No, not really. God, I hope not.

But I just wanted to give myself a shot at interpreting this seemingly embittered expression. It’s a writing prompt from Selma, by the way. Maybe next time I will be more visual through written words. But for now, here’s a photograph I took years ago when I was still married. It was from a bouquet of roses I gave my then wife.

Back then, I was naive enough to think that love was simple as it was beautiful. Like the flowers, it was gorgeous for a while and then one day, I’m like… uhmm, what happened?

Times were already rough when I took this shot. When I saw what happened to the roses after just a few days, I began to think that at some point, our marriage might somehow end up the same way. For the first time in my life, I started to fear that nothing could possibly last forever. Not even love.

So yes, you can say that I hated love for being so difficult on me. Back then, it seemed like I really did.