Dumping Someone Quotes

The only person that deserves a special place in your life is someone that never made you feel like you were an option in theirs.

I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.

I don't know what I'm going to do with you, Trav! I've dumped someone for you-twice-I've picked up and went to Vegas with you-twice-I've literally gone through hell and back, married you and branded myself with your name. I'm running out of ideas to prove to you that I'm yours." A small smile graced his lips. "I love it when you say that." "That I'm yours?" I asked. I leaned up on the balls of my feet, pressing my lips against his. "I. Am. Yours. Mrs. Travis Maddox. Forever and always.

Frostpine made a face. Lifting the cup, he dumped its contents down his throat. “Auugghh!” he yelled, his voice stronger than it had been since his return from the harbor. "Are you trying to kill me, woman?" "If I mean to kill someone, I do it," Rosethorn told him. "I don't try.

Don't be jealous of anyone. I guarantee you, if everyone walked into a room, and dumped their problems onto the floor, when they saw what everyone else's problems were, they'd be scrambling to get their own problems back before someone else got to them first.

Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me. You’ll be happier.

The cup is half full, sunshine and flowers and I try to act like I agree, but really I’m pissed someone dumped out half of my drink.

We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.

She dumped me for the worst reason of all. For absolutely no reason at all...I mean, if she fell in love with someone else, or I did something wrong, or I let her down in some unforgivable way...That, I'd understand, right? But instead, she said...it wasn't anything. Not a single thing. It was just me. I was nice. I was kind. We just...she didn't see the connection anymore. I think she thought I was boring. And the cruelest part is, when someone says something mean about you, you know when they're right.

And this is my life, getting dumped with no warning. Or liking people who don't like me back, or who don't like me enough, or not as much as they like someone else.

And then," Ress was saying, his boyish face set with fiendish delight, "just as he got her into bed, stark naked as the day he was born, her father walked in"- winces and groans came from the guards, even Chaol himself-"and he dragged him out of bed by his feet, took him down the hall, and dumped him down the stairs. He was shrieking like a pig the whole time." Chaol leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. "You would be, too, if someone were dragging your naked carcass across the ice-cold floor." He smirked as Ress tried to deny it. Chaol seemed so comfortable with the men, his body relaxed, eyes alight. And they respected him, too-always glancing at him for approval, for confirmation, for support. As Celaena's chuckle faded, Chaol looked at her, his brows high. "You're one to laugh. You moan about the cold floor more than anyone else than I know." She straightened as the guards gave hesitant smiles. "If I recall correctly, you complain about every time I wipe the floor with you when we spar." "Oho!" Ress cried, and Chaol's brows rose higher. Celaena gave him a grin. "Dangerous words," Chaol said. "Do we need to go to the training hall to see if you can back them up?" "Well, as long as your men don't object to seeing you knocked on your ass." "We certainly do not object to that," Ress crowed. Chaol shot him a look, more amused than warning. Ress quickly added, "Captain.

...because once you've got one scar on your face or your heart, its only a matter of time before someone gives you another - and another - until a day doesn't go by when you aren't being bashed senseless, nor a town that you haven't been run out of, and you get to be such a goddamn mess that finally it doesn't feel right unless you're getting the Christ beaten out of you - amd within a year of that first damming fall, those first down borne fists, your first run out, you wind up with flies buzzing around your eyes, back at the same place, the same town, deader than when you left, bobbiong around in the swill - a dirty deadbeat whore in a roadside ditch. But a little part of you deosn't die. A little part of you lives on. And you make an orphan of that corrupt and contemtible part, dumping it right smack in the laps of the ones who first robbed you of your sweetness, for it is the wicked fruit of their crimes, it is their blood, their sin, it belongs there, this child of blood, this spawn of sin...

But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk of the edge of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.

Dumping the tent onto the ground, I studied it fiercely. All right, I can do this. How hard can it be, really? Kneeling, I picked up a long metal spike, frowning. What in the world? Are you supposed to stab someone with these? Do tents come with vampire-slaying kits?

It’s like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn’t tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it’s like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room.

Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.

Everything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you're dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself.

It's like spending 6 months just trying to inhale. It's like forgetting how to move your muscles and reliving every nauseous moment in your life and struggling to get all the splinters out from underneath your skin. It's like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn't tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it's like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room. It's like this.

I want to get comfortable with my insecurities until I am no longer insecure. I want to be comfortable in my skin so that I do not need to dump any of my discomfort onto someone else in the form of judgment.

Someone once told me that Fate will chew you up and spit you out many times, taking you away from those you love and dumping you into places you never wanted to be. It’s up to each of us where we choose to belong.

We’re all responsible for our own lives. Dumping the blame on someone else is for the weak.

I’M ONLY FIFTEEN—CAN YOU PLEASE DUMP THIS HUGE RESPONSIBILITY ON SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING?

Paco!” she announces loudly. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you,” Elena says, pointing to Paco talking to a bunch of girls. “Next time you want to take a dump, do it in someone else’s house.

I review my three boyfriends, the three men I slept with in my twenties, searching for a common thread. Nothing. No consistent features, coloring, stature, personality. But one theme does emerge: they all picked me. And then dumped me. I played the passive role. Waiting for Hunter and then settling for Joey. Waiting to feel more for Nate. Then waiting to feel less. Waiting for Alec to go away and leave me in peace. And now Dex. My number four. And I am still waiting. For all of this to blow over. For his September wedding. For someone who gives me that tingly feeling as I watch him sleeping in...

Have you ever suffered a sharp disappointment or a painful loss and found yourself looking for someone to blame? Have you, for example, ever been nasty to a store clerk when you were really upset about your job? Most people have an impulse to dump bad feelings on some undeserving person, as a way to relieve - temporarily—sadness or frustration. Certain days you may know that you just have to keep an eye on yourself so as not to bite someone’s head off. The abusive man doesn’t bother to keep an eye on himself, however. In fact, he considers himself entitled to use his partner as a kind of human garbage dump where he can litter the ordinary pains and frustrations that life brings us. She is always an available target, she is easy to blame — since no partner is perfect—and she can’t prevent him from dumping because he will get even worse if she tries. His excuse when he jettisons his distresses on to her is that his life is unusually painful—an unacceptable rationalization even if it were true, which it generally isn’t.

Well, that’s society for you, I’m afraid,” said Carrot. “Everything is dumped on the people below until you find someone who’s prepared to eat it. That’s what Mr. Vimes says.

Narcissistic abuse is not just that someone dumped you or who you had a little tiff with them. NA is psychological abuse and brainwashing using intermittent reward and punishment, coercive control and withholding normal empathetic, emotional reactions to lower your self esteem.

Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.' 'What is it about, then?' I ask. 'It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.' 'I don't know how to get over it, Mum,' I say. 'At this point I'm so tired of myself. I don't know how to let go of her.' 'You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.' 'Does it get easier?' 'Much,' she says.

Each person entering our world brings either a contribution or destruction. Trying to be “always nice” is to invite certain disaster. Those with poisonous attitudes, strange opinions, and caustic conversations love to look for someone nice who will listen to them. They love to dump their verbal garbage into the mental factory of anyone willing to listen. A major challenge in life is for each person to learn the art of standing guard at the doorway of their mind. Carefully examine the credentials and authority of those seeking to enter within that place where your attitudes are formed.

He looked around for the most trustworthy person, for someone to be on his team. He took a gamble and dumped Bat into Lily's arms. "Watch him for me, will you?" he asked. "Make sure he gets out all right?" "Put that werewolf down immediately, Lily," Raphael ordered. "It really hurts that you would say that," Bat muttered, and shut his eyes. Lily considered Bat's head, pillowed on her lavender bosom. "I don't want to put him down," she announced. "The Shadowhunter gave this DJ to me." Bat opened one eye. "Do you like music?" "I do," said Lily. "I like jazz." "Cool," said Bat. Raphael threw up his hands. "This is ridiculous! Fine," he snapped. "Fine. Let's just vacate the collapsing mansion, shall we? Can we all agree on that one fun, non-suicidal activity.

You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you're pissed off because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn't like me anymore. You're such a sitzpinkler. You're so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not gettting left behind. Well, it doesn't work, kafir. I just - it's not just dumb, it's ineffective. Because then you're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you. There's your goddamned Theorem.

Live the life you’d be envious of if you saw someone else living it. This is my personal mantra. Whenever I’m going through a difficult time, like a breakup, and I’m wishing to be the person who could get over it and move on, I tell myself to be that person. Instead of waiting to be inspired by someone else and being jealous that they’re living a life I wish I had, I tell myself not to wait for that moment and to start being the person I want to be. If you wish you were the woman who went for that big promotion, learned a second language, dumped that guy who cheated on you, then just be that person. Think, if I have the energy to wish for it, I have the energy to do it.

Hey, Zee,” I said. “I take it that you can fix it, but it’ll be miserable, and you’d rather haul it to the dump and start from scratch.” “Piece of junk,” groused Zee. “What’s not rusted to pieces is bent. If you took all the good parts and put them in a pile, you could carry them out in your pocket.” There was a little pause. “Even if you only had a small pocket.” I patted the car. “Don’t you listen to him,” I whispered to it. “You’ll be out of here and back on the road in no time.” Zee propelled himself all the way under the car so his head stuck out by my feet. “Don’t you promise something you can’t deliver,” he snarled. I raised my eyebrows, and said in dulcet tones, “Are you telling me you can’t fix it? I’m sorry. I distinctly remember you saying that there is nothing you can’t fix. I must have been mistaken, and it was someone else wearing your mouth.” He gave a growl that would have done Sam credit, and pushed himself back under again, muttering,“Deine Mutter war ein Cola-Automat!” “Her mama might have been a pop machine,” I said, responding to one of the remarks I understood even at full Zee-speed. “Your mama . . .” sounds the same in a number of languages. “But she was a beauty in her day.” I grinned at Gabriel. “We women have to stick together.

About Bane. Don’t hurt him,” Raphael said abruptly. Alec hesitated. “No,” he said, his voice softer. “I would never—” Raphael held up a peremptory hand. “Stop being disgusting, please,” he said. “I don’t care if you wound his, as the kids say, ‘wittle fee-fees.’ Dump him like a ton of magic bricks. I wish you would. I just meant, don’t kill him.” “I’m not going to kill him,” Alec said, appalled. His blood ran cold at the idea, and colder as he looked down into Raphael’s face. The vampire was serious. “Aren’t you?” Raphael asked. “Shadowhunter.” He said the word the same way as the Downworlders of the Shadow Market had, but it sounded different in service of protecting someone Alec would gladly give his life to shield from harm. It made Alec wonder if the people of the Market were all looking at him and seeing a threat to someone they cared for. “Stop it, Raphael,” said Lily. She gave Alec a brief, surprisingly sympathetic look. “Kid’s obviously in love.” “Ugh,” said Raphael. “Terrible business. Let’s get out of here.” Elliott cheered. “Can we go to the after-party?” “No,” Raphael said with distaste. He left Alec and walked away without a look back. After a quick last glance, Lily and then Elliott turned to follow.

It’s okay to kill a man if someone else deems him unfit to live. What I really want to say is who the hell are you and who are you to decide who gets to die. Who are you to decide who should be killed. Who are you to tell me which father I should destroy and which child I should orphan and which mother should be left without her son, which brother should be left without a sister, which grandmother should spend the rest of her life crying in the early hours of the morning because the body of her grandchild was buried in the ground before her own. What I really want to say is who the hell do you think you are to tell me that it’s awesome to be able to kill a living thing, that it’s interesting to be able to ensnare another soul, that it’s fair to choose a victim simply because I’m capable of killing without a gun. I want to say mean things and angry things and hurtful things and I want to throw expletives in the air and run far, far away; I want to disappear into the horizon and I want to dump myself on the side of the road if only it will bring me toward some semblance of freedom but I don’t know where to go. I have nowhere else to go.

Diana, would you marry someone for money?" I asked her out of the blue one afternoon during her lunch break. Without missing a beat, she made a contemplative noise. "It depends.How much money?" It was right then I knew I'd called the wrong person. I should have dialed Oscar, my slightly younger brother, instead. He'd always been wise beyond his years. Diana...not so much. I only told her the partial truth. "What if someone bought you a house?" She "hmmed" and then "hmmed" a little more. "A nice house?" "It wouldn't be a mansion, you greedy whore, but I'm not talking about a dump or anything either." I figured at least.

I remember first learning about death quite vividly. I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me. 'Sometimes, when someone gets ill, and they're very very old, they don't get better again. They just get iller and iller and then... then their body stops working.' 'I don't understand.' 'What's in them just goes away, and doesn't come back.' 'Grandpa isn't coming back?' 'No,' she said. 'Not ever again.' 'Grandpa said he was going away and not ever coming back after he held Grandma's head in that cotton-dump outside of town and kicked Skeeter seventy-three times.' 'Grandpa was very drunk. That's not the same as being dead. Grandpa's dead, son. He's not there anymore.' And I remember saying, 'Hold everything right fucking THERE. 'You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and feeding me and clothing me and all-- and, YEAH, whipping me from time to time, and making me live in a house that's freezing fucking cold all the goddamn time-- and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to do and sometimes I just want to scream-- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head-- I go through all this-- and then there's death? 'What is the motherfucking deal here?

