I Hate Them Unconditionally

I tell my kids this, and I’ll tell it to any other bastard out there with the ears to hear it:

I hate my kids.

Carve it on my goddamn tombstone. And right below that, you can carve this:

I love them unconditionally.

Don’t get it twisted. Those two things aren’t opposites; they’re the same damn beast, two heads on the same monster. The hatred comes from the love. I learned that the second I got suckered into this fatherhood racket. That thing they sell you, that “unconditional love”? It’s not a gift. It’s a life sentence. It’s the heaviest goddamn burden a man will ever carry, and that weight, that endless, grinding obligation, it breeds a pure and honest kind of hatred you can’t understand until it’s crushing your own goddamn spine.

First off, after spending months going at it like goddamn rabbits, hoping to get her pregnant, the bill comes due. Nine months later, the kid arrives, screaming its lungs out, a little bundle of pure noise and need. And your wife? The woman you married, the one with the tight body, the sharp mind, the laugh that could make your ribs ache? She’s gone. A ghost. Ruined by hormones, by sleepless nights, by the sheer, soul-grinding machinery of childbirth. She’s not the same person. And there’s no coming back from that, not really.

The kids? They’re just a constant pain in the ass, a parade of evolving tortures. First it’s colic, then it’s diapers full of shit, crap smeared on the goddamn walls. Then the whining starts: “I need money, I need clothes, I need, I need, I need.” Little vampires, the both of them, and raising them without free healthcare is like living with a guillotine hanging over your neck. This world is a rude bastard, and it charges you by the minute for the privilege of suffering.

Caring for these things – and “things” feels like the right word sometimes – it’s a man’s burden. Don’t let them sell you any other bill of goods. It’s the proper word. Your life isn’t yours anymore. You can’t quit that job you hate, can you? Every move you make, every dime you earn, is now part of a calculated plan with them at the center. Forget what you want; who’s gonna feed the cat? Hell, it’s not even about putting food on their plates. No. They want the nineteen-dollar box of sugar-coated bullshit cereal, they want the organic milk that costs more than a good bottle of whiskey.

And they can’t live in some cramped apartment. Oh, no. Separate rooms for everyone. So you look around at this sprawling empire of dependents, and you realize what you have to do: work more hours. Work yourself into an early grave so you can support an at-home nanny who also happens to be their mother. So she can play out her own childhood psychodrama, trying to be a “better person than her mother was.” Yeah, we all saw how well that turned out.

It’s a direct withdrawal from my life, from my goddamn pocket, to make sure these kids have someone hovering over them, tending to their every whim. And that’s what a father signs up for, right? That’s the deal. And if you bust your ass enough to actually afford that stay-at-home mom, you’re supposed to feel like some kind of saint, like you should get extra points in heaven for financing the whole damn production. Bullshit.

And how did I get rewarded for it all? Child support. After the divorce, suddenly I’m the deadbeat if I can’t maintain that same damn level. No job, no money, no work – doesn’t matter, pay up. My kids saw me living like a dog, miserably crawling from one rented shack to another, while their mom stayed in the nice big house telling them thier father , the one I paid for, where they’d go to celebrate Mother’s Day. Dad lived in a shack. That’s unforgivable.

Then, during the five-year divorce war, their mom – the professional babysitter for twenty years – she’d use my own kids against me. Punish them if they dared say anything good about me, while she was constantly filling their heads with shit about their old man. And not one of them, not one, ever stood up and said, “No, that’s not right.” They were complicit, just by being there. Complacent. Is that the word? Anger. That’s what fills my heart when I think about them.

And this isn’t just my opinion, my bitterness talking. These are facts, the kind they don’t like to talk about in polite company because society controls the goddamn narrative. That’s why so many homeless men you see out there are running from child support garnishments that make it impossible to even make rent. They get pulled over, license revoked for non-payment. Now they can’t get to work, car gets impounded, and suddenly they’ve got an arrest record. Or the checking account gets wiped clean by the state, and there’s nothing left for gas, food, or anything else. The financial castration of men, of fathers, it’s a real, factual goddamn thing. And not to be able to discuss it, not to sit with other men and just emotionally release, to say, “I fucking hate my kids sometimes, and here’s why…” – that’s part of the sickness.

