Anatomy of Hate

It takes more effort to hate someone than to love them.  Or even be indifferent.  Why do I waste so much energy and emotion completely loathing someone who is only in my life peripherally??

Practically speaking, I have so many reasons to hate her, I can rotate them around and not repeat one for months!

She has caused so much hurt and despair to the people I love the most.  I see them trying to love her and her doing everything she can to make them hate her.  Why was it so easy for me to stop loving and start hating???

I look at her life and realize that, by a simple twist of fate, it could have been mine.  Is that why I hate her so much?  Do I see some glimmer of myself in her, and think that maybe if I hate her enough, I won't turn into her?  Like some sort of checks and balances, maybe?

Or, worse, what if you become what you hate?  Like Luke Skywalker in "Return of the Jedi".  You know the scene where Emperor Palpatine is encouraging Luke to feed his hatred.  And for a while, Luke does, but when he realizes that my doing that, he is becoming what he hates.

Or, is hate just a deformed expression of love??  I'd LIKE to think that that's viable, if only to soothe my scorched conscience.  I'd even settle for getting to the point where I don't give a fig, either way.  Indifferent.  Neither here nor there.