once hate is gone

I had told my mother I did not want to see him because I hated him. But this was not true. It was only that I had hated him and I wanted to hold on to this hatred. I did not want to look on him as a ruin: it was not a ruin I had hated. (...) I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forces to deal with pain.

- Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin