—and yesterday was a big effin' day, my friends—I find myself pondering things like, "Why do I hate him so much?" 

I don't like to toss the word 'hate' around and I don't do it easily. There is too much of that in the world already and I don't like participating in any of it. I'm a happy person who doesn't like to hate on anybody...unless they really, really deserve it. 

And make no mistake about it, I think Individual 1 deserves it. I detest pretty much everything about him. I find him a loathsome worm, incapable of the self-reflection necessary to be an empathetic or kind person. He is everything I hate in a person: full of himself, willfully ignorant, a liar, a stone cold jerk...I could go on and on, but you get the idea. 

But as I pondered all of this, I thought about WHY all those things bother me. It occurred to me today that it's because he reminds me way too much of so many of the toxic people I've had in my life throughout the years. Whether it was exes or people I encountered over the years in the workplace or elsewhere, Individual 1 embodies all the qualities that caused me so much grief, anger, and heartache. 

The victimhood and the victim-shaming; the narcissism and the sexism; the ego, the ignorance, the lying, the sheer ugliness that lurks deep inside. The guy who decided that he was the head of the household and I had to defer to him. The guy who was seeing numerous women all the time he was seeing me. The guy who got pissed off at me for not wearing a dress and heels around the house when I got home from working at the lab. The boss who blatantly lied about things, like saying, "I never said that" when every single goddamn person in the small lab heard him say it. The coworker who went around telling everyone exactly what he wanted to do to me and then denied it when I confronted him. The doctor who sexually harassed me. The guys who trash-talked about me to anyone who would listen when I had the audacity to break up with them. The people who lied and manipulated and took advantage and who never, EVER took the blame for anything and never had the self-awareness to even think that they might bear some culpability in things.

It's all there. All wrapped up into one big fat bloated orange blob.

He's like a bad acid flashback to all the worst times in my life. A flushback, if you will. 

It's no wonder I loathe him.