I too hated C once to the point I actually kicked a PC over on its side out of anger. I never understood pointers, structures and string manipulation. I genuinely hated it and wanted it to go away. I deleted all the code I'd written then went for a walk.

Then suddenly... click.

Suddenly, in my mind appeared an abstract model for it. It was complete and possible for one person to understand.

Since then I understand what I'm doing rather than know how to drive the compiler.

That has never happened for any other language I've written and that includes Z80+6502+X86 ASM, C++, C#, VB3-6, PDS7, ksh, Python, Perl and PHP to name a few. Assembly is close but not abstract enough.

Enlightenment is probably the best word to describe it.