Look, I love them to death, unconditionally. That’s the hell of it. They want another thousand? Here you go. Need five thousand? Fine. Need me to come beat the shit out of someone bothering them? I’m on my way. New computer, refrigerator’s busted? Consider it done. I’m not saying I deny them anything they need. But just know, deep down, I fucking hate them equally, with the same goddamn intensity that I love them.

And the reason I chew on these things, the reason I try to be this brutally honest, is because I’ve read all that crap about “love” – A Course in Miracles, self-help garbage, trying to define “pure love.” What they describe, that idealized bullshit? It’s the same kind of screwed-up, obligatory love I feel for my kids. Twenty years of marriage, I hated that woman more often than I loved her, so I got a divorce. You can’t do that with your kids. It’s not societal taboo; it’s deeper, it’s in the goddamn DNA. No matter if I don’t like their choices, their lifestyle, if they’re doing drugs or having more damn babies they can’t care for, you’re just… stuck. You’re supposed to love them, accept them. But I couldn’t do that with anyone else, not really. And nobody’s ever done it for me, not unless they were tied to me by blood, like my grandmother.

So, you dive into this cesspool of dating apps, all these wandering, damaged souls trying to connect. You think you’re going to find that “pure love,” that unconditional bullshit, out there? No goddamn way. That’s a pipe dream for fools and poets. And I’m too old to be either.

Author’s Note

So you’ve just read that. The story about a father who hates his own goddamn kids. You probably think it’s just another story about a bitter, broken man bitching about child support and a bad marriage.

It’s not.

That story is about the quiet, ugly, and beautiful truth of what real, unconditional love actually looks like.

My kids, in their own selfish, destructive, and completely innocent way, they gave me the only glimpse I’ve ever had of what that thing really is. It’s not the bullshit they sell you in the greeting card aisle. It’s not a warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s a goddamn paradox. It’s the ability to hate and love something, someone, with the exact same, all-consuming intensity.

That’s a father’s love.

The love isn’t a feeling. It’s a goddamn life sentence. A structural load you are required to carry until the day you die. It’s the quiet, constant, grinding pressure of knowing that your life is no longer your own. And that weight, that endless, non-negotiable burden, it breeds a pure and honest kind of hatred for the cage you’ve been put in.

The “hate” isn’t for the kids themselves. It’s for what they represent. They are the beautiful, living, breathing architects of your own imprisonment. They are the reason you can’t quit that job you hate. They are the reason the woman you married turned into a goddamn babysitter who you stopped fucking. They are a constant, open-ended invoice for a life you can no longer afford to live. They are a daily reminder of all the roads you can no longer take.

And the “unconditional love”? That’s the part that makes it a special kind of hell. The love is the simple, brutal fact that you carry that weight anyway. You don’t drop it. You don’t walk away. You keep paying the bills, you keep answering the phone, you keep being the goddamn rock, even when every bone in your body is screaming under the pressure.

You can divorce a wife. You can’t divorce your own blood. That’s the unconditional part. It’s not a choice. It’s a biological fact. And that lack of a choice, that beautiful, terrible, and completely inescapable obligation… that’s where the real love, and the real hate, is born.

So, when I say my kids gave me a glimpse of true love, that’s what I mean. They taught me that the only real, unconditional love a man will ever know is the kind that makes him want to put a bullet in his own head one minute, and then take a bullet for someone else the next.

It’s a sick, twisted, and beautiful thing. And you’re not going to find it on some goddamn dating app. You’re not going to find it in a self-help book. You’re only going to find it in the quiet, desperate, and completely honest moments of a life that has been beautifully, and completely, ruined.