Hurts Being Ignored Quotes

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

When Great Trees Fall When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.

Being in love with your best friend is problematic.

Sometimes, you will go through awful trials in your life and then a miracle happens--God heals you. Don’t be disheartened when the people you love don’t see things like you do. There will be Pharisees in your life that will laugh it off, deny that it happened, or will mock your experience based on righteousness they think you don't possess. God won't deny you a spiritual experience because you are not a spiritual leader. He loves everyone equal. The only people that really matter in life are the people that can “see” your heart and rejoice with you.

I understand why it hurts. I understand the loneliness of not being seen. I understand, most of all, from years of watching, that ignorance is worse than cruelty.

The world isn’t perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn’t apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it’s about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn’t perfection. The point is doing it anyway.

You know that feeling at the end of the day, when the anxiety of that-which-I-must-do falls away and, for maybe the first time that day, you see, with some clarity, the people you love and the ways you have, during that day, slightly ignored them, turned away from them to get back to what you were doing, blurted out some mildly hurtful thing, projected, instead of the deep love you really feel, a surge of defensiveness or self-protection or suspicion? That moment when you think, Oh God, what have I done with this day? And what am I doing with my life? And how must I change to avoid catastrophic end-of-life regrets? I feel like that now: tired of the Me I've always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the same small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me... --"Buddha Boy

You smell of winter dew at the first crack of dawn and when you use your power it feels like being submerged in the most intoxicating vanilla cream that I lose myself in it every time and … and you were beautiful,‟ he blurted out, catching us both by surprise. But he went on, ignoring the fact that my hand was still slipping. „So stunning in that dress the other night I could hardly look at you it hurt so much. You are the thing I dread in myself, Violet, because … I love you so much that I can‟t trust myself. I‟d die for you, give up all my power for you, I‟d give my soul in an instant, even if it meant I had to spend eternity in torment - just for one moment with you as mine. Wanting you consumes me. I dread you because I know the risk but I‟m so selfish I want you anyway. I‟d take you even though it could kill you

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could ever improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished. It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.

We're never called on to do what hurts. We just do what hurts out of ignorance and habit. Once we see what we're doing, we can stop.

The hardest part of letting go is the "uncertainty"--when you are afraid that the moment you let go of someone you will hate yourself when you find out how close you were to winning their affection. Every time you give yourself hope you steal away a part of your time, happiness and future. However, once in a while you wake up to this realization and you have to hold on tightly to this truth because your heart will tear away the foundation of your logic, by making excuses for why this person doesn't try as much as you. The truth is this: Real love is simple. We are the ones that make it complicated. A part of disconnecting is recognizing the difference between being desired and being valued. When someone loves you they will never keep you waiting, give their attention and affection away to others, allow you to continue hurting, or ignore what you have gone through for them. On the other hand, a person that desires you can't see your pain, only what they can get from you with minimal effort in return. They let you risk everything, while they guard their heart and reap the benefits of your feelings. We make so many excuses for the people we fall in love with and they make up even more to remain one foot in the door. However, the truth is God didn't create you to be treated as an option or to be disrespected repeatedly. He wants you to close the door. If someone loves you and wants to be in your life no obstacle will keep them from you. Remember, you are royalty, not a beggar.

People are denying even the most basic scientific facts because it makes them feel better about hurting each other. Do you realize how horrifying that is? We’re talking about human beings making a conscious effort, going out of their way, to be ignorant. Willfully stupid. They’re proud of it. They take pride in idiocy. There’s not even an attempt to rationalize things anymore.

To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do; whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?

A man worth being with is one… That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another’s life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.

Until we accept that our children have much more of a risk of being sexually abused than drowning in a pool, being struck by a car, stricken with cancer, hurt by a vaccination, or diagnosed with ebola, we contribute to a culture of panic and ignorance.

Once someone is an unreal other, we lose sight of how they hurt. Because we don’t experience them as feeling beings, we not only ignore them, we can inflict pain on them without compunction. Not

Do not ignore being bullied, because it will never stop.

Stand firm, speak up—because silence is not golden, instead, it is deadly. Do not ignore being bullied, because it will never stop.

That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

We are deeply hurting inside and out because our feelings are constantly being ignored.

If you give the slightest pain to any living being, then in the form of pain, the pain-giving-karma will give you its ‘fruit’. So think before you hurt any living being.

You were right to end it with us,” I said harshly. “And I’m not willing to do it again.” He stared at me, shocked. My words were a lie, of course. Part of me wanted to try again, to endure anything to be with him. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Maddie. Couldn’t stop thinking about the hurt she would go through. It was ironic, really. Last time, he’d gone out of his way to hurt me purposely because it was for the greater good. Now I was doing the same for both of them, saving her from heartache and him from more grief with me. We were in an endless cycle. “You can’t mean that. I know you can’t.” His face was a mixture of incredulity and pain. I shook my head. “I do. You and me are a disaster. What we did during this stasis...it was wrong. It was disgraceful. Immoral. We betrayed someone who loves both of us, who wishes nothing but the best for us. How could we do that? What kind of precedent is that? How could we expect to have a solid relationship that was built on that sort of sordid foundation? One that was built on lies and deceit?” Saying those words hurt. It was tarnishing the beauty of these precious few days we had, but I needed to make my case. Seth was silent for several moments as he assessed me. “You’re serious.” “Yes.” I was a good liar, good enough that the person who loved me most couldn’t tell. “Go back to her, Seth. Go back to her and make it up to her.” “Georgina...” I could see it, see it hitting him. The full weight of betraying Maddie was sinking in. His nature couldn’t ignore the wrong he’d done. It was part of his good character, the character that had gone back to save Dante, the character that was going to make him leave me. Again. Hesitantly, he extended his hand to me. I took it, and he pulled me into an embrace. “I will always love you.” My heart was going to burst. How many times, I wondered, could I endure this kind of agony? “No, you won’t,” I said. “You’ll move on. So will I.” Seth left not long after that. Staring at the door, I replayed my own words. You’ll move on. So will I. In spite of how much he loved me, how much he was willing to risk, I truly felt he’d go back to Maddie, that he’d believe what I said. I’d driven home the guilt, made it trump his love for me. You’ll move on. So will I. The unfortunate part about being a good liar, however, was that while I could get other people to believe my words, I didn’t believe them myself.

We all have days when we feel small. Really small. Completely inadequate but saddled with all this responsibility...I have to fight battles against people who shouldn't be my enemies - especially when there are allready plenty of enemies to go around. There are days when I would love to pull the cover over my head and say to hell with it. But I don't do that. And most people don't do that. Most people get up and do their jobs and work their asses off for no reward at all - but just so they can get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. World isn't perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn't apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it's about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn't perfection. The point is doing it anyway.

Maybe the answer is: Don’t be an asshole, think before you open your trap, take responsibility for your words. Meaning, apologize when you’re wrong and correct yourself moving forward—and don’t constantly look for reasons to be offended and police well-meaning people’s words. We want folks to talk to each other, right? Not just hang out with like-minded people all the time. Everyone is ignorant about something, and everyone is offended by something. If people can’t have a calm, respectful dialogue without being hurt by ignorance, or without offending with insensitivity, then what the hell are we supposed to do? Surround ourselves with robots who don’t challenge our ideas?

I closed what little distance was left between us, one hand sliding through his soft hair, the other gathering the back of his shirt into my fist. When my lips finally pressed against his, I felt something coil deep inside of me. There was nothing outside of him, not even the grating of cicadas, not even the gray-bodied trees. My heart thundered in my chest. More, more, more—a steady beat. His body relaxed under my hands, shuddering at my touch. Breathing him in wasn’t enough, I wanted to inhale him. The leather, the smoke, the sweetness. I felt his fingers counting up my bare ribs. Liam shifted his legs around mine to draw me closer. I was off-balance on my toes; the world swaying dangerously under me as his lips traveled to my cheek, to my jaw, to where my pulse throbbed in my neck. He seemed so sure of himself, like he had already plotted out this course. I didn’t feel it happen, the slip. Even if I had, I was so wrapped up in him that I couldn’t imagine pulling back or letting go of his warm skin or that moment. His touch was feather-light, stroking my skin with a kind of reverence, but the instant his lips found mine again, a single thought was enough to rocket me out of the honey-sweet haze. The memory of Clancy’s face as he had leaned in to do exactly what Liam was doing now suddenly flooded my mind, twisting its way through me until I couldn’t ignore it. Until I was seeing it play out glossy and burning like it was someone else’s memory and not mine. And then I realized—I wasn’t the only one seeing it. Liam was seeing it, too. How, how, how? That wasn’t possible, was it? Memories flowed to me, not from me. But I felt him grow still, then pull back. And I knew, I knew by the look on his face, that he had seen it. Air filled my chest. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I didn’t want—he—” Liam caught one of my wrists and pulled me back to him, his hands cupping my cheeks. I wondered which one of us was breathing harder as he brushed my hair from my face. I tried to squirm away, ashamed of what he’d seen, and afraid of what he’d think of me. When Liam spoke, it was in a measured, would-be-calm voice. “What did he do?” “Nothing—” “Don’t lie,” he begged. “Please don’t lie to me. I felt it…my whole body. God, it was like being turned to stone. You were scared—I felt it, you were scared!” His fingers came up and wove through my hair, bringing my face close to his again. “He…” I started. “He asked to see a memory, and I let him, but when I tried to move away…I couldn’t get out, I couldn’t move, and then I blacked out. I don’t know what he did, but it hurt—it hurt so much.” Liam pulled back and pressed his lips to my forehead. I felt the muscles in his arms strain, shake. “Go to the cabin.” He didn’t let me protest. “Start packing.” “Lee—” “I’m going to find Chubs,” he said. “And the three of us are getting the hell out of here. Tonight.” “We can’t,” I said. “You know we can’t.” But he was already crashing back through the dark path. “Lee!

Stand firm, speak up—because silence is not golden, instead, it is deadly. Do not ignore being bullied, because it will never stop. Throughout my challenges with being bullied, I learned I have a choice, I have a voice, I have power over my thoughts, and my bully does not have power over me. Do not stand up against a bully alone.

He is my other eyes that can see above the clouds; my other ears that hear above the winds. He is the part of me that can reach out into the sea. He has told me a thousand times over that I am his reason for being; by the way he rests against my leg; by the way he thumps his tail at my smallest smile; by the way he shows his hurt when I leave without taking him. (I think it makes him sick with worry when he is not along to care for me.) When I am wrong, he is delighted to forgive. When I am angry, he clowns to make me smile. When I am happy, he is joy unbounded. When I am a fool, he ignores it. When I succeed, he brags. Without him, I am only another man. With him, I am all-powerful. He is loyalty itself. He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant. His head on my knee can heal my human hurts. His presence by my side is protection against my fears of dark and unknown things. He has promised to wait for me... whenever... wherever - in case I need him. And I expect I will - as I always have. He is just my dog.

From here on," Kanin said, "you will have to decide what kind of demon you will be. Not all meals will come to you so easily, ignorant and seeking to do you harm. What will you do if your prey invites you inside, offers you a place at the table? What will you do if they flee, or cower down, begging you not to hurt them? How you stalk your prey is something you must come to terms with, or you will quickly drive yourself mad. And once you cross that threshold, there is no coming back from it.

Trump continues to hurl insults in my direction. I learn how it feels to be on the other side. But I know enough not to react. That’s what he wants me to do. He wants me to be defensive. He wants to know when he’s hurt someone or gotten a rise out of them; he wants to project his hurt onto the source of it. Trump doesn’t care if you dispute him or call him a liar. Only silence bothers him. Being ignored drives him mad.