Showing up each week and having someone to complain to without the fear of someone tweeting about it was spectacular. I would recommend ANYONE try it. We’re all a garbage dump of dysfunction, but if you get in there and churn the problems, they turn to mulch faster so new things can grow out of them. (I have no idea how to mulch, so I hope that analogy is accurate.)

Somebody once described the Internet as a library where all the books have been taken off the shelves and dumped in the middle of the floor. Disorganisation, however, is not the issue. The Internet is the greatest library in the universe; unfortunately someone has removed all the ‘no talking’ signs.

We line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental problems like incinerators, waste dumps, acid rain, global warming and pollution. But we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems each of us creates, we end up with those big environmental dilemmas. Humans are content to blame someone else, like government or corporations, for the messes we create, and yet we each continue doing the same things, day in and day out, that have created the problems. Sure, corporations create pollution. If they do, don't buy their products. If you have to buy their products (gasoline for example), keep it to a minimum. Sure, municipal waste incinerators pollute the air. Stop throwing trash away. Minimize your production of waste. Recycle. Buy food in bulk and avoid packaging waste. Simplify. Turn off your TV. Grow your own food. Make compost. Plant a garden. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you don't, who will?

Death comes to us all, that is the only thing we can be certain of. It makes no difference whether it is a thief in a garbage dump or a policeman in the line of duty. When someone dies at the hands of another, the pain for the survivors is the same.

Lunch with the Person Who Dumped You

Pigeon?” “Yeah?” A few moments passed, and then he sighed. “Nothing.” Travis hesitated. “I can’t shake this feeling,” he said under his breath. “What do you mean? Like a bad feeling?” I said, suddenly nervous. He turned to me with concern in his eyes, “I have this crazy feeling that once we get home, I’m going to wake up. Like none of this was real.” I slid my arms around his waist, running my hands up the lean muscles of his back. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He looked down to his wrist, and then glanced to the thick silver band on his left finger. “I just can’t shake the feeling that the bubble’s going to burst, and I’m going to be lying in my bed alone, wishing you were there with me.” “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Trav! I’ve dumped someone for you—twice—I’ve picked up and went to Vegas with you—twice—I’ve literally gone through hell and back, married you and branded myself with your name. I’m running out of ideas to prove to you that I’m yours.” A small smile graced his lips. “I love it when you say that.” “That I’m yours?” I asked. I leaned up on the balls of my feet, pressing my lips against his. “I. Am. Yours. Mrs. Travis Maddox, forever and always.” His small smile faded as he looked at the boarding gate and then down to me. “I’m gonna fuck it up, Pigeon. You’re gonna get sick of my shit.” I laughed. “I’m sick of your shit, now. I still married you.” “I thought once we got married, that I’d feel a little more reassured about losing you. But I feel like if I get on that plane….” “Travis? I love you. Let’s go home.” His eyebrows pulled in. “You won’t leave me, right? Even when I’m a pain in the ass?” “I vowed in front of God…and Elvis…that I wouldn’t, didn’t I?” His frown lightened a bit. “This is forever?” One corner of my mouth turned up. “Would it make you feel better if we made a wager?” “What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?” I smiled. “The stupid kind. Didn’t you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?” He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re that sure, huh? You’d bet on it?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and smiled against his lips. “I’d bet my first born. That’s how sure I am.” And then the peace returned. “You can’t be that sure,” he said, the anxiousness absent from his voice. I raised an eyebrow, and my mouth pulled to one side. “Wanna bet?

One of the pitfalls of having an ex-boyfriend is that people still pair you together in their memories, and sooner or later someone’s bound to mention him. And now that it has happened . . . I can’t say I feel nothing. I don’t think it’s possible to get royally dumped by the only boy I’ve ever done it with, let alone loved, and then feel nothing when he’s brought up in conversation.

Even though we'd never met, imagining being dumped by Gene made me want to die. What was the point of going out with someone? What was the point of falling in love? The whole thing was enough to make me wish I'd been born in one of those countries where they still have arranged marriages. I mean, okay, yes, it would certainly suck not being allowed to drive or vote and having to ask a man's permission to leave the house. But at least you wouldn't have to worry about being dumped.

Let’s order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let’s take a chance precisely because it might fail. Let’s take the hard way out. Let’s go to the moon. Fuck it; let’s go to the moon again. Let’s quit our jobs. Let’s work at being better at what we do by fucking up faster, not less. Let’s fuck up really fast. Let’s wrestle sharks, fight monsters, and disagree with the board. Let’s borrow so much money it becomes someone else’s problem. Let’s start a 10-hour drive by announcing “I’m not into you anymore.” Let’s dump everything out of the garage onto the sidewalk and build something really cool in that space. Let’s start out to build a better mousetrap, and halfway there let’s decide to jump on the mice’s team.

Alden handed her a bottle of Youth—the special water that elves drank for its unique enzymes. “You must be thirsty.” “Yeah, that happens when someone drugs you.” She was tempted to dump the bottle over his head.

Mark Arm: [On discussing not being on drugs] Kurt was just fuckin' loaded on pills, and I said something like, "You just gotta want to do it bad enough." What I regret not saying is, "You need to dump your junkie wife, because you're not going to be able to do this while you're in a partnership with someone who's also an enthusiast.

The last werewolf tripped over Raphael Santiago’s foot. Alec hastily hit him in the back of the head with the hilt of his seraph blade, and the werewolf stayed down. “That was an accident,” said Raphael, with Lily and Elliott sticking close behind him. “He got in my way as I was trying to leave.” “Okay,” Alec panted. He wiped dust and sweat out of his eyes. Bat the DJ staggered toward them, claws out, and Alec flipped his seraph blade so he was holding the hilt again. “Someone dropped a piece of roof on me,” Bat told him, blinking in a way that was more owlish than wolfish. “Inconsiderate.” Alec realized Bat was not so much on a murderous out-of-control rampage as mildly concussed. “Easy there,” he said, as Bat tumbled against his chest. He looked around for the most trustworthy person, for someone to be on his team. He took a gamble and dumped Bat into Lily’s arms. “Watch him for me, will you?” he asked. “Make sure he gets out all right.” “Put that werewolf down immediately, Lily,” Raphael ordered. “It really hurts that you would say that,” Bat muttered, and shut his eyes. Lily considered Bat’s head, pillowed on her lavender bosom. “I don’t want to put him down,” she announced. “The Shadowhunter gave this DJ to me.” Bat opened one eye. “Do you like music?” “I do,” said Lily. “I like jazz.” “Cool,” said Bat. Raphael threw up his hands. “This is ridiculous! Fine,” he snapped. “Fine. Let’s just vacate the collapsing mansion, shall we? Can we all agree on that one fun, non-suicidal activity?

