Performative Frank

I hate everyone. 

(“I’m quitting Youtube…” ahh)

That was how I felt within the past three months after dealing with my college rejections. As I dealt with my sadness, I picked apart every person I knew who contributed to any part of my sadness. Whether it was hyping me up or just a person smiling, I piled up resentment for everyone I knew. No one was safe. I hated all my friends for one of the stupidest reasons at one point. Why is this person so happy? There’s absolutely no reason to be happy. Why did I ask for any advice in the first place? Do I really need every bit of reassurance that I can get? Am I that insecure? Every night, I would ask myself these questions while being sad. And I know this probably makes me sound like a horrible person. But for maybe the first time ever, I fucking hated school. Every time I saw someone I knew in the hallway or walked into a classroom it would be something like: one… two… three… bruh fuck that guy and that girl, I don’t want to see them. It was probably one of the lowest slumps I had ever been in.

Some days I would be dead silent and would only go throughout the day only saying about 50 words in total. A dread continued to consume me as I delved deeper into my sadness.

There was one thing that I clung onto though.

While I went quiet and sought an internal peace with myself, I would always see people’s faces light up while talking. And during those moments I almost instantly was able to forgive people for the things I somehow found resentment for. And as I watched more people smile, I could only start smiling myself. I found each smile contagious and each person smiling showed me that I shouldn’t really care.

I needed to stop blaming other people for something that wasn’t even their fault. Each smile reminded me that there was an actual human behind all the resentment I had built up. And each smile symbolized a new reason to be happy. That sense of being a human was what made me smile. I started telling myself, how could I ever hate this person? And along with those questions came a guilty consciousness. How could I ever be so mean?

With enough time, I was able to learn forgiveness and lose all my resentment for everyone. It came to a point where I couldn’t hate a single person and embraced/appreciated all of their positive traits with the things that made me smile. I found it really hard to hate someone even if they weren’t the best person because I realized in my bath of resentment that I would never want someone to have that amount of hatred for me ever in my life.

At the same time, I started drifting away from the people that I would’ve called really close friends back in the fall. Gossip wasn’t meant for me and I realized it after this change of heart. It reduced people to one trait/story and brought way too much negativity to my life that it would make me frown. I started believing that yes, we can vent to friends if someone makes us angry but when you start telling everyone, you are just actively making someone look like a bad person. I still considered these people my friends, but I had to reevaluate my friend circle a bit. I didn’t necessarily have any hatred towards them either. We are just people and people do what they want to do. I have no control over them whatsoever and it took me a long time to realize that. I still appreciate and love them for the qualities that led me to them in the first place, which is what matters most to me.

If there was one thing I could take away from this experience it’s that no one is ever perfect. After my arc full of resentment, I realized how easily it was to hate someone. Hell, I was able to hate someone for being a kind person. I’m not sure what got to my head but hopefully with my new heart I can find a peace of mind and escape that pit forever.

Next Post: A Fresh Wound (6/17/26)

Photo of the Day: Here’s a photo of a poster that I made for my AP Lit project :).