Friendship is a difficult thing to define. Oscar here is my oldest friend. How would you define friendship, Oscar?" Oscar grunts slightly, as though the answer is obvious. "Friendship is about choice and chemistry. It cannot be defined." "But surely there's something more to it than that." "It is a willingness to overlook faults and to accept them. I would let a friend hurt me without striking back," he says, smiling. "But only once." De Souza laughs. "Bravo, Oscar, I can always rely on you to distill an argument down to its purest form. What do you think, Dayel?" The Indian rocks his head from side to side, proud that he has been asked to speak next. "Friendship is different for each person and it changes throughout our lives. At age six it is about holding hands with your best friend. At sixteen it is about the adventure ahead. At sixty it is about reminiscing." He holds up a finger. "You cannot define it with any one word, although honesty is perhaps the closest word-" "No, not honesty," Farhad interrupts. "On the contrary, we often have to protect our friends from what we truly think. It is like an unspoken agreement. We ignore each other's faults and keep our confidences. Friendship isn't about being honest. The truth is too sharp a weapon to wield around someone we trust and respect. Friendship is about self-awareness. We see ourselves through the eyes of our friends. They are like a mirror that allows us to judge how we are traveling." De Souza clears his throat now. I wonder if he is aware of the awe that he inspires in others. I suspect he is too intelligent and too human to do otherwise. "Friendship cannot be defined," he says sternly. "The moment we begin to give reasons for being friends with someone we begin to undermine the magic of the relationship. Nobody wants to know that they are loved for their money or their generosity or their beauty or their wit. Choose one motive and it allows a person to say, 'is that the only reason?'" The others laugh. De Souza joins in with them. This is a performance. He continues: "Trying to explain why we form particular friendships is like trying to tell someone why we like a certain kind of music or a particular food. We just do.

Not having someone doesn't hurt as much as being ignored by someone.

I was being drilled again, for something someone did to me. I followed the rules, told the teacher, and once again—I still got punished for it. How and why did I get in trouble? Wow—what sense does that make? None. None what so ever. Once again, I was being bullied and it was ignored.

The irony, though, is that when we ignore our feelings, or suppress them, they only become stronger. The really powerful emotions build up inside us, like a dark force that inevitably poisons everything we do, whether we like it or not. Hurt feelings don’t vanish on their own. They don’t heal themselves. If we don’t express our emotions, they pile up like a debt that will eventually come due.

Haunted You haunt me in my dreams I can only hear my drowning screams Is it because I'm afraid of you Or am I afraid of this feeling The feeling of being blue Maybe it's me you are healing Can I admit that it's my heart you are stealing I'm afraid of being let down Can you relieve me of the sound The voices tell me to hide In my mind is where they reside Can I ignore the calmness you bring You hold my heart on a string

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country," (pp. 41 & 42).

Strangely, he felt calm now. It didn't matter if Aria was hundreds of miles away, or whatever she'd hurt him, or said good-bye, or anything else. Nothing would change the way he felt. Not ignoring his thoughts of her, or being with Kirra. The moment Aria had taken his hand on the roof at Marron's, she'd changed everything. No matter what happened, she'd always be the one.

I was being drilled again, for something someone did to me. I followed the rules and told the teacher—but I still… and once again, got in trouble. Wow—what sense does that make? None. None what so ever. Once again, I was being bullied and it was ignored.

People are denying even the most basic scientific facts because it makes them feel better about hurting each other. Do you realize how horrifying that is? We’re talking about human beings making a conscious effort, going out of their way, to be ignorant. Willfully stupid. They’re proud of it. They take pride in idiocy.

Tedros turned away. 'I don't like being hurt.' 'Who is hurting you?' 'No one.' He swallowed. 'I'm okay.' 'You're lucky, then, because I fell quite hurt myself.' He looked back at me. 'You do? Where are you hurt?' 'Here,' I said, my hand on my heart. 'Oh.' He nodded. 'Who hurt you?' 'Someone I loved very much,' I said. Tedros nodded. 'Me too.' He sniffled and curled into a bean shape, his back against my knee. 'When does the hurt go away?' 'Once you make friends with it. Once you come to see the hurt not as something to fear or run away from, but as an important part of you. As important as love and hope and happiness. All of them are pieces of you heart, each as important as the other. But ignoring the hurt or pretending it's not there doesn't make it go away. It just means that you're not using all of your heart. Soon that piece might even dry up and break away. We don't want that. A strong king needs all of his heart. And the funny thing is, once you're bold enough to welcome the hurt, to give it a hug and face it unafraid... then suddenly, it's gone.

The Black Friend is the person who is willing to speak the truth to the white people in their lives, to call them out when they do or say something hurtful, ignorant, or offensive.

You can be: Cool Awesome Funny Ignorant Cold ... But in the end you always gonna hurt somebody.

Anyway, most of the chapter is Bella telling us how much pain she's in. First she's about to die because delivering Optimus Beyonce nearly killed her. And then she goes on and on about how hot and awful the vampire venom feels as it takes hold of her body. She's in agony and there's nothing she can do about it. Good! I hope it hurts. This is what you get, Bella Swan. This is what you get for being a greedy, self-centered jerk. This is what happens to people who let thousands die in Italy. This is what you get for ruining Jacob's life and ignoring your human friends because you'd rather spend time with pretty people. This is what happens to selfish brats that have no regard for their family. This is what you get for being weak and dependent. This is what you get for lying to your father. This is what you get for crying and complaining about your perfect life. This is what you get for spending pages and pages describing freaking magnets! THIS IS WHAT YOU GET! I only wish the pain lasted longer than a chapter. An entire book of Bella's torture would be nice. And maybe if the book were illustrated…with Octo-Bears…I would finally sympathize with this, the least likable character in the history of novels. Bella, I do not care one tiny bit that you're in pain.

No one's really numb of pain or being hurt. It's either they chose to deceive themselves or refuses to accept the fact that they are hurting or still feels the pain. It's always a choice. Feel it or ignore it!

What’s wrong?” Before I could stop myself, I mumbled, “I’m used to resting my head on a warm tiger-fur pillow is what’s wrong.” He grunted, “Hmm, let me see what I can do.” Panicky, I squeaked out, “No, really. I’m okay. Don’t bother.” He ignored my protests, scooped up my mummy-wrapped self, and set me down again on his side of the fire. He turned me on my side so I faced the fire, lay down behind me, and slid an arm under my neck to cradle my head. “Is that more comfortable for you?” “Uh, yes and no. My head can definitely rest better in this position. Unfortunately, the rest of me is feeling the complete opposite of relaxed.” “What do you mean? Why can’t you relax?” “Because you’re too close for me to relax.” Bemused, he said, “Me being too close never bothered you when I was a tiger.” “The tiger you and the man you are two completely different things.” He put his arm around my waist and tugged me closer so we were spooned together. He sounded irritated and disappointed when he muttered, “It doesn’t feel different to me. Just close your eyes and imagine I’m still a tiger.” “It doesn’t exactly work like that.” I lay stiffly in his arms, nervous, especially when he began nuzzling the back of my neck. He said softly, “I like the smell of your hair.” His chest rumbled against my back, sending massaging vibrations through my body as he purred. “Ren, can you not do that right now?” He lifted his head. “You like it when I purr. It helps you sleep better.” “Yes, well, that only works with the tiger. How can you do that as a man anyway?” He paused, and said, “I don’t know. I just can,” then buried his face in my hair again and stroked my arm. “Uh, Ren? Explain to me how you plan to keep watch like this.” His lips grazed my neck. “I can hear and smell the Kappa, remember?” I twitched and shivered, with nerves, or anticipation, or something else, and he noticed. He stopped kissing my neck and lifted his head to peer at my face in the flickering firelight. His voice was solemn and calm. “Kells, I hope you know that I would never hurt you. You don’t need to be afraid of me.” Rolling toward him, I lifted my hand and touched his cheek. Looking into his blue eyes, I sighed. “I’m not afraid of you, Ren. I trust you with my life. I’ve just never been close to someone like this before.” He kissed me softly and smiled. “I haven’t either.” He shifted, lying down again. “Now, turn around and go to sleep. I’m warning you that I plan to sleep with you in my arms all night long. Who knows when, or if, I’ll ever get to do it again. So try to relax, and for heaven’s sake, don’t wiggle!” He pulled me back against his warm chest, and I closed my eyes. I ended up sleeping better than I had in weeks.

My Dearest, Can you forgive me? In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly than I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny. I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world. I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months than some make in a lifetime. I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart: that I can’t go on without you. You were right about everything. I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like one who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of a coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner. Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we—both of us—were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me. Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know. I love you and always will. I am tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in the kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever.

If you are paralyzed by your past, if Satan is destroying your gifts and your calling by his incessant replaying of old tapes, you're actually being hit by a double whammy. The original damage in the past is one thing - but now you're letting yourself be hurt and sidetracked again by the memory of what happened... We should not be ignorant of Satan's devices, and these ugly memories are one of the main weapons in his arsenal.

We don’t open our hearts by being a tower of strength. We don’t open our hearts by glossing over things in our head. We open our hearts by feeling what we feel. We open our hearts by being vulnerable, honest, and gentle. We’ve become so strong, so self-sufficient. I can deal with that, we say. No big deal. I’ll keep moving on. Yet many circumstances we’ve been through, and some we’re going through now, cause break lines in our heart. Some of the fractures are small. Some are big. They really hurt. Maybe certain people in our lives weren’t there for us, aren’t there for us now in a way we’d like them to be. Maybe some deceived us unconsciously or betrayed us deliberately. I can deal with that, we say. I understand. They have their own issues. I forgive… Yes, people do have their own issues. And we do forgive. But now it may be time to learn gentleness, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness for ourselves as well. We don’t open our hearts by ignoring the break lines. We take our hand, knowing it’s held by God, and gently run our fingers across each crack. Yes, it’s there. Yes, I feel it. Yes, I’m ready to heal my heart.

I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home. I loved you enough to insist you buy a bike with your own money even though we could afford it. I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to the drugstore and confess, “I stole this.” I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes. I loved you enough to say, “Yes, you can go to Disney World on Mother’s Day.” I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, disgust and tears in my eyes. I loved you enough not to make excuses for your lack of respect or your bad manners. I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and ask for your forgiveness. I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said. I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail. I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your own actions at age 6, 10 or 16. I loved you enough to figure you would lie about the party being chaperoned but forgave you for it—after discovering I was right. I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be. But, most of all, I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

If God, who loves us, has given us an instruction manual, and we ignore the instructions, we have no right to complain because we are miserable and hurt. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of Christians who sow their wild oats and pray for a crop failure.

