I’d never felt something so intense for a woman before. How could I hate her and still be so attracted to her? It didn’t make any sense. Maybe my brain was confusing hate for lust. There was research to support that. Studies on elite athletes showed they typically framed their physical symptoms before a high-pressure athletic event—elevated heart rate, so-called butterflies in the stomach, and so forth—as excitement. Other people framed the same sensations as anxiety or nervousness. The difference wasn’t in the symptoms, it was in the way their brains interpreted the data their body sent. My