A real friend, he'd say, is the one who, when you say you need for them to kill someone for you, asks only, "And where did you want me to dump the body?" I understood that it was hyperbole, but I saw him do barely less more than once, to exhaust himself in research and effort to him his people. Which is how he divided the whole world: his people and everyone else.

It's an odd fact of life that you don't really remember the good times all that well. I have only mental snapshots of birthday parties, skiing, beach holidays, my wedding. The bad times too are just impressions. I can see myself standing at the end of some bed while someone I love is dying, or on the way home from a girlfriend's after I've been dumped, but again, they're just pictures. For full Technicolor, script plus subtitles plus commemorative programme in the memory, though, nothing beats embarrassment. You tend to remember the lines pretty well once you've woken screaming them at midnight a few times.

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.

I motioned for Slade to pick her up. “Take care of her, will you?” I asked him. Slade looked down at Katie, still clinging to his legs, and then back at me. A stricken look crossed his face. He leaned toward me and whispered, “Um. To be clear, are you asking me to kill her and dump her body?” “What? No! Why on earth would you think that?” Brent cleared his throat. “To a Shadow King, ‘taking care of someone’ has a very different connotation.” “Oh . . . Oh!” I was going to have to be more careful with my vocabulary choices in the future.

I was crazy in love with you in high school, and you broke my heart the day you hooked up with someone else our sophomore year. Then you broke it again when you promised me you’d dump him the night we kissed and go out with me instead, because the next morning, you forgot all about me.

I don't know if you can empathize, but it hurts when someone you love dumps you." "You're joking, right?" said Chuck. "How do you think I wound up in the pound? At least grid boy didn't try to have you gassed. I still don't know what I did to those people. Or why you like that grid asshole so much." "He's not only an asshole," I said, sorry to have to defend him. "At first he was smart and sexy and fun." "How was he fun?" said Chuck. "Did he play ball? No. Did he bring meaty snacks? No. And he made such a big fucking deal when I drooled on his pants. How much fun was that?

If her mind had held even the smallest chance of a future, she would have had no reason to tell me anything at all, whether or not it could send her to prison. But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk off the edges of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.

A Buddhist story is that a man came shouting angrily at Buddha, who remained unaffected by him. When questioned by others as to how he remained calm and unaffected, Buddha answered with a question. “If someone gives you a gift and you choose not to receive it, to whom then does the gift belong?” Of course it stays with the giver. So it was with words that were still unjustly dumped onto me sometimes. I stopped taking them on and instead I felt compassion. After all, those words were not coming from a place of happiness.

Sam: I dated a cross eyed girl once but I dumped her cause I thought she was seeing someone else.

You’re so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not getting left behind.

Don’t dump your backstory into your reader’s lap right away, no matter how vital it is to the plot. How many of us want to hear someone’s life story the moment after we meet him?

Part of me still wants to tell her, I’M ONLY FIFTEEN—CAN YOU PLEASE DUMP THIS HUGE RESPONSIBILITY ON SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING?

We’re like oil and water, only someone put the oil on the bottom and then dumped the water in, so I’m forever trying to get over him while simultaneously going through him as the pieces of me try to connect on the other side.

He’d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault. And I believed him. Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, Here is my value, my power. So when he dumped me—because he was bored with me, because he’d found someone else more exciting—I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure. There was one other boy like that, whom I took my shirt off for because I thought I had to, before I started realizing that I could be the one doing the choosing. I didn’t want anyone; that was the problem. To be perfectly blunt, I’d started to figure my body out quickly. I didn’t need boys in order to feel good. And that realization gave me great power.

clumsy fingers, feeling faintly guilty about going through his wife’s purse. It feels private. But this is an emergency. He dumps the contents onto the middle of their neatly made bed. Her wallet is there, her change purse, lipstick, pen, a tissue packet—it’s all there. Not an errand then. Maybe she stepped out to help a friend? An emergency of some kind? Still, she would have taken her purse with her if she was driving the car. And wouldn’t she have called him by now if she could? She could borrow someone else’s phone. It’s not like her to be thoughtless. Tom sits on the edge of the bed, quietly unraveling. His heart is beating too fast. Something is wrong. He thinks that maybe he should call the police. He

He found people respond to crises in two ways. Some get to work fixing the problem. Others, proving the problem wasn’t their fault. Reacher liked the first kind. Rutherford seemed like the first kind. It was nice to see someone not dumping on him for a change.

Someone once said that the worst features of an era are accented in the children’s books of that period. Book by book our societal problems were dumped into children’s books. What editors called “realism” is really adult betrayal, violence, sexual indiscretions, alcoholism, and the Big D’s: death, divorce, disease, and drugs. Books with inconsequential plots and characters became thinly disguised “moralisms”—the kind of moralisms that come from a nonjudgmental culture urging readers to suspend judgment, to become understanding and noncondemning, and to realize their sexuality.

Sergeant Donald Gardner of the 47th and his men were dumped into the water about fifty yards from shore. They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine-gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard someone say, “Perhaps we’re intruding, this seems to be a private beach.

Yesterday, where someone had dumped a cat-scratched leather recliner in the weedy empty lot around the corner, an elderly man was found sitting in the chair, quietly disoriented. The recliner looked like a seat on an Amtrak train, in Coach. The man did not seem to know where he was, or how he got there, but he was not fearful, just quiet. He was able to recite his son’s email address and list the son’s many accomplishments to the police whom someone called to help. They were kind when they contacted the man’s son in another state. But this won’t go well, I thought, and chose not to follow the story.

Around none o'clock in the evening, Sean and I climbed onto the tar-paper roof of the U-Find-It building. On one side of the roof someone had dumped a pile of copper pipes and plumbing fixtures that had been ripped out of abandoned buildings. It looked like a giant puzzle that only angels could untangle.

My mother was (still is) a timeless beauty—she’s also smart and funny—but when she was dating someone, I’d watch her turn werewolf-style from a competent, determined authority figure into this entirely not-her version of herself: a desperate, overly flirtatious, subservient ding-dong for shitty men who’d inevitably dump her and leave her in tears. And yes, this is harsh, but this type of personality-corrupting toxic masculinity bullshit didn’t spring up from within her out of nowhere. She was taught to do this, taught that acting sweet, deferential, and noncombative was her best chance at securing a man, aka happiness.

He’d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault. And I believed him. Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, Here is my value, my power. So when he dumped me—because he was bored with me, because he’d found someone else more exciting—I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure.

He'd convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault. And I believed him. 'Look what I do to these poor boys,' I thought. And yet also, 'Here is my value, my power.' So when he dumped me – because he was bored with me, because he'd found someone else more exciting – I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure.

I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me.

Like what might happen if Coach Reed rang the doorbell at The Dump some afternoon and sat down next to Lucas. Like knowing that Principal Peattie is wrong about what he said. Like laying a missing bird picture back where it’s supposed to be. Like someone seeing what a chump you are and getting you a cold Coke anyway. Like Possibility.

Alternatively, if you don’t trust yourself, you might instruct the algorithm to follow the recommendation of whichever eminent psychologist you do trust. If your boyfriend eventually dumps you, the algorithm may walk you through the official five stages of grief, first helping you deny what happened by playing Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” then whipping up your anger with Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” encouraging you to bargain with Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” and Paul Young’s “Come Back and Stay,” dropping you into the pit of depression with Adele’s “Someone Like You” and “Hello,” and finally helping you accept the situation with Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.

Rejected from a job interview, dumped by your lover, got low marks in exam, losing on every front of life... Don't you think these are most common heartbreaking moments of our life? We keep thinking that we don't have enough happiness in our life, but trust me, happiness is never enough if you keep comparing your downfall with someone's rising. Live free.

It wasn’t only the warning that kept us safe but our ability to keep that warning quiet. Like secret agents operating behind enemy lines, we couldn’t afford to get caught. And yet we risked it anyway. With voices hushed, we reached out to each other to offer our knowledge. We tried. Because we’d always wanted the best for each of our friends. We wanted her to dump that loser. We wanted her to stop worrying about losing five pounds. We wanted to tell her she looked great in that dress and that she should definitely buy it. We wanted her to crush the interview. We wanted her to text us when she got home. We wanted her to see what we saw: someone smart and brave and funny and worthy of love and success and peace. We wanted to kill whoever got in her way.

Elena opens the door and yanks me through the house, stopping only when we reach the backyard. She lets me go only to grab the microphone from the lead singer. "Paco!" she announces loudly. "Yeah, I'm talkin' to you," Elena says, pointing to Paco talking to a bunch of girls. "Next time you want to take a dump, do it in someone else's house." Paco's entourage of girls backs up and giggles, leaving him alone.

To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren

Contradictions. Fauxnerable people are not consistent in their character. • Disclosures that focus on the past. “I struggled with porn” or “I was such a mess.” This isn’t vulnerability. Vulnerability is about showing up courageously in the present moment with how you are currently affecting someone or experiencing your inner life. • Staged fauxnerability. A fauxnerable pastor or leader may conjure up tears at will on stage but show little empathy or care face to face. • Victim mentality. The fauxnerable pastor may blame his staff, a bad system, or a needy spouse. • Lack of curiosity. Vulnerable people are curious. Fauxnerable people are defensive and reactive. • Oversharing. An emotional dump is not necessarily an act of vulnerability but may in fact be a way of using you to engender sympathy or to take their side. • Self-referencing. His fauxnerability is in service of his ego, not an expression of mutuality or connection.

Has it ever occurred to you that the last thought before your falling asleep at night becomes the first thought on waking up in the morning? All night long, while you remain asleep, the thought stays within you in a seed form. And so, that which is the last thing at night becomes first in the morning. At the moment of your death all your desires will come together and become a seed. That very seed will consequently be the new life in the womb. You start fresh from where you left off. Whatsoever you are is of your own making. Don’t blame others. As a matter of fact, there is no one whom you can blame. Basically it is the cumulative effect of your own actions. Whatsoever you are – beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy, man or a woman – it is all a result of your actions. You are the architect of your life. Don’t blame on your stars – you’ll be simply fooling yourself. This way you are dumping the responsibility on to someone else. No need to say God has sent you – don’t dump the responsibility on God. That’s just a strategy to avoid your own responsibility. You alone are the cause for being imprisoned in this body. One who understands perfectly that he himself is responsible for being in this world, a transformation takes place in his life.

I fully intend to say all this to Wendell as I get comfortable on the couch, but instead all that comes out is a torrent of tears. Through the blur, I see the tissue box soaring toward me. Once again, I miss the catch. (In addition to being dumped, I think, I’ve become uncoordinated.) I’m both surprised by and ashamed of my outburst—we haven’t even greeted each other yet—and every time I try to pull it together, I get in a quick “I’m sorry” before I lose it again. For about five minutes, my session goes like this: Cry. Try to stop. Say, I’m sorry. Cry. Try to stop. Say, I’m sorry. Cry. Try to stop. Say, Oh God, I’m really sorry.

and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox

I’ve never liked urban myths. I’ve never liked pretending to believe in them; never understood why everyone else doesn’t see straight through them. Why is it they’ve always happened to a friend of a friend - someone you’ve never met? Why does everyone smile and nod and pull the right faces, when they must know they’re not true? Pointless. A waste of breath. So I sneered at the myths about Scaderstone Pit. It was just an old quarry – nothing more. I never believed in the rumours of discarded dynamite. It had decayed, they said. It exploded at the slightest touch, had even blown someone’s hand off. I shrugged off the talk of the toxic waste. It was dumped in the dead of night, they said. The canisters rusting away, leaking deadly poisons that could blind you, burn your lungs. I laughed at the ghost stories. You could hear the moans, they said, of quarrymen buried alive and never found. You could see their nightwalking souls, searching for their poor crushed bodies. I didn’t believe any of it – not one word. Now, after everything that’s happened, I wonder whether I should’ve listened to those stories. Maybe then, these things would’ve happened to someone else, and I could’ve smiled and said they were impossible. But this is not an urban myth. And it did not happen to someone else, but to me. I’ve set it down as best I can remember. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you.

It is getting harder to talk. My throat is always sore, my lips raw. When I wake up in the morning, my jaws are clenched so tight I have a headache. Sometimes my mouth relaxes around Heather, if we're alone. Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze. What is wrong with me? It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis. I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.

Over a span of twenty years, Shakespeare churned out an impressively whopping thirty-eight plays, 154 love sonnets, and two epic narrative poems. While most people associate him with his plays, it was his sonnets that likely earned him admiration among his contemporaries. Yes, that’s right: In his lifetime, Shakespeare garnered more acclaim for his sonnets than he did for his plays. In England during the 1590s, writing plays was considered a bit hackish—a way to pay the bills—and not an intellectual pursuit. Writing sonnets was all the rage— and a way to gain literary prestige. These poems weren’t published for the plebeian public, but were written down and shared among the literati—and aristocrats looking for some intellectual cachet by becoming patrons to brilliant but perhaps financially strapped writers. So, while Shakespeare likely wrote nearly all of his love sonnets in the early to mid 1590s, they weren’t officially collected and published until 1609, well after the fad had passed. W. H. Auden said of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “They are the work of someone whose ear is unerring.” In today’s less poetry-friendly world, appreciation of these sonnets tends, sadly, to be relegated to classrooms, Valentine’s Day, and anniversaries. Which is too bad, because—though they do indeed rhyme—they are far superior to the ditties found in ninety-nine-cent greeting cards. In fact, they cover the whole gamut of love—the good, the bad, the erotic, and the ugly, including love triangles, being dumped, and jealousy. There is also speculation as to how autobiographical the sonnets are. The truth is that we know so little about Shakespeare’s private life.

Martin looked at Alejandra with a pained expression. How he detested that face of hers, her boutique-face, the one that she seemed to put on deliberately in order to play her role in that frivolous world; a face that seemed to linger on once she found herself alone with him, its abominable features fading away only very slowly, as there gradually emerged one or another of the faces that belonged to him alone, a face he waited for as one awaits a beloved traveler amid a repulsive crowd. But as Bruno said, the word person means "mask", and each of us has many masks; that of father, professor, lover....But which is the real one? And is there in fact one that is the real one? At certain moments Martin thought that the Alejandra that he was now seeing there before him, laughing at Bobby's jokes, was not, could not be the same Alejandra that he knew, and above all could not be the more profound, the marvelous and fearsome Alejandra that he loved. But at other times (and as the weeks went by the more he began to be convinced of it), he was inclined to think, as Bruno did, that all these Alejandras were real and that that boutique-face was genuine too and in some way or other expressed a sort of reality inherent in Alejandra's soul: a reality--and heaven only knew how many others there were!---that was foreign to him, that did not belong to him and never would. And then, when she came to him still bearing the faint traces of those other personalities, as though she had not had the time (or the desire?) to transform herself, Martin discovered--in a certain sarcastic grin on her lips, in a certain way of moving her hands, in a certain glint in her eyes--the lingering signs of a strange existence: like someone who has been around a garbage dump and still retains something of its foul stench in our presence.

James finished his curry and wandered off on his own. He noticed a girl leaning against a tree smoking. Long hair, baggy jeans. She was about James’s age, nice looking. He didn’t remember her from any of the intelligence files. “Hey, can I have a drag?” James said, trying to sound cool. “Sure,” the girl said. She passed James the cigarette. James had never tried one before and hoped he wasn’t about to make an idiot of himself. He gave it a little suck. It burned his throat, but he managed not to cough. “Not seen you here before,” the girl said. “I’m Ross,” James said. “Staying here with my aunt for a bit.” “Joanna,” the girl said. “I live in Craddogh.” “Haven’t been there yet,” James said. “It’s a dump, two shops and a post office. Where you from?” “London.” “I wish I was,” Joanna said. “You like it here?” “I’m always covered in mud. I want to go to bed, but there’s a guy playing guitar three meters from where I sleep. I wish I could go home, have a warm shower, and see my mates.” Joanna smiled. “So why are you staying with your aunt?” “Long story: Parents are getting divorced. Mum freaking out. Got expelled from school.” “So you’re good-looking and you’re a rebel,” Joanna said. James was glad it was quite dark because he felt himself blush. “You want the last puff, Ross?” “No, I’m cool,” James said. Joanna flicked the cigarette butt into the night. “So, I paid you a compliment,” Joanna said. “Yeah.” Joanna laughed. “So do I get one back?” she asked. “Oh, sure,” James said. “You’re really like . . . nice.” “Can’t I get any better than nice?” “Beautiful,” James said. “You’re beautiful.” “That’s more like it,” Joanna said. “Want to kiss me?” “Um, OK,” James said. James was nervous. He’d never had the courage to ask a girl out. Now he was about to kiss someone he’d known for three minutes. He pecked her on the cheek. Joanna shoved James against the tree and started kissing his face and neck. Her hand went in the back pocket of James’s jeans, then she jumped backwards.

The day after you pop up at your distillery alive and kicking, someone will come to finish you off." "Let them try," Keir shot back. "I can defend myself." The duke arched a mocking brow. "Impressive. Only a matter of days ago, we were celebrating that you were able to drink through a straw. And now apparently you're well enough for an alley fight." Keir was instantly hostile. "I know how to keep up my guard." "That doesn't matter," Kingston replied. "As soon as your arm muscles fatigue, your elbows will drift outward, and he'll find an opening." "What would a toff like you know about fighting? Even with my ribs cracked, you couldn't take me down." The older man's stare was that of a seasoned lion being challenged by a brash cub. Calmly he picked up a small open pepper cellar from the table and dumped a heap of ground black pepper in the center of Keir's plate. Perplexed, Keir glanced down at it, as a puff of gray dust floated upward. His nose stung, and in the next breath, he sneezed. A searing bolt of agony shot through his rib cage. "Aghhh! He turned away from his plate and doubled over. "Devil take your sneakit arse!" he managed to gasp.

Then Simi had to call in a favor from her police boyfriend to track the vehicle..." Police boyfriend? Your brain sticks on those two words, and you don't hear anything else. "What police boyfriend?" "Shhh." Simi strokes your forehead. "The ambulance is coming." You shake your head, concentrate on not passing out from the pain of the damage to your rapidly thawing body. "How long?" "About twenty-four hours," she says. "That's it?" You try to push yourself up, but your arms still aren't listening to the messages from your brain. "You moved on in less than a day?" "It's not what you think," she says. "Garcia and I..." "Garcia? Not Detective Garcia? You're now on a last-name basis?" You don't care about your broken body or the necklace or the hench people. You don't even care if they've captured Mr. X or killed him. You care about Simi in a way you've never cared about anyone before. You love her. You love her and she dumped you in less than a day for someone far more worthy than you. A good guy. A man in uniform who doesn't live a life of secrets and lies. Pain washes over you. You close your eyes and let the words settle in your throat. Police boyfriend. Death. Come for me now.

the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim. But we weren’t ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us.

We got it on file,” Van Dyne said. Vince could not believe what he had heard. “I thought people in your line of work didn't keep records? Safer for you and essential for your clients.” Van Dyne shrugged. “Fuck the clients. Maybe one day the feds or the locals hit us, put us out of business. Maybe I find myself needing a steady flow of cash for lawyers' fees. What better than to have a list of a couple of thousand bozos living under phony names, bozos who'd be willing to be squeezed a little rather than have to start all over again with new lives.” “Blackmail,” Vince said. “An ugly word,” Van Dyne said. “But apt, I'm afraid. Anyway, all we care about is that we are safe, that there aren't any records here to incriminate us. We don't keep the data in this dump. Soon as we provide someone with a new ID, we transmit the record of it over a safe phone line from the computer here to a computer we keep elsewhere. The way that computer is programmed, the data can't be pulled out of it from here; it's a one-way road; so if we are busted, the police hackers can't reach our records from these machines. Hell, they won't even know the records exist.” This new high-tech criminal world made Vince woozy. Even the don, a man of infinite criminal cleverness, had thought these people kept no records and had not realized how computers had made it safe to do so

Ah, the problem is that you didn’t DTR,” said Holly wisely. Kami stared. “What?” “D. T. R.,” Holly spelled out, slowly and helpfully. “Do try rollerblading?” Kami guessed. “Dump the recycling. Don’t taste reptiles. No, that doesn’t make any sense at all.” Holly wrinkled her nose. “Because the others made perfect sense?” Kami shrugged, and Holly grinned. “Determine the Relationship,” Holly said. “That’s when the two of you have been kissing a bunch and then you find yourself on a sofa or somewhere and someone’s like, ‘Oh, do you want to be my girlfriend?’ or ‘Is this an exclusive thing, then?’ And then you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and then you’ve either determined the relationship or determined that there isn’t a relationship. You guys needed to DTR.” “Well, we have,” Kami said. “We D’d the R, or rather he D’d that there wasn’t an R, and now we’re done.” Holly put out the hand that wasn’t holding the book, and wiggled it noncommittally. “I don’t know,” she said. “He—we talked about you, once.” “That one time you two made out?’ Kami asked with a sinking feeling. “Uh, I don’t remember exactly when.” Holly looked shifty. “It was totally that time you made out, wasn’t it?” “Oh, come on,” said Holly. “What’s that thing you say? The past is another country. You make out with different people there.” “That’s not how it goes but I admire your creative weaseling,” said Kami. “You are the most promising reporter on my newspaper staff.

You're certainly not dressed like you're running a business." Eyes blazing, she glared. "What's wrong with how I'm dressed?" "An apron and a pink tracksuit with Juicy written across the ass are hardly serious business attire and they certainly don't scream swipe right on desi Tinder." Sam didn't know if there was such a thing as Tinder for people of South Asian descent living abroad, but if it did exist, he and Layla would definitely not have been a match. Layla gave a growl of frustration. "You may be surprised to hear that I don't live my life seeking male approval. I'm just getting over a breakup so I'm a little bit fragile. Last night, I went out with Daisy and drank too much, smoked something I thought was a cigarette, danced on a speaker, and fell onto some loser named Jimbo, whose girlfriend just happened to be an MMA fighter and didn't like to see me sprawled on top of her man. We had a minor physical altercation and I was kicked out of the bar. Then I got dumped on the street by my Uber driver because I threw up in his cab. So today, I just couldn't manage office wear. It's called self-care, and we all need it sometimes. Danny certainly wouldn't mind." "Who's Danny?" The question came out before he could stop it. "Someone who appreciates all I've got going here-" she ran a hand around her generous curves- "and isn't hung up on trivial things like clothes." She tugged off the apron and dropped it on the reception desk. "I'm not hung up on clothes, either," Sam teased. "When I'm with a woman I prefer to have no clothes at all." Her nose wrinkled. "You're disgusting." "Go home, sweetheart." Sam waved a dismissive hand. "Put your feet up. Watch some rom-coms. Eat a few tubs of ice cream. Have a good cry. Some of us have real work to do.

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

Now that you’ve fallen to that point, here comes the crème de la crème. Imagine that while you’re lost in the disturbed energy, you actually do one or more of the things that your mind is telling you to do. Imagine what would happen if you actually quit your job, or if you decide, “I’ve held this in long enough. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” You have no idea how big a step down that is. It’s one thing if the disturbance is going on inside of you. But the moment you allow it to express itself, the moment you let that energy move your body, you have descended to another level. Now it’s almost impossible to let go. If you start yelling at somebody, if you actually tell someone how you feel about them from this state of nonclarity, you have involved that person’s heart and mind in your stuff. Now both of your egos are involved. Once you externalize these energies, you will want to defend your actions and make them look appropriate. But the other person will never think they were appropriate. Now even more forces are keeping you down. First you fall into the darkness, and then you manifest that darkness. When you do this, you are literally taking the energy of the blockage and passing it on. When you dump your stuff into this world, it’s like painting the world with your stuff. You put more of that kind of energy into your environment and it comes back to you. You are now surrounded by people who will interact with you accordingly. It’s just another form of “environmental pollution,” and it will affect your life. That is how negative cycles happen. You actually take a piece of your stuff, which is nothing but deeply seated disturbance from your past, and you implant it in the hearts of those around you. At some point it will come back to you. Anything you put out comes back. Imagine if you got upset and fully released your disturbed energies onto another person. This is how people ruin relationships and destroy their lives.

That looks like the last one for a bit. We’ll climb out there.”   “Is it safe?” I can’t help but ask.   “None of this is safe,” he tells me, voice cutting. “But we can’t stay here all night.”   “Why not? We’re already covered in poop.”   “Because this is a sewer and the water’s rising.” Aron looks at me like I’m stupid. “The tide’s coming in. Unless you want to drown in someone else’s shit, we have to get out of here.”   “It is?” I look down and sure enough, I guess the water (if you can call it that) is higher than it was before. I thought it was because the tunnel was just, getting deeper in this part, but it’s past my knees and soaking the hem of my tunic. “I didn’t realize.”   “How is it I’m the immortal and you’re the one that has no clue how a city works?”   I slap his arm, irritated. “Don’t you start that shit with me. You want to know how it works where I live? We go into a tiny little room, sit on a toilet, take a dump, and then jiggle a handle and the magic poo gods take it all away. Whoosh. That’s it. That’s the extent of my knowledge. Once a month I pay the water bill and that’s all I do. So if your stupid city doesn’t work the way my stupid city did, don’t blame me.”   I glare at him, waiting for his answer.   He just watches me. His mouth twitches, just a little. Finally, he says, slowly, “Magic poo gods?”   I throw my hands up in the air. “You’re impossible and I hate you. If we’re leaving, let’s just go.”   “Should we say a prayer to the magic poo gods first?” When I shoot him the bird, he snorts with amusement. “Here I thought you didn’t believe in any gods.”   “There’s just one where I come from, and he doesn’t put up with any lesser god bullshit like this place, thank you.” I stomp ahead, splashing through the horrible, sludgy water so I can get away from my equally horrible companion.   Aron’s laughter rumbles through the sewer pipe, and I ignore him, pushing forward. I’m so tired and the night has been so long. To think I just took a bath and now I’m covered in crap and mud once more. It’s like this entire world is conspiring against me. Heck, maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been cursed since I stepped through that portal. Given that I’m stuck with the infuriating Aron, I believe it. One minute I think he might be okay, and the next I want to choke him.

BUYING OFF THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS Where are the environmentalists? For fifty years, they’ve been carrying on about overpopulation; promoting family planning, birth control, abortion; and saying old people have a “duty to die and get out of the way”—in Colorado’s Democratic Governor Richard Lamm’s words. In 1971, Oregon governor and environmentalist Tom McCall told a CBS interviewer, “Come visit us again. . . . But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.” How about another 30 million people coming here to live? The Sierra Club began sounding the alarm over the country’s expanding population in 1965—the very year Teddy Kennedy’s immigration act passed65—and in 1978, adopted a resolution expressly asking Congress to “conduct a thorough examination of U.S. immigration laws.” For a while, the Club talked about almost nothing else. “It is obvious,” the Club said two years later, “that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size and growth rate,” even more than “the number of children per family.”66 Over the next three decades, America took in tens of millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens alike. But, suddenly, about ten years ago, the Sierra Club realized to its embarrassment that importing multiple millions of polluting, fire-setting, littering immigrants is actually fantastic for the environment! The advantages of overpopulation dawned on the Sierra Club right after it received a $100 million donation from hedge fund billionaire David Gelbaum with the express stipulation that—as he told the Los Angeles Times—“if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”67 It would be as if someone offered the Catholic Church $100 million to be pro-abortion. But the Sierra Club said: Sure! Did you bring the check? Obviously, there’s no longer any reason to listen to them on anything. They want us to get all excited about some widening of a road that’s going to disturb a sandfly, but the Sierra Club is totally copasetic with our national parks being turned into garbage dumps. Not only did the Sierra Club never again say another word against immigration, but, in 2004, it went the extra mile, denouncing three actual environmentalists running for the Club’s board, by claiming they were racists who opposed mass immigration. The three “white supremacists” were Dick Lamm, the three-time Democratic governor of Colorado; Frank Morris, former head of the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation; and Cornell professor David Pimentel, who created the first ecology course at the university in 1957 and had no particular interest in immigration.68 But they couldn’t be bought off, so they were called racists.

Alan, as per his usual routine, got up early and peeked into my rom to check on me. What he found were his teenage stepdaughter and her childhood sweetheart curled up in the same bed, sound asleep and draped all over each other. He hissed my name, alarmed: "Jenna!" "Wha-?" I sat straight up, immediately aware of what was happening and how it all looked. I clambered over Cameron, who was just coming to consciousness, and followed Alan into the kitchen. "It's nothing, I swear," I said in a whisper. If Mom wasn't up yet, I wanted to keep it that way. Alan shook his head. "It looks bad." He glanced toward my bedroom. "Was that Ethan? Tell him to come out here. I want to talk to him." "Um, it's not Ethan. It's Cameron." He put his hands to his head. "Jenna. Jenna." "I know. Is Mom awake?" "Not yet." I kept my voice low. "Can we talk by the fish tank?" He led, I followed. "He came to my window in the night," I explained. "He needed to talk. I let him in. It was me. It was my idea. It was all...nothing happened." "This isn't my area," Alan said, looking at the fish. "Your mom is supposed to do the tough stuff. We have a policy of laissez-faire when it comes to me and...this kind of thing." "Exactly. So," I said hopefully, "go make the coffee and we'll pretend nothing every happened." Cameron came into the room, his blanket wrapped around him. His hair was sticking up in the back, and his long eyelashes hooded sleepy eyes. "I just needed to talk to someone," he said to Alan. "Guess we fell asleep." "Uh-huh." Alan cast an anxious glance toward his and mom's bedroom and said, "You couldn't talk in the kitchen?" "We didn't think about it," I said. "That's how innocent it was, see?" Alan stared at us, still shaking his head. "Look, Cameron, just get out of here before Jenna's mom sees you. Okay?" He nodded. "I'll go get my boots." I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Alan." When Cameron shut my bedroom door, Alan said, "Jenna. This is the kind of situation that's very, very awkward, to say the least. If your mom were to find out, I would be in scalding hot water." "She won't. Thank you thank you thank you." "Now. I need my coffee." He shuffled off to the kitchen, ankles cracking. "I'm too old for this." Back in my room, I watched Cameron get ready to go, thinking about everything we'd talked about and what it meant. "Where do you live?" I asked. "I'll take you home." "I share a studio apartment with three other guys. It's a dump," he said, lacing up his boots. "How come you were sleeping in my car yesterday?" "Sometimes I don't want to be there." He pulled on his jacket. "I'll go straight to school, shower in the locker room. See you later." He started to open the window. "Wait," I said. "You can use the front door, you know. Just be quiet." "Okay." He paused on his way out of my room, looing back once to say, "Thanks.

We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described the evolution of that movie, I explained that our decision to overhaul the film so late in the game led to a meltdown of our workforce. This meltdown was the big unexpected event, and our response to it became part of our mythology. But about ten months before the reboot was ordered, in the winter of 1998, we’d been hit with a series of three smaller, random events—the first of which would threaten the future of Pixar. To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren Jacobs, one of the lead technical directors on the movie, remembers watching this occur in real time. At first, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he was frantically dialing the phone to reach systems. “Pull out the plug on the Toy Story 2 master machine!” he screamed. When the guy on the other end asked, sensibly, why, Oren screamed louder: “Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!” The systems guy moved quickly, but still, two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds. An hour later, Oren and his boss, Galyn Susman, were in my office, trying to figure out what we would do next. “Don’t worry,” we all reassured each other. “We’ll restore the data from the backup system tonight. We’ll only lose half a day of work.” But then came random event number two: The backup system, we discovered, hadn’t been working correctly. The mechanism we had in place specifically to help us recover from data failures had itself failed. Toy Story 2 was gone and, at this point, the urge to panic was quite real. To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year. I remember the meeting when, as this devastating reality began to sink in, the company’s leaders gathered in a conference room to discuss our options—of which there seemed to be none. Then, about an hour into our discussion, Galyn Susman, the movie’s supervising technical director, remembered something: “Wait,” she said. “I might have a backup on my home computer.” About six months before, Galyn had had her second baby, which required that she spend more of her time working from home. To make that process more convenient, she’d set up a system that copied the entire film database to her home computer, automatically, once a week. This—our third random event—would be our salvation. Within a minute of her epiphany, Galyn and Oren were in her Volvo, speeding to her home in San Anselmo. They got her computer, wrapped it in blankets, and placed it carefully in the backseat. Then they drove in the slow lane all the way back to the office, where the machine was, as Oren describes it, “carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh.” Thanks to Galyn’s files, Woody was back—along with the rest of the movie.