DEAR MAMA, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. Every time I try to write to you and Papa I realize I’m not saying the things that are in my heart. That would be O.K., if I loved you any less than I do, but you are still my parents and I am still your child. I have friends who think I’m foolish to write this letter. I hope they’re wrong. I hope their doubts are based on parents who loved and trusted them less than mine do. I hope especially that you’ll see this as an act of love on my part, a sign of my continuing need to share my life with you. I wouldn’t have written, I guess, if you hadn’t told me about your involvement in the Save Our Children campaign. That, more than anything, made it clear that my responsibility was to tell you the truth, that your own child is homosexual, and that I never needed saving from anything except the cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant. I’m sorry, Mama. Not for what I am, but for how you must feel at this moment. I know what that feeling is, for I felt it for most of my life. Revulsion, shame, disbelief—rejection through fear of something I knew, even as a child, was as basic to my nature as the color of my eyes. No, Mama, I wasn’t “recruited.” No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, “You’re all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You’re not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends—all kinds of friends—who don’t give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it.” But no one ever said that to me, Mama. I had to find it out on my own, with the help of the city that has become my home. I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don’t consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being. These aren’t radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it’s all right for you to like me too. I know what you must be thinking now. You’re asking yourself: What did we do wrong? How did we let this happen? Which one of us made him that way? I can’t answer that, Mama. In the long run, I guess I really don’t care. All I know is this: If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it’s the light and the joy of my life. I know I can’t tell you what it is to be gay. But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. It’s not fearing your body, or the pleasures that God made for it. It’s not judging your neighbor, except when he’s crass or unkind. Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. I like it. There’s not much else I can say, except that I’m the same Michael you’ve always known. You just know me better now. I have never consciously done anything to hurt you. I never will. Please don’t feel you have to answer this right away. It’s enough for me to know that I no longer have to lie to the people who taught me to value the truth. Mary Ann sends her love. Everything is fine at 28 Barbary Lane. Your loving son, MICHAEL

What can we do when we have hurt people and nowthey consider us to be their enemy? Thereare few things to do. The first thing is to take the time to say, “I am sorry, I hurt you out of my ignorance, out of my lack of mindfulness, out of my lack of skillfulness. I will try my best to change myself. I don’t dare to say anything more to you.” Sometimes, we do not have the intention to hurt, but because we are not mindful or skillful enough, we hurt someone. Being mindful in our daily life is important, speaking in a way that will not hurt anyone. The second thing to do is to try to bring out the best part in ourselves, to transform ourselves. That is the only way to demonstrate what you have just said. When you have become fresh and pleasant, the other person will notice very soon. Then when there is a chance to approach that person, you can come to her as a flower and she will notice immediately that you are quite different. You may not have to say anything. Just seeing you like that, she will accept you and forgive you. That is called “speaking with your life and not just with words.” When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person stop suffering,that is a sign of real love. But be careful. Sometimes you may think that you are stronger than you actually are. To test your real strength, try going to the other person to listen and talk to him or her, and you will discover right away whether your loving compassion is real. You need the other person in order to test. If you just meditate on some abstract principle such as understanding or love, it may be just your imagination and not real understanding or real love. Reconciliation opposes all forms of ambition, without taking sides. Most of us want to take sides in each encounter or conflict. We distinguish right from wrong based on partial evidence or hearsay. We need indignation in order to act, but even righteous, legitimate indignation is not enough. Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people who are capable of loving, of not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality.

Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast Is open? or will God incense his ire For such a petty trespass? and not praise Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain Of death denounced, whatever thing death be, Deterred not from achieving what might lead To happier life, knowledge of good and evil; Of good, how just? of evil, if what is evil Be real, why not known, since easier shunned? God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just; Not just, not God: not feared then, nor obeyed: Your fear itself of death removes the fear. Why then was this forbid? Why, but to awe; Why, but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshippers? He knows that in the day Ye eat thereof, your eyes, that seem so clear, Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods, Knowing both good and evil, as they know.

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.” -Giacomo Leopardi- “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” -Thomas Jefferson- ”I forever hunger for knowledge, yet I do nothing but hurt myself .” -Glorian Ray-

ever validated that what I went through was wrong. Forgiveness feels like it trivializes, minimizes, or, worse yet, makes what happened no big deal. I can’t possibly forgive when I still feel so hostile toward the one who hurt me. I’m not ready to forgive. I still feel hurt. They haven’t apologized or even acknowledged that what they did was wrong. Being back in relationship with this person isn’t possible or safe. Furthermore, it’s not even reasonable for me to have a conversation with the person who hurt me. I’m still in the middle of a long, hard situation with no resolution yet. I’m afraid forgiveness will give them false hope that I want to reestablish the relationship, but I don’t. It’s easier to ignore this person altogether than to try and figure out boundaries so they don’t keep hurting me. What they did is unchangeable; therefore, forgiveness won’t help anything. The person who hurt me is no longer here. I can’t forgive someone I can’t talk to. I don’t think any good will come from forgiveness now. When your heart has been shattered and reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your own chest yet, forgiveness feels a bit unrealistic.

Kyle, I was so afraid.” Cole lifted his head from the comfort of her bosom to see her face again. She smoothed back his wild, knotted hair. “It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.” A crowd in the doorway interrupted their loving revelation. Nurse Susan stormed into the room. Cole ignored them all and kissed Kyle’s sleepy lips. “I love you, Kyle. Thank you for being alive. They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Kyle sighed. “They hurt me so much when they took you, Cole. That’s the worst pain on earth. The worst.” Kyle kissed his forehead and ran her hands over his back. “I’m your shadow. I love you too.

Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during the day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings. Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country.

Dear Jessa, I’ve started this letter so many times and I’ve never been able to finish it. So here goes again . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Riley is dead. I’m sorry for ignoring your emails and for not being there for you. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish it had been me that died and not Riley. If I could go back in time and change everything I would. I’m sorry I left without a word. There’s no excuse for my behaviour but please know that it had nothing to do with you. I was a mess. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone for months. And I felt too guilty and didn’t know how to tell you the truth about what happened. I couldn’t bear the thought of you knowing. I got all your emails but I didn’t read them until last week. I couldn’t face it and I guess that makes me the biggest coward you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never replied. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I don’t even know how to ask your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it. I’m just glad you’re doing better. I’m better too. I’ve started seeing a therapist – twice a week – you’d like her. She reminds me of Didi. I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who needed therapy, but they made it a condition of me keeping my job. She’s helped me a lot with getting the panic attacks under control. Working in a room the size of a janitor’s closet helps too – there aren’t too many surprises, only the occasional rogue paperclip. I asked for the posting. I have to thank your dad ironically. The demotion worked out. Kind of funny that I totally get where your father was coming from all those years. Looks like I’ll be spending the remainder of my marine career behind a desk, but I’m OK with that. I don’t know what else to say, Jessa. My therapist says I should just write down whatever comes into my head. So here goes. Here’s what’s in my head . . . I miss you. I love you. Even though I long ago gave up the right to any sort of claim over you, I can’t stop loving you. I won’t ever stop. You’re in my blood. You’re the only thing that got me through this, Jessa. Because even during the bad times, the worst times, the times I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping, the times I’d think the only way out was by killing myself and just having it all go away, I’d think of you and it would pull me back out of whatever dark place I’d fallen into. You’re my light, Jessa. My north star. You asked me once to come back to you and I told you I always would. I’m working on it. It might take me a little while, and I know I have no right to ask you to wait for me after everything I’ve done, but I’m going to anyway because the truth is I don’t know how to live without you. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. So please, I’m asking you to wait for me. I’m going to come back to you. I promise. And I’m going to make things right. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll never stop trying for the rest of my life to make things right between us. I love you. Always. Kit

Sometimes you welcome people only for them to show you how unwelcoming you are. Sometimes you generously help people only for them to show you how extravagant and evil you are. Sometimes you teach people only for them to show you how ignorant you are. Sometimes you open your doors to people only for them to show you how dirty your room is. Sometimes you make way for people only for them to block your ways. Sometimes you draw people closer to you only for them to teach you the real meaning of betrayal and loneliness. Sometimes you smile to people only for them to show you the color of your teeth. Sometimes you play with people only for them to show you how uncouth you are. In life, sometimes, your very best intentions shall be seen as woefully bad. Sometimes in life, your very good deeds and acts would see another meaning, but no matter how people perceive, accept and treat you or your good intentions, acts and deeds, know yourself, and dare not to be changed by circumstances so easily! Regardless of how hurtful circumstances might be, dare to guard your heart and your tongue, so you may not speak what you should never say that can make you miss your reward from the Sovereign Lord. Keep doing what you have to do, as you have to do, as a living sacrifice to your Father who is in Heaven, knowing that your reward is from Him alone, and wait patiently with a calm and an understanding heart for your reward from Him, regardless of the arduous nature of the hurt and trials!

say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. “Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back. “You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice. “Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…” “I know, I believe you.” At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket. “Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger. Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces. “Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?” I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself. “You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—” I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!” He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door. I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them. But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room. “—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!

She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence— and it didn't help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses. Anna fought the urge to turn around, to take Charles's hand or slide under his arm and let his presence drive away the wrongness. Once, she would have, but now she had the uneasy feeling that he might back away as he almost had when she sat on his lap in the boat, before Brother Wolf had taken over. Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him...but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right. Charles was old. He'd seen and experienced so much—next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe he'd have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who... "Anna?" said Charles. "What's wrong? Are you crying?" He moved in front of her and stopped, forcing her to stop walking, too. She opened her mouth and his fingers touched her wet cheeks. "Anna," he said, his body going still. "Call on your wolf." "You should have someone stronger," she told him miserably. "Someone who could help you when you need it, instead of getting sent home because I can't endure what you have to do. If I weren't Omega, if I were dominant like Sage, I could have helped you." "There is no one stronger," Charles told her. "It's the taint from the black magic. Call your wolf." "You don't want me anymore," she whispered. And once the words were out she knew they were true. He would say the things that he thought she wanted to hear because he was a kind man. But they would be lies. The truth was in the way he closed down the bond between them so she wouldn't hear things that would hurt her. Charles was a dominant wolf and dominant wolves were driven to protect those weaker than themselves. And he saw her as so much weaker. "I love you," he told her. "Now, call your wolf." She ignored his order—he knew better than to give her orders. He said he loved her; it sounded like the truth. But he was old and clever and Anna knew that, when push came to shove, he could lie and make anyone believe it. Knew it because he lied to her now—and it sounded like the truth. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I'll go away—" And suddenly her back was against a tree and his face was a hairsbreadth from hers. His long hot body was pressed against her from her knees to her chest—he'd have to bend to do that. He was a lot taller than her, though she wasn't short. Anna shuddered as the warmth of his body started to penetrate the cold that had swallowed hers. Charles waited like a hunter, waited for her to wiggle and see that she was truly trapped. Waited while she caught her breathe. Waited until she looked into his eyes. Then he snarled at her. "You are not leaving me." It was an order, and she didn't have to follow anyone's orders. That was part of being Omega instead of a regular werewolf—who might have had a snowball's chance in hell of being a proper mate. "You need someone stronger," Anna told him again. "So you wouldn't have to hide when you're hurt. So you could trust your mate to take care of herself and help, damn it, instead of having to protect me from whatever you are hiding." She hated crying. Tears were weaknesses that could be exploited and they never solves a damn thing. Sobs gathered in her chest like a rushing tide and she needed to get away from him before she broke. Instead of fighting his grip, she tried to slide out of it. "I need to go," she said to his chest. "I need—" His mouth closed over hers, hot and hungry, warming her mouth as his body warmed her body. "Me," Charles said, his voice dark and gravelly as if it had traveled up from the bottom of the earth,...

How are things going with your brothers?” “The judge set a date to hear me out after graduation. Mrs.Collins has been prepping me.” “That is awesome!” “Yeah.” “What’s wrong?” “Carrie and Joe hired a lawyer and I lost visitation.” Echo placed her delicate hand over mine.“Oh, Noah. I am so sorry." I’d spent countless hours on the couch in the basement, staring at the ceiling wondering what she was doing. Her laughter, her smile, the feel of her body next to mine, and the regret that I let her walk away too easily haunted me. Taking the risk, I entwined my fingers with hers. Odds were I’d never get the chance to be this close again. "No, Mrs. Collins convinced me the best thing to do is to keep my distance and follow the letter of the law." "Wow, Mrs. Collins is a freaking miracle worker. Dangerous Noah Hutchins on the straight and narrow. If you don’t watch out she’ll ruin your rep with the girls." I lowered my voice. "Not that it matters. I only care what one girl thinks about me." She relaxed her fingers into mine and stroked her thumb over my skin. Minutes into being alone together, we fell into each other again, like no time had passed. I could blame her for ending us, but in the end, I agreed with her decision. “How about you, Echo? Did you find your answers?” “No.” If I continued to disregard breakup rules, I might as well go all the way. I pushed her curls behind her shoulder and let my fingers linger longer than needed so I could enjoy the silky feel. “Don’t hide from me, baby. We’ve been through too much for that.” Echo leaned into me, placing her head on my shoulder and letting me wrap an arm around her. “I’ve missed you, too, Noah. I’m tired of ignoring you.” “Then don’t.” Ignoring her hurt like hell. Acknowledging her had to be better. I swallowed, trying to shut out the bittersweet memories of our last night together. “Where’ve you been? It kills me when you’re not at school.” “I went to an art gallery and the curator showed some interest in my work and sold my first piece two days later. Since then, I’ve been traveling around to different galleries, hawking my wares.” “That’s awesome, Echo. Sounds like you’re fitting into your future perfectly. Where did you decide to go to school?” “I don’t know if I’m going to school.” Shock jolted my system and I inched away to make sure I understood. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know? You’ve got colleges falling all over you and you don’t fucking know if you want to go to school?” My damned little siren laughed at me. “I see your language has improved.” Poof—like magic, the anger disappeared. “If you’re not going to school, then what are your plans?” "I’m considering putting college off for a year or two and traveling cross-country, hopping from gallery to gallery.” “I feel like a dick. We made a deal and I left you hanging. I’m not that guy who goes back on his word. What can I do to help you get to the truth?” Echo’s chest rose with her breath then deflated when she exhaled. Sensing our moment ending, I nuzzled her hair, savoring her scent. She patted my knee and broke away. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.” "I think it’s time that I move on. As soon as I graduate, this part of my life will be over. I’m okay with not knowing what happened.” Her words sounded pretty, but I knew her better. She’d blinked three times in a row.

We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today. We are, each of us, responsible for every decision we make that hurts or harms another human being. We are responsible for recognizing that what happened in previous generations at the hands of or to people who look like us set the stage for the world we now live in and that what has gone before us grants us advantages or burdens through no effort or fault of our own, gains or deficits that others who do not look like us often do not share. We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom. We are responsible for ourselves and our own deeds or misdeeds in our time and in our own space and will be judged accordingly by succeeding generations.

This is the same stuff your parents did to you: ignoring your feelings, not recognizing what you needed, invalidating you. You grew up never being taught how to be honest about what was going on inside you. You also had to pretend.” “So now you have blame them too? It this what therapy does—teaches you to blame and hurt others to make yourself feel better?” “I don’t see why we can’t look at the facts without judging them. No one ever talked about what was really going on in our family. We were always hiding, or ignoring, or punishing when things came to the surface.” “That was years ago! If you can’t let go of the past, then I don’t think you’re making all that much progress. And you can tell your therapist that.” She’s waving frantically at the waiter to give her the check, even though our dinner is only half eaten. “Just go…” she hisses, not looking at me any more, fumbling for her purse. “Just leave.

She could’ve been hurt,” I clip, ignoring him. I’m ready to storm back downstairs and beat the shit out of a dead man. Torture him in the worst imaginable ways, despite him not being able to feel a damn thing. Fuck. So badly, I want to tear through whatever veil separates the dead from the living, reach in, snatch his soul back out, and make him wish he never had one. Every muscle in my body is locked tight and brimming with tension. “We’re going to find her.

The Chinese ideograph for forbearance is a heart with a sword dangling over it, another instance of language's brilliant way of showing us something surprising and important fossilized inside the meaning of a word. Vulnerability is built into our hearts, which can be sliced open at any moment by some sudden shift in the arrangements, some pain, some horror, some hurt. We all know and instinctively fear this, so we protect our hearts by covering them against exposure. But this doesn't work. Covering the heart binds and suffocates it until, like a wound that has been kept dressed for too long, the heart starts to fester and becomes fetid. Eventually, without air, the heart is all but killed off, and there's no feeling, no experiencing at all. To practice forbearance is to appreciate and celebrate the heart's vulnerability, and to see that the slicing or piercing of the heart does not require defense; that the heart's vulnerability is a good thing, because wounds can make us more peaceful and more real—if, that is, we are willing to hang on to the leopard of our fear, the serpent of our grief, the boar of our shame without running away or being hurled off. Forbearance is simply holding on steadfastly with whatever it is that unexpectedly arises: not doing anything; not fixing anything (because doing and fixing can be a way to cover up the heart, to leap over the hurt and pain by occupying ourselves with schemes and plans to get rid of it.) Just holding on for hear life. Holding on with what comes is what makes life dear. ...Simply holding on this way may sound passive. Forbearance has a bad reputation in our culture, whose conventional wisdom tells us that we ought to solve problems, fix what's broken, grab what we want, speak out, shake things up, make things happen. And should none of this work out, then we are told we ought to move on, take a new tack, start something else. But this line of thinking only makes sense when we are attempting to gain external satisfaction. It doesn't take into account internal well-being; nor does it engage the deeper questions of who you really are and what makes you truly happy, questions that no one can ignore for long... Insofar as forbearance helps us to embrace transformative energy and allow its magic to work on us... forbearance isn't passive at all. It's a powerfully active spiritual force, (67-70).

AUTHOR’S NOTE Dear reader: This story was inspired by an event that happened when I was eight years old. At the time, I was living in upstate New York. It was winter, and my dad and his best friend, “Uncle Bob,” decided to take my older brother, me, and Uncle Bob’s two boys for a hike in the Adirondacks. When we left that morning, the weather was crisp and clear, but somewhere near the top of the trail, the temperature dropped abruptly, the sky opened, and we found ourselves caught in a torrential, freezing blizzard. My dad and Uncle Bob were worried we wouldn’t make it down. We weren’t dressed for that kind of cold, and we were hours from the base. Using a rock, Uncle Bob broke the window of an abandoned hunting cabin to get us out of the storm. My dad volunteered to run down for help, leaving my brother Jeff and me to wait with Uncle Bob and his boys. My recollection of the hours we spent waiting for help to arrive is somewhat vague except for my visceral memory of the cold: my body shivering uncontrollably and my mind unable to think straight. The four of us kids sat on a wooden bench that stretched the length of the small cabin, and Uncle Bob knelt on the floor in front of us. I remember his boys being scared and crying and Uncle Bob talking a lot, telling them it was going to be okay and that “Uncle Jerry” would be back soon. As he soothed their fear, he moved back and forth between them, removing their gloves and boots and rubbing each of their hands and feet in turn. Jeff and I sat beside them, silent. I took my cue from my brother. He didn’t complain, so neither did I. Perhaps this is why Uncle Bob never thought to rub our fingers and toes. Perhaps he didn’t realize we, too, were suffering. It’s a generous view, one that as an adult with children of my own I have a hard time accepting. Had the situation been reversed, my dad never would have ignored Uncle Bob’s sons. He might even have tended to them more than he did his own kids, knowing how scared they would have been being there without their parents. Near dusk, a rescue jeep arrived, and we were shuttled down the mountain to waiting paramedics. Uncle Bob’s boys were fine—cold and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. I was diagnosed with frostnip on my fingers, which it turned out was not so bad. It hurt as my hands were warmed back to life, but as soon as the circulation was restored, I was fine. Jeff, on the other hand, had first-degree frostbite. His gloves needed to be cut from his fingers, and the skin beneath was chafed, white, and blistered. It was horrible to see, and I remember thinking how much it must have hurt, the damage so much worse than my own. No one, including my parents, ever asked Jeff or me what happened in the cabin or questioned why we were injured and Uncle Bob’s boys were not, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen continued to be my parents’ best friends. This past winter, I went skiing with my two children, and as we rode the chairlift, my memory of that day returned. I was struck by how callous and uncaring Uncle Bob, a man I’d known my whole life and who I believed loved us, had been and also how unashamed he was after. I remember him laughing with the sheriff, like the whole thing was this great big adventure that had fortunately turned out okay. I think he even viewed himself as sort of a hero, boasting about how he’d broken the window and about his smart thinking to lead us to the cabin in the first place. When he got home, he probably told Karen about rubbing their sons’ hands and feet and about how he’d consoled them and never let them get scared. I looked at my own children beside me, and a shudder ran down my spine as I thought about all the times I had entrusted them to other people in the same way my dad had entrusted us to Uncle Bob, counting on the same naive presumption that a tacit agreement existed for my children to be cared for equally to their own.

From here on,” Kanin said, “you will have to decide what kind of demon you will be. Not all meals will come to you so easily, ignorant and seeking to do you harm. What will you do if your prey invites you inside, offers you a place at the table? What will you do if they f lee, or cower down, begging you not to hurt them? How you stalk your prey is something you must come to terms with, or you will quickly drive yourself mad. And once you cross that threshold, there is no coming back from it.

That person is beautiful; who tries to bring out the best in others. If you don't let others be pushed to the side, it’s beautiful. If you see someone lagging behind, walking beside them is a beautiful thing. If someone is being ignored, taking the step to include them is beautiful. People who always remind others of their worth are the beautiful souls. Knowing that, it hurts when it feels like you're being forgotten and not letting the same to happen for someone is one of the beautiful thing.

And can there be anything better for the interests of the State than that the men and women of a State should be as good as possible? There can be nothing better. And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such manner as we have described, will accomplish? Certainly. Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest degree beneficial to the State? True. Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of their country; only in the distribution of labours the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking 'A fruit of unripe wisdom,' and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is about;—for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings, That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base. Very

We continue to see happiness and positivity used as weapons within communities of color and among immigrants. Responses like "Can't we all just love each other?" and "We're all just one human race" are typically used to silence and discontinue conversations about racism in favor of more "happiness" and cohesion. The problem is, we're only prioritizing one group's happiness and comfort while ignoring and silencing the other. We're effectively saying, "Sorry you're hurt, but your negativity and response to racism is really bumming me out, so could you stop?

Insofar as violence is immoral, the Rights Revolutions show that a moral way of life often requires a decisive rejection of instinct, culture, religion, and standard practice. In their place is an ethics that is inspired by empathy and reason and stated in the language of rights. We force ourselves into the shoes (or paws) of other sentient beings and consider their interests, starting with their interest in not being hurt or killed, and we ignore superficialities that may catch our eye such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and to some extent, species.

When you were born, you could have been anybody. So quick and malleable, your parents could look at your face and see a future president. They tried to mold you as you grew, but they could only work with what they had. And when their tools stopped working, they gradually handed them off to you, asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” There’s a certain art to becoming who you are. There’s no standard kit you can use to assemble yourself, swapping out parts as needed. Instead, it feels more like a kind of stretching, a teasing out at the edges, like a glassblower standing at the furnace. A teenage personality is a delicate medium, its emotions almost too heavy to handle. You had to figure out a way to keep yourself together and tease out the good parts without falling out of balance or stretching yourself too thin. You couldn’t stop everything to try to fix your flaws, but you couldn’t just ignore them either. Luckily, you were nothing if not flexible, softened by the heat of youth, which kept you warm on a dingy couch or a night in the wilderness. You knew that you weren’t just you, you were also the person you would one day become. So even when you failed, you could still be whatever you wanted to be. As long as you kept moving. Inevitably you got hit, and you got hurt. You prided yourself on how well you absorbed the blow, bouncing back as if nothing had happened. But the pain changed you, in little chips and cracks that might take you years to notice. Over time you learned how to position yourself in very specific ways, protecting the most vulnerable parts of your psyche, even as you knew they were still a crucial part of the real you. Gradually you became more and more reluctant to move from that position. Growing a little harder, a little more brittle.

So why would anyone seek to harm these good people? Why would someone take the lives of his fellow human beings with such senseless cruelty? Because hurt people hurt people. Because when suffering isn’t treated with compassion, it seethes and spreads. Because when fear isn’t met with courage, it deceives and disconnects humans from humanity. When ignorance isn’t countered with wisdom, it festers and takes root in the hearts of the fearful. When hatred isn’t cradled with kindness, it can corrupt the beauty of existence to the extreme that causing suffering is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

You can have that life,” he told her. “It’s right there for you to take.” “I love you,” Eve quickly countered. “Loving me hurts you, doesn’t it?” Beckett asked, looking down. “No, you don’t have to tell me. I know. I can smell it. I can smell the pain coming off of you,” he said, looking at the floor. “You had love before and a future. What does loving me get you, Eve? What does it get you?” He stood, angry with himself. “I don’t need to get anything from you. It’s the way it is. There’s no changing that.” She gripped the porch railing. Beckett stepped close to Eve and tenderly tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “You’re saying goodbye,” she said, her eyes full of questions. “Do you know there are other little girls out there like that one? I lived with a few of them. They would sell their souls for a mother like you.” At the word mother Eve’s chin crumpled. She tried to hold back the tears, but they wouldn’t obey. “See that? It’s what you need. You need that—a little kid calling you Mom.” Beckett put his arms around her as she shattered. The pain she kept hidden surfaced from where it had been smoldering. When he felt her knees weaken, he hugged her harder. “That’s right. It’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, baby. You want normal.” He guided her to the chair he’d vacated. “There’s a guy out there who’ll hold your hand. There’s a little girl out there. She’s waiting for you. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.” He knelt in front of her and rubbed her arms. She slapped at his hands, letting outrage carry her words. “I don’t want another man. I want you. I’ve killed for you. I’ve protected you. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Do you honestly think these hands that kill can hold a child?” She held her fingers in front of her face. “Yes. Absolutely. Don’t you know, gorgeous? Mothers are some of the most vicious killers out there, if their kids are threatened. You just have more practice.” He took her hands and kissed them. “I’ve lost too much. I can’t lose you. Don’t make me. Please. I’ll beg you if I have to.” She watched his lips on her palms. He shook his head and used her own words against her. “The hardest part of loving someone is not being with them when you want to be.” He stood, and she mirrored his motion,already shaking her head. “Don’t say it.” Beckett ignored her; he knew what he had to do. He had to set beautiful Eve free to find that soft, touchable woman he’d seen her become with the little girl.

To lovers out there … No man is an island. We all need someone In our lives no matter how rich we are, how educated , well-spoken, or how capable we are .The reason why most people are alone and suffering the way they are suffering . It is because they’re judgmental towards other people. They judge people without knowing them first. By doing so they choose to ignore good people who have good intentions, good heart and who care about them, because of their own selfish ego and standards. By the time they are desperate and are looking for someone they end opening up for wrong people in their lives and end up being hurt or murdered.

I looked up, my eyes pouring with tears of pain and understanding. I had to look away. I let my other hand slip from the rock and hang loose. “Don’t, Violet!” Lincoln’s voice was strong and unwavering. It caught me by surprise. “Don’t. You. Dare. Look at me!” It wasn’t compulsion, but I still couldn’t stop myself. I had to see him one last time. I opened my mouth to tell him good-bye, but he didn’t let me speak. “If you let go, I’m jumping in there after you!” My hand slipped in his hold and I did little to stop it, but he clung on. “It’s better this way, Linc! You can fight him without me and then you’ll be free!” He looked at me like I was mad until his jaw set with determination. “You smell of winter dew at the first crack of dawn and when you use your power, it feels like being submerged in the most intoxicating vanilla cream that I lose myself in it every time and…and you were beautiful,” he blurted out, catching us both by surprise. But he went on, ignoring the fact my hand was still slipping. “So stunning in that dress the other night, I could hardly look at you it hurt so much. You are the thing I dread the most in myself, Violet, because…I love you so much that I can’t trust myself. I’d die for you, give up all my power for you. I’d give you my soul in an instant, even if it meant I had to spend eternity in torment—just for one moment with you as mine. Wanting you consumes me. I dread you because I know the risk, but I’m so selfish, I want you anyway. I’d take you even though it could kill you.” I cried out again, the pain now so much worse, inside and out. My hand continued to slip as I looked into his eyes, intense with want, and I knew he was telling the truth. He would jump in after me. I forced my loose arm up and he grabbed it, leaning farther into the opening. He lifted me out and as he did, the severity of my burns became apparent. I couldn’t hold back the screams and he placed me belly down on the ground.

There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. Having the ability to acknowledge and fix your wrong builds trust. It’s much easier for us to think of ourselves as the victim than it is for us to consider that we’ve been a villain. Think about all the people who have done something wrong to you. Now consider how much peace you would have if they sincerely realized the impact of their decisions, apologized, and attempted to fix it. There are some people you could never imagine coming back to do that. I’m sorry they hurt you. I wish they realized the impact their decisions had on your heart and soul. The greatest gift you can give your future is not to let that spirit of ignoring the pain you’ve caused live on through you.

Some may say asexual people don’t have problems (or the right problems, or enough problems), and therefore they should just go ally with heterosexual people, but this ignores the fact that heteronormative attitudes influence the heterosexual world to also exclude asexual people. If “not LGB” is understood to mean “heterosexual” in queer spaces, those who say so are processing heterosexual as the default, which is an attitude that also hurts them. Even aromantic asexual people, who are less likely to be assumed heterosexual because they are unlikely to have romantic partners, are sometimes told “you don’t belong here because you’re just straight.” Perceived blank spaces being interpreted as heterosexual by default is a heteronormative assumption.

There are days when I would love to pull the cover over my head and say to hell with it. “But I don’t do that. And most people don’t do that. Most people get up and do their jobs and work their asses off for no reward at all—but just so they can get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. The world isn’t perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn’t apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it’s about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn’t perfection. The point is doing it anyway.

Speaking of… I gotta go. I need to be at the field.” His voice rumbled through his chest and against my ear as he spoke. I sighed and stepped out of his arms. I was sad that our couple days together were over and I would be here tonight without him. Classes started tomorrow, and I knew we were going to see a lot less of each other now that the semester was starting. “I’ll walk you out,” I said and followed him to the door. Ivy was still digging through my clothes and called out a good-bye. “Just stay inside,” he said, palming the handle. “It’s cold and slippery out there. You’ll be safer in here.” I grimaced. “You’re probably right.” He grinned. “I’ll call you later, ‘kay?” I nodded. He released the door handle and closed the distance between us with one step. The toes of his shoes bumped against my boots and the front of his jacket brushed against me. My stomach fluttered and my heart rate doubled. The effect he had on me was nothing short of amazing. I tipped my head back so I could look up into his eyes, and the corner of his mouth lifted. He looked at me with so much affection in his gaze that emotion caught in my throat. He didn’t have to say anything because I heard everything just by looking in his eyes. My fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and tangled in the cotton fabric, and at the same time I stretched up, he bent down. The feel of his lips against me was my favorite sensation. Nothing compared to the way his mouth owned mine. His tongue stretched out, sweeping through my mouth with gentle pressure, and I sighed into him and sagged forward. A low laugh vibrated his chest and he pulled back. “Be careful walking to class tomorrow, huh? Don’t fall and hurt yourself.” I nodded, barely comprehending his words. He slipped out the door before reality came flooding back. I rushed forward, caught the closing door, and called out his name. He stopped and turned. The lopsided, knowing smile on his face was smug. “Good luck at practice,” I called, ignoring the few girls who stopped to watch us. “Thanks, baby.” I swear every girl within earshot sighed. I couldn’t even blame them. I shut the door and leaned against it. Ivy put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “I’m gonna need a mega supply of barf bags to put up with you two this semester.” I smiled.

Yeah, Jules!" Chelsea said in a voice thick with envy. "Go away, you're making the rest of us look bad." She winked at Jule's date wickedly. "I bet you just want to eat her up, don't ya?" He stared at Chelsea with bewilderment and glanced back at Jules for help. "Just ignore her," Jules explained over the noise from the sound system. "She doesn't get out much." Chelsea tried to look hurt by Jule's words, but she couldn't quite pull it off. "I'm just sayin', Jules, he'd better watch his back tonight, or I might be trying to take you away from him." Chelsea loved to play the potentially bi-curious card, even though everyone knew she liked boys far too much to go to bat for the other team. "Gross!" cried Claire, who wasn't pretending at all. Claire hated it when the conversation deviated too far off her straight and narrow path. The operative word being straight. "Don't worry, Claire-bear," Chelsea soothed condescendingly. "I'm not going to hook up with Jules." She wrapped her arm around Claire's waist and then said suggestively in he ear, "I'm much more likely to make a move on you." "Eww!" Claire shrieked, shoving Chelsea away. "Get away from me!" "Leave her alone, Chels," Jules interrupted. "Or you're gonna make her start her 'It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' speech. And sorry, Claire, but none of us really want to hear that." Jay pulled Violet close to him as they listened to the familiar, playful bantering. He slid his arm around her waist from behind, and let his lips gently tease her earlobe while no one was paying attention to the two of them. Violet wanted to turn around right there, in his arms, and forget this whole dance thing altogether. "Hey!" Chelsea's voice interrupted them, and Violet jumped a little, realizing that everyone was staring at them. "Did you hear me?" Violet leaned forward on her crutches and away from Jay, still feeling bemused by the close and intimate contact. "What?" she asked, trying to focus on what had been said. "I said, 'I gotta pee.' Let's go to the bathroom," Chelsea repeated as if Violet were some sort of imbecile, incapable of understanding normal human speech. "Keep it up, Chels, and none of us is gonna want to hook up with you tonight," Violet promised jokingly. Chelsea grinned at Violet. "I like the way you think, Violet Ambrose. Maybe you'll be the lucky girl I choose.' And then she turned to Jay. "Don't worry, I've got her from here," Chelsea announced. Jules and Claire followed. Violet laughed and glanced back at him. "I'll only be a few." Jay gave her a skeptical look that no one else would have even noticed, as he assessed the three girls who would be escorting Violet. And then he finally nodded. "Okay, I'm gonna show these guys my car." He was beaming again. "I'll be right outside, but I won't be long." Violet did her best to keep up with the trio ahead of her, but it was hard on one high heel and two crutches. Finally she yelled at them exasperatedly, "If you guys don't wait, I'm not going!" They all three stopped and turned around. Chelsea tapped her lovely silver shoe impatiently. "Hurry up, Violet, or I swear I'll take you off my list.

When people talk about destiny, they tend to forget that it isn’t deprived from free will, free will to both accept it or destroy it. If you were meant to find love and then hurt the person that loves you back, you’ve just exercised your free will against destiny, and that destiny, that brought that person to you, will now use the exact same force to pull such person away from you. You cannot violate the spiritual laws of the universe. You will always pay a heavy price for being ignorant about this fact. You have the free will to do whatever you wish in the paradise of life, but only as long as you don’t violate the sacred rules, when eating the fruit of selfishness, the tree of good and evil. That need to explore discernment will cost you your happiness, and expel you from the paradise destined to you.

The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking. Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed their bewilderment at having developed cancer. “I have always been a positive thinker,” one man in his late forties told me. “I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts. Why should I get cancer?” As an antidote to terminal optimism, I have recommended the power of negative thinking. “Tongue in cheek, of course,” I quickly add. “What I really believe in is the power of thinking.” As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as “negative.” That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate. Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality. It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be. As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of the hurt child. The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defence of the child into a life principle. The onset of symptoms or the diagnosis of a disease should prompt a two-pronged inquiry: what is this illness saying about the past and present, and what will help in the future? Many approaches focus only on the second half of that healing dyad without considering fully what led to the manifestation of illness in the first place. Such “positive” methods fill the bookshelves and the airwaves. In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden. Even more fundamentally, not posing those questions is itself a source of stress. First, “positive thinking” is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality. Allowing this fear to dominate engenders a state of childhood apprehension. Whether or not the apprehension is conscious, it is a state of stress. Second, lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the major sources of stress and one of the potent activators of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response. Third, stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases. One cannot be autonomous as long as one is driven by relationship dynamics, by guilt or attachment needs, by hunger for success, by the fear of the boss or by the fear of boredom. The reason is simple: autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. Like a leaf blown by the wind, the driven person is controlled by forces more powerful than he is. His autonomous will is not engaged, even if he believes that he has “chosen” his stressed lifestyle and even if he enjoys his activities. The choices he makes are attached to invisible strings. He is still unable to say no, even if it is only to his own drivenness. When he finally wakes up, he shakes his head, Pinocchio-like, and says, “How foolish I was when I was a puppet.

How can it be, we asked ourselves again and again, that they're all so cruel to him? How can this enormous conspiracy exist where everyone has agreed ahead of time that it is completely alright to be hurtful to these harmless people who hurt no one? The situation in some ways tinges everything with the sadness of these inevitable encounters. People's ignorance was so sharp then, it is still sharp now, and many of them cannot perform so much as a basic interaction without saying something base and awful or laughing or outright turning away. It is true though that there is another side which is it made it easier to find the people who are worthwhile as they were and are in no way troubled by him and entered into an immediate camaraderie. Such a person is difficult to guess at. I would not always have known them from their appearance. For people with innate gentleness and sensitivity are often compelled to hide or disguise it.

Swallowing your pride and facing, again and again, the harm you have caused through carelessness, through ignorance, through problematic beliefs, through acting from places of pain and trauma and brokenness, through thinking it’ll be OK, through thinking nobody will find out, through desperation, through opportunism, through all the reasons that cause us to harm one another. Even if we didn’t mean to. Even if we didn’t know better. Even if we were being lazy, or careless, or afraid, even if we were acting out because we have all this hurt inside, or even if we don’t know why we did it. Whatever our intentions. Doing the work to cross that bridge and see, for real, the impact that we had, what it means, and what we need to learn or do, how we need to change and grow, what we need to offer of ourselves, how we can repair, what can be different. It can be different. We know that it can. You know that it can. But the only way out is through.

He had never asked anything from them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him- and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. he wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner- if his response was what they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those constant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference? Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt? He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost ... almost as if they wounded by the mere fact of his being.

In many cases, their sole purpose in life was focused on winning the love of people who appeared to hurt them endlessly. From my perspective, my patients were being rejected by parents or new relational partners who, compared with them, were blatantly manipulative and intellectually inferior. Despite this, these individuals seemed to have an almost magical grip over my patients. The most common and most frustrating clinical event that I saw in my practice (and one largely ignored in the psychoanalytic literature) was the borderline patient’s hope-filled, frantic return to the rejecting object, despite having been rejected dozens of times previously. It appeared that emotional fixation and the resulting primitive dependency on frustrating and rejecting object(s) was the very core of many characterological disorders. Many of my patients’ self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors were secondary consequences to intolerable frustration from long-term unmet dependency needs that were exclusively focused on the parental object(s) who failed the patients in their childhood.

Maybe I've put too much high hopes and expectations on you, or started holding you to an unreachable standard." "That isn't fair," he says, his own breath coming quicker. He's starting to look less confused and more straight-up angry. Join the club, bud. "I probably should have told you before Geoffrey and Aiden, but I was excited, and you've been ignoring all my attempts to talk since UltiCon. And I really didn't think you would take the news this way. I thought it was a good thing and truthfully? I think you're overreacting." The little porcupine quills that I imagine live just beneath my skin, primed to shoot up and protect me at a moment's notice, are at the ready now. Except they feel more like Wolverine claws in this case, and Norberto Beneventi's about to feel their wrath. "Overreacting, huh? Love to hear that. Sorry I'm not over the moon, shooting rainbows out my eyeballs because I'm so delighted for you. Sorry I'm not a selfless little woman whose only goal in life is to see her man shine, that I have real feelings and ambitions for myself." "Reese, for the love of---" he shouts, throwing his hands up in the air and walking in a tight circle before returning to stand in front of me. He adjusts his cap with a long-suffering sigh. "You know what? I think you've been waiting for this. I think you figured out that there was more to say after our last conversation, and you know this is not that big of a deal, but you've been scared for so long, and angry, and the world's been unfair to you. And I bet whether you realize it or not, you've been waiting for the first excuse to get rid of me for good. You're used to being alone and it's easier than letting another person in, so all you needed was the smallest hint that something may not be perfect and boom---no more Benny. Am I right?" I scoff, moving to pass him for real this time and not stopping when his hand brushes my shoulder. "You just know me so well, don't you? Please, tell me more about how I'm feeling, why I do the things I do. But you'll have to send it in another message, because I don't have to stay here and listen to it." I hoist my bag farther onto my shoulder and stomp away from him, my own fury nearly blocking out his parting words. "Go on, then. Maybe you can move back across the country. See if running from your problems works the second time around.

I landed on my side, my hip taking the brunt of the fall. It burned and stung from the hit, but I ignored it and struggled to sit up quickly. There really was no point in hurrying so no one would see. Everyone already saw A pair of jean-clad legs appeared before me, and my suitcase and all my other stuff was dropped nearby. "Whatcha doing down there?" Romeo drawled, his hands on his hips as he stared down at me with dancing blue eyes. "Making a snow angel," I quipped. I glanced down at my hands, which were covered with wet snow and bits of salt (to keep the pavement from getting icy). Clearly, ice wasn't required for me to fall. A small group of girls just "happened by", and by that I mean they'd been staring at Romeo with puppy dog eyes and giving me the stink eye. When I fell, they took it as an opportunity to descend like buzzards stalking the dead. Their leader was the girl who approached me the very first day I'd worn Romeo's hoodie around campus and told me he'd get bored. As they stalked closer, looking like clones from the movie Mean Girls, I caught the calculating look in her eyes. This wasn't going to be good. I pushed up off the ground so I wouldn't feel so vulnerable, but the new snow was slick and my hand slid right out from under me and I fell back again. Romeo was there immediately, the teasing light in his eyes gone as he slid his hand around my back and started to pull me up. "Careful, babe." he said gently. The girls were behind him so I knew he hadn't seen them approach. They stopped as one unit, and I braced myself for whatever their leader was about to say. She was wearing painted-on skinny jeans (I mean, really, how did she sit down and still breathe?) and some designer coat with a monogrammed scarf draped fashionably around her neck. Her boots were high-heeled, made of suede and laced up the back with contrasting ribbon. "Wow," she said, opening her perfectly painted pink lips. "I saw that from way over there. That sure looked like it hurt." She said it fairly amicably, but anyone who could see the twist to her mouth as she said it would know better. Romeo paused in lifting me to my feet. I felt his eyes on me. Then his lips thinned as he turned and looked over his shoulder. "Ladies," he said like he was greeting a group of welcomed friends. Annoyance prickled my stomach like tiny needles stabbing me. It's not that I wanted him to be rude, but did he have to sound so welcoming? "Romeo," Cruella DeBarbie (I don't know her real name, but this one fit) purred. "Haven't you grown bored of this clumsy mule yet?" Unable to stop myself, I gasped and jumped up to my feet. If she wanted to call me a mule, I'd show her just how much of an ass I could be. Romeo brought his arm out and stopped me from marching past. I collided into him, and if his fingers hadn't knowingly grabbed hold to steady me, I'd have fallen again. "Actually," Romeo said, his voice calm, "I am pretty bored." Three smirks were sent my way. What a bunch of idiots. "The view from where I'm standing sure leaves a lot to be desired." One by one, their eyes rounded when they realized the view he referenced was them. Without another word, he pivoted around and looked down at me, his gaze going soft. "No need to make snow angels, baby," he said loud enough for the slack-jawed buzzards to hear. "You already look like one standing here with all that snow in your hair." Before I could say a word, he picked me up and fastened his mouth to mine. My legs wound around his waist without thought, and I kissed him back as gentle snow fell against our faces.

These other voices make me constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn’t pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else’s success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God’s favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father’s home and choose to dwell in a “distant country.” Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.

According to Finnish psychologist Kaj Björkqvist, by the time a girl is eight years old she is unlikely to express frustration and anger toward others physically. Girls are, on the other hand, as verbally aggressive as boys. Instead of hitting or shoving, girls will use verbal, nonverbal, and socially manipulative skills to hurt others—mainly other girls. Girls will insult and denigrate each other; they will also hold grudges for a very long time. Björkqvist and others have shown that girls are “significantly more likely than boys to become friendly with someone else as revenge”; and that girls will gossip and suggest the “shunning” of another girl. According to Björkqvist, indirect aggression is a type of “hostile behavior [that] is carried out in order to harm the opponent, while avoiding being identified as aggressive.” Björkqvist and others developed a scale, known as the Direct and Indirect Aggression Scale, which measures physical aggression (hitting, kicking, tripping, shoving, pushing, pulling), and verbal aggression (yelling, insulting, teasing, threatening to hurt the other, calling the other names), on the one hand, and on the other hand, indirect aggression (shutting the other out of the group, becoming friends with another as revenge, ignoring, gossiping, telling bad stories, planning secretly to bother the other, saying bad things behind the back, saying to others: “let’s not be with him/her,” telling the other’s secrets to a third person, writing notes in which the other is criticized, criticizing the other’s hair or clothing, trying to get others to dislike the person).

And then, oh God, she realized the Sussex Waltz was beginning which reminded her that... She turned. The other man she'd been unable to refuse earlier was standing before her. He stretched out a hand. She could not for the life of her understand what the Duke of Falconbridge wanted from her. She ascribed his presence and his attention to the week's general theme, which was "torture." He'd perhaps come to Sussex to shop for a wife, since he'd recently shed himself of the candidate he'd selected. It wouldn't be her. 'Regardless' of how determined he might be. And the man personified determination. Regardless of the glimmer of temptation she'd felt to... well, allow herself to be charmed. To surrender to the sheer force of him. The notion that she'd ever thought she could entirely ignore someone of his reputation on her walk today she ascribed to naïveté and heartbreak. He'd skillfully found her unprotected flank again and again. He'd even made her smile when she'd thought to never do it again. And yet she recalled his eyes when she'd said the name "Abigail." She'd panicked; she'd played her trump. And she'd hurt him. This was the impression that lingered. It was as though everything else he'd said and done up until then had been steps in a dance, and he'd only dropped his mask when she tripped him. So he was a clever man, a watchful man, a powerful man, but a man with unexpectedly human vulnerabilities. She wasn't certain she cared. She still didn't think he was a 'nice' man. She took his hand. She was immediately overwhelmingly conscious of its size; it enveloped hers with almost absurd masculine strength.

There was a tap at the door, and it opened. His lips parted to snarl at the visitor. "May I come in?" he heard a girl ask softly. The curse died on Kev's lips. His senses were overwhelmed. He closed his eyes, breathing, waiting. It's you. You're here. At last. "You've been alone for so long," she said, approaching him, "I thought you might want some company. I'm Winnifred." Kev drew in the scent and sound of her, his heart pounding. Carefully he eased to his back, ignoring the pain that shot through him. He opened his eyes. He had never thought any gadji could compare to Romany girls. But this one was remarkable, an otherworldly creature as pale as moonlight, her hair silver-blond, her features formed with tender gravity. She looked warm and innocent and very soft. Everything he wasn't. His entire being responded so acutely to her that he reached out and seized her with a quiet grunt. She gasped a little but held still. Kev knew it wasn't right to touch her. He didn't know how to be gentle. He would hurt her without even trying. And yet she relaxed in his hold, and stared at him with those steady blue eyes. Why wasn't she frightened of him? He was actually frightened for her, because he knew what he was capable of. He hadn't been aware of pulling her closer. All he knew was that now part of her weight was resting on him as he lay on the bed, and his fingertips had curled into the pliant flesh of her upper arms. "Let go," she told him gently. He didn't want to. Ever. He wanted to keep her against him, and pull her braided hair down and comb his fingers through the pale silk. He wanted to carry her off to the ends of the earth. "If I do," he said gruffly, "will you stay?" The delicate lips curved. Sweet, delicious smile. "Silly boy. Of course I'll stay. I've come to visit you.

You need to forgive me. Now that really blew her away. Forgive God? This idea is going to cause some readers to freak out. Just listen for a moment. If you are holding something in your heart against Jesus—the loss of someone you love, a painful memory from your past, simply the way your life has turned out—if you are holding that against Jesus, well, then, it is between you and Jesus. And no amount of ignoring it or being faithful in other areas of your life is going to make it go away. In order to move forward, you are going to need to forgive Jesus for whatever these things are. “But Jesus doesn’t need our forgiveness!” you protest. I didn’t say he did. I said that you need to forgive Jesus—you need it. Let me be clear: To forgive a person, we pardon a wrong done to us; “Forgiving” Jesus means to release the hurt and resentment we hold against him. This comes before understanding. We don’t often know why things have happened the way they have in our lives. What we do know is that we were hurt, and part of that hurt is toward Jesus, because in our hearts we believe he let it happen. Again, this is not the time for sifting theological nuances, but this is why it is so important for you to look at the world the way Jesus did—as a vicious battle with evil. When you understand you have an enemy that has hated your guts ever since you were a child, it will help you not to blame this stuff on God. Anyhow, the facts are it happened, we are hurt that it happened, and part of us believes Jesus should have done something about it and didn’t. That is why we need to “forgive” him. We do so in order that this part of us can draw near him again, and receive his love. Perhaps part of the fruit of that restoration will be that Jesus will then be able to explain to us why things happened the way they did. This is often the case. But whether we receive this or not, we know we need Jesus far more than we need understanding. And so we forgive—meaning, we release the offense we feel towards him.

These are things to have under your belt in order to make and strengthen boundaries: Educate them. To be blunt, narcissists aren’t exactly in tune with their interpersonal or communication skills. Try using incentives or other motivators to get them to pay attention to how their behavior affects others. They may not empathize or seem to get what you’re saying, but at least you can say you tried to look at it from your point of view. Understand your personal rights. In order to demand being treated fairly and with respect, it’s important to know what your rights are. You’re allowed to say no, you have a right to your feelings, you are allowed privacy—and there are no wedding or relationship vows that say you are at the beck and call of your partner. When a person has been abused for a long time, they may lack the confidence or self-esteem to take a stand on their rights. The more power they take back, though, the less the abuser has. Be assertive. This is something that depends on confidence, and will take practice, but it’s worth it. Being assertive means standing up for yourself and exuding pride in who you are. Put your strategies into play. After the information you’ve absorbed so far, you have an advantage in that you are aware of your wants, what the narcissist demands, what you are able to do and those secret tiny areas you may have power over. Tap into these areas to put together your own strategies. Re-set your boundaries. A boundary is an unseen line in the sand. It determines the point you won’t allow others to cross over or they’ll hurt you. These are non-negotiable and others must be aware of them and respect them. But you have to know what those lines are before making them clear to others. Have consequences. As an extension of the above point, if a person tries ignoring your boundaries, make sure you give a consequence. There doesn't need to be a threat, but more saying, “If you ________, we can’t hang out/date/talk/etc.” You’re just saying that crossing the boundary hurts you so if they choose to disregard it, you choose not to accept that treatment. The narcissist will not tolerate you standing up for yourself, but it’s still important. The act of advocating for yourself will increase your self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. Then you’ll be ready to recover and heal.

ever. Amen. Thank God for self-help books. No wonder the business is booming. It reminds me of junior high school, where everybody was afraid of the really cool kids because they knew the latest, most potent putdowns, and were not afraid to use them. Dah! But there must be another reason that one of the best-selling books in the history of the world is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray. Could it be that our culture is oh so eager for a quick fix? What a relief it must be for some people to think “Oh, that’s why we fight like cats and dogs, it is because he’s from Mars and I am from Venus. I thought it was just because we’re messed up in the head.” Can you imagine Calvin Consumer’s excitement and relief to get the video on “The Secret to her Sexual Satisfaction” with Dr. GraySpot, a picture chart, a big pointer, and an X marking the spot. Could that “G” be for “giggle” rather than Dr. “Graffenberg?” Perhaps we are always looking for the secret, the gold mine, the G-spot because we are afraid of the real G-word: Growth—and the energy it requires of us. I am worried that just becoming more educated or well-read is chopping at the leaves of ignorance but is not cutting at the roots. Take my own example: I used to be a lowly busboy at 12 East Restaurant in Florida. One Christmas Eve the manager fired me for eating on the job. As I slunk away I muttered under my breath, “Scrooge!” Years later, after obtaining a Masters Degree in Psychology and getting a California license to practice psychotherapy, I was fired by the clinical director of a psychiatric institute for being unorthodox. This time I knew just what to say. This time I was much more assertive and articulate. As I left I told the director “You obviously have a narcissistic pseudo-neurotic paranoia of anything that does not fit your myopic Procrustean paradigm.” Thank God for higher education. No wonder colleges are packed. What if there was a language designed not to put down or control each other, but nurture and release each other to grow? What if you could develop a consciousness of expressing your feelings and needs fully and completely without having any intention of blaming, attacking, intimidating, begging, punishing, coercing or disrespecting the other person? What if there was a language that kept us focused in the present, and prevented us from speaking like moralistic mini-gods? There is: The name of one such language is Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication provides a wealth of simple principles and effective techniques to maintain a laser focus on the human heart and innocent child within the other person, even when they have lost contact with that part of themselves. You know how it is when you are hurt or scared: suddenly you become cold and critical, or aloof and analytical. Would it not be wonderful if someone could see through the mask, and warmly meet your need for understanding or reassurance? What I am presenting are some tools for staying locked onto the other person’s humanness, even when they have become an alien monster. Remember that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was turned into a Klingon, and Bones was freaking out? (I felt sorry for Bones because I’ve had friends turn into Cling-ons too.) But then Spock, in his cool, Vulcan way, performed a mind meld to determine that James T. Kirk was trapped inside the alien form. And finally Scotty was able to put some dilithium crystals into his phaser and destroy the alien cloaking device, freeing the captain from his Klingon form. Oh, how I wish that, in my youth or childhood,

You’re all I want, Jane.” As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfasten his own trouser buttons. “The only woman I ever cared about.” “You’re the only man Iever cared about.” She undulated against his fingers, begging for him with her body. “Why do you think…I waited for you so long?” “Not long enough, apparently,” he muttered, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself engaged to Blakeborough.” He tugged at her nipple with his teeth, then relished her cry of pleasure. “I only…did it because I was…tired of waiting.” She arched against his mouth. “Because you clearly weren’t…coming back for me.” “I was sure you hated me.” At last he got his trousers open. “You acted like you hated me still.” “I did.” Her breath was unsteady. “But only because…you tore us apart.” He shifted her to sit astride him. “And now?” Flashing him a provocative smile he would never have dreamed she had in her repertoire, she unbuttoned his drawers. “Do I look like I hate you?” His cock, so hard he thought it might erupt right there and embarrass him, sprang free. “You look like…like…” He paused to take in her lovely face with its flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and lush lips. Then he swept his gaze down to her breasts with their brazen tips, displayed so enticingly above the boned corset and her undone shift. He then dropped his eyes to the smooth thighs emerging from beneath her bunched-up skirts. Shoving the fabric higher, he exposed her dewy thatch of curls, and a shudder of anticipation shook him. “You look like an angel.” She uttered a breathy laugh. “A wanton, more like.” Taking his cock in her hand, she stroked it so wonderfully that he groaned. “Would an angel do this?” His cock was a rod of iron. “Jane…” He covered her hand to stay it, but she ignored his attempt. “I love it when you can’t control yourself,” she whispered. “I love having you at my mercy. You have no idea…how much I enjoy seeing Dom the Almighty brought low.” He barely registered her words. What she was doing felt so good. So bloody damned good. If she stroked him much more… “I want to be inside you.” He gripped her wrist. “Please, Jane…” Her sensuous smile faltered. “You’ve never said ‘please’ to me before. Not in your whole life.” “Really?” Had he only ever issued orders? If so, no wonder she’d refused him last night. Perhaps it was time to show her she didn’t have to seduce him to gain control. That he could give up his control freely…to her, at least. “Then let me say it now. Please, Jane, make love to me. If you don’t mind.” She stared at him. “I…I don’t know what you mean.” He nodded to his cock, which looked downright ecstatic over the idea. “Get up on your knees and fit me inside you.” Realizing he’d just issued yet another order, he added, “Please. If you want.” Jane got that sultry look on her face again. Like the little seductress she was rapidly showing herself to be, she rose up and then came down on him. By degrees. Very slow degrees. He had trouble breathing. “Am I hurting you?” Her smile broadened as she shimmied down another inch. “Not really.” Stifling a curse, he clutched her arms. “You just…enjoy torturing me.” “Absolutely,” she said and moved his hands to cover her breasts. He was more than happy to oblige her unspoken request, happy to thumb her nipples and watch as her lovely mouth fell open and a moan of pure pleasure escaped her. His cock swelled, and he thrust up involuntarily. “Please…” he said hoarsely. “Please, Jane…” With a choked laugh, she sheathed herself on him. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh, that feels amazing.” “It would feel more amazing if you…would move,” he rasped, though the mere sensation of being buried inside her was making him insane. When she arched an eyebrow, he added, “Please.” “I could get to like this,” she said teasingly. “The begging.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK WHAT TO DO FIRST 1. Find the MAP. It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one. It will be found in the front part of your brochure, quite near the page that says For Mom and Dad for having me and for Jeannie (or Jack or Debra or Donnie or …) for putting up with me so supportively and for my nine children for not interrupting me and for my Publisher for not discouraging me and for my Writers’ Circle for listening to me and for Barbie and Greta and Albert Einstein and Aunty May and so on. Ignore this, even if you are wondering if Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein or in fact the dog. This will be followed by a short piece of prose that says When the night of the wolf waxes strong in the morning, the wise man is wary of a false dawn. Ka’a Orto’o, Gnomic Utterances Ignore this too (or, if really puzzled, look up GNOMIC UTTERANCES in the Toughpick section). Find the Map. 2. Examine the Map. It will show most of a continent (and sometimes part of another) with a large number of BAYS, OFFSHORE ISLANDS, an INLAND SEA or so and a sprinkle of TOWNS. There will be scribbly snakes that are probably RIVERS, and names made of CAPITAL LETTERS in curved lines that are not quite upside down. By bending your neck sideways you will be able to see that they say things like “Ca’ea Purt’wydyn” and “Om Ce’falos.” These may be names of COUNTRIES, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell. These empty inland parts will be sporadically peppered with little molehills, invitingly labeled “Megamort Hills,” “Death Mountains, ”Hurt Range” and such, with a whole line of molehills near the top called “Great Northern Barrier.” Above this will be various warnings of danger. The rest of the Map’s space will be sparingly devoted to little tiny feathers called “Wretched Wood” and “Forest of Doom,” except for one space that appears to be growing minute hairs. This will be tersely labeled “Marshes.” This is mostly it. No, wait. If you are lucky, the Map will carry an arrow or compass-heading somewhere in the bit labeled “Outer Ocean” and this will show you which way up to hold it. But you will look in vain for INNS, reststops, or VILLAGES, or even ROADS. No – wait another minute – on closer examination, you will find the empty interior crossed by a few bird tracks. If you peer at these you will see they are (somewhere) labeled “Old Trade Road – Disused” and “Imperial Way – Mostly Long Gone.” Some of these routes appear to lead (or have lead) to small edifices enticingly titled “Ruin,” “Tower of Sorcery,” or “Dark Citadel,” but there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places. In short, the Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get. And, be warned. If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule. 3. Find your STARTING POINT. Let us say it is the town of Gna’ash. You will find it down in one corner on the coast, as far away from anywhere as possible. 4. Having found Gna’ash, you must at once set about finding an INN, Tour COMPANIONS, a meal of STEW, a CHAMBER for the night, and then the necessary TAVERN BRAWL. (If you look all these things up in the Toughpick section, you will know what you are in for.) The following morning, you must locate the MARKET and attempt to acquire CLOTHING (which absolutely must include a CLOAK), a SADDLE ROLL, WAYBREAD, WATERBOTTLES, a DAGGER, a SWORD, a HORSE, and a MERCHANT to take you along in his CARAVAN. You must resign yourself to being cheated over most prices and you are advised to consult a local MAGICIAN about your Sword. 5. You set off. Now you are on your own. You should turn to the Toughpick section of this brochure and select your Tour on a pick-and-mix basis, remembering only that you will have to take in all of it.

When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework—besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people—is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to the racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them. Even more, if most white people are good, innocent, lovely folks who are just angry or scared or ignorant, it naturally follows that whenever racial tension arises, I must be the problem. I am not kind enough, patient enough, warm enough. I don’t have enough understanding for the white heart, white feelings, white needs. It does not matter that I don’t always feel like teaching white people through my pain, through the disappointment of allies who gave up and colaborers who left. It does not matter that the “well-intentioned” questions hurt my feelings or that the decisions made in all-white meetings affect me differently than they do everyone else. If my feelings do not fit the narrative of white innocence and goodness, the burden of change gets placed on me.

The effort to minimize the hurt by minimizing the loss, pretending that a dead body has lost it's meaning or identity, is another tune we whistle past the graveyard. the sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. for those whose sons and daughters, husbands wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and the air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning. But oh, so difficult, the tuition.

Often, being a person of color in white-dominated society is like being in an abusive relationship with the world. Every day is a new little hurt, a new little dehumanization. We walk around flinching, still in pain from the last hurt and dreading the next. But when we say “this is hurting us,” a spotlight is shown on the freshest hurt, the bruise just forming: “Look at how small it is, and I’m sure there is a good reason for it. Why are you making such a big deal about it? Everyone gets hurt from time to time”—while the world ignores that the rest of our bodies are covered in scars. But racial oppression is even harder to see than the abuse of a loved one, because the abuser is not one person, the abuser is the world around you, and the person inflicting pain in an individual instance may themselves have the best of intentions.

When we express our body-based needs and desires with our partner, we take a risk. We want to be treated as lovable, to feel understood and valued, yet we also risk being ignored, rejected, or simply misread. These risks come up in any marriage, any day. It’s in the nature of being human that we never get over wanting to be affirmed as lovable and never stop feeling hurt when we aren’t. The astonishing yet normal reality of marriage is that we never feel cared for once and for all. The reservoir of goodwill needs to be replenished through loving words and actions. And if emotional communication works well, it can be replenished. This is the peculiar, hopeful truth at the heart of every meaningful human attachment, including marriage.

Most people experience some amount of anger. You might feel like an angry child losing Santa Claus. In thinking over the time spent being faithful, there can be rage over the damage done — life lost, negative self-image, ignorance about the world and real life, guilt and suffering, denial of pleasures, missing skills, hurt relationships, spoiled careers. If you have parents who used religion to justify severe discipline, or if you suffered actual abuse at the hands of church leaders, you could be very angry.

The door opened behind us and several of the cheerleaders shrieked as Darius strode in wearing his Pitball uniform, making a beeline for Tory. She was only in her skirt and sports bra, looking to him with her brows arching. “Flans on a Friday!” Geraldine exclaimed mid-lunge. “This is the ladies room and Jacinta has her Petunia out!” She pointed at Jacinta who was struggling to get her panties up her legs, getting entangled as she stared at Darius’s back in alarm. Darius rolled his eyes, ignoring the chaos around him as he fixed Tory in his sights while I fought a grin at the two of them. I couldn’t believe what Caleb had done for them and I was so happy that there was a way they could be together sometimes. Even if that did involve a threesome with two Heirs, at least she was enjoying herself. Get it, Tor. “Cheerleaders sometimes support a certain player on the field,” Darius said as he pushed his hand into his pocket and took out a navy ribbon with the word Fireshield on it. “Will you cheer for me today, Roxy?” He held it out for her and I swear she actually blushed. “I’m cheering for Darcy and Geraldine too.” “We don’t mind,” I said immediately. “Do we Geraldine?” “By all the rocks in Saturn’s rings, of course we don’t!” Tory shrugged in answer, a smile playing around her mouth and he leaned forward and wrapped the ribbon around her throat and tied it in place. “They’re normally worn on the wrist,” Geraldine whispered to me overly loudly. “This is most romantic.” “Good luck,” Tory said and he nodded before heading out of the room. I bit my lip, looking to her for a comment while Geraldine rested a foot up on the bench, pressing her elbow to her knee and perching her chin on her knuckles as she gazed wistfully at my sister. “What?” Tory asked innocently. “You know what,” I teased and she fought a grin, glancing over her shoulder as if checking to make sure he was really gone. Then she cast a silencing bubble around thethree of us and her expression became anxious. “It’s not that I don’t like the sweet side of Darius, but…” she started. “But what?” Geraldine gasped. “What is it?” I pressed gently when she didn’t elaborate. She sighed, looking a bit guilty. “I just miss our back and forth. This isn’t him. It’s just a nice version of him. I want the real Darius, not some watered down version. And I need to be sure the real Darius isn’t going to hurt me again. Like what happens when one day I piss him off and make him lose his temper again?” Geraldine’s jaw almost hit the floor, but before she could try and convince Tory otherwise, I spoke. Because I knew my sister, and I was starting to get a fairly good read on Darius too. And she had a point. He was on his best behaviour right now, but that couldn’t go on forever. If they were going to find some way to make this work, she needed to know what long-term Darius looked like. And besides that, she lived for being kept on her toes. (Darcy)

Tactical Consideration in Strikes and Kicks Used in Attack and Defense When you have enough time to identify a dangerous scenario before it starts, the primary attacks are kicks and secondary attacks are punches. In the short range it is faster to reach with a punch than to shift the body’s weight up for a kick. In the long range it is faster to leap one step and lift the leg for a kick instead of leaping two steps. Therefore in the long range, kicks are considered to be primary attacks. If you block a fake kick, attack at the same time. If your opponent tries to punch you, he would not succeed since he would have closed a two-step gap before reaching you while you were moving to block his kick as he started to move. Since he initially planned to lunge two steps forward to close the gap, he would not expect you to meet him halfway and it would break his train of thought. Another tactical move would be to move forward and close the gap without immediately attacking, and waiting for the opponent to attack first so that you could follow with a block and counterattack. However, your opponent could preemptively kick as you try to move in. Krav Maga defense techniques are designed to automatically counter a kick with a follow-up hand strike. First, the right hand goes to the left shoulder before it strikes, therefore catching the outside of the forearm in any such possible attack. During training and practice of that particular defense, the student should practice the defense with all the possible follow-up scenarios as well. Reaction Time Consideration Remember that you are a human being and your skeleton is designed for use in a unique way. If you try to crawl like a snake, or walk like a monkey, you will never reach the speed and balance of your natural movement. Therefore as a Krav Maga fighter you have the upper hand. If a martial artist attempts to get into a particular stance, or makes an opening statement with a few threatening moves and screams, or tries to fake an attack, you should know by now that he is wasting his energy and attacks and you should really react to his initial standing position when he is about to close the range, or preemptively attack if you think he is serious about hurting you. At times ignoring a person at the right time but yet being ready to counter him with the right timing will discourage a bully through the messages your body and actions deliver. From a distance, you can see that his closest limb, according to the striking distance, is what you should be concerned about. Follow your training and counterattack by blocking only the closest limb. If he fakes his first move, it should not be a great concern. While he is doing this, you should block the fake attack and counterattack him at the same time. He should never be able to get to his second planned attack.

Joey Tomlinson, in his much-needed and timely book, The Day of Trouble: Depression, Scripture, and the God Who Is Near, masterfully tackles the issues of mental health and well-being from a Christian and biblical perspective. Speaking with a pastor’s heart, Tomlinson helps his readers wrestle with the spiritually, mentally, and physically debilitating scourge of depression. In seeking to help hurting people, Tomlinson draws from years of pastoral ministry as a counsellor, as well as drawing from the Bible, current medical and pharmaceutical studies, and tried-tested-and-true insights from other godly writers, preachers, and pastors both past and present. The result is a book that gives readers a well-grounded, balanced, applicable, and effective dose of biblical wisdom, godly encouragement, and convicting exhortation. This book is extremely helpful for all Christians–whether you’re managing personal challenges with mental health or helping others in treating theirs. Tomlinson doesn’t mince words in his direct and honest dealings with the subject, but his Christ-like love for his readers is evident on every page. The Day of Trouble is a well-written, sincere, and highly practical gift to the church, a book that sheds gospel-transforming light on an often overlooked and ignored area of the Christian life. I hope and pray that it is widely read among God’s people, for I know it will be a healing balm used by the Triune God to restore Christian joy to the minds and hearts of suffering souls.

If Bliss Brain is so desirable and pleasurable, why is it so fragile? Why can our brains be distracted from happiness by the slightest hint of a thought? Why is the demon’s slightest whisper enough to drag us out of bliss? Why are our brains hardwired for negativity? The answer is simple: That’s how our ancestors survived. Those who were the most responsive to danger lived. If your ancestor’s brain had a genetic mutation that heard the rustle of the tiger in the grass a nanosecond earlier, he started running a moment sooner. Genes that paid close attention to threats conferred an enormous survival advantage, as I illustrate in my book The Genie in Your Genes. People who were less responsive to potential threats died, and their genes were lost to the gene pool. Those who reacted to the smallest hint of danger survived, passing their paranoid genes to the next generation. In contrast, happiness provided little or no survival value. Fail to notice a beautiful sunset, ignore the sound of children singing, walk by a rose bush without smelling the blooms? Nothing bad happens. But miss the rustle of the tiger? That’s fatal. So thousands of generations of evolution have honed our ability to respond to even the most minuscule whisper of the remotest possibility of threat, and abandon happiness at the drop of a hat. Mother Nature cares greatly about your survival—and not at all about your happiness. That’s why the DMN defaults to worry, instead of to bliss. Mentally rehearsing future stuff that might just possibly hurt us, past stuff that definitely hurt us, and present stuff that might signal danger—all these are signs of a brain that is successfully practicing the strategies that ensured our ancestors’ survival. This isn’t bad. It’s just excessive for the safe modern world in which we live. If you’re at a construction site where a skyscraper is being built, you wear a hard hat and safety goggles. Such an outfit is entirely appropriate for that context. As attire for tea with the queen? Not so much. Although the DMN interrupts meditation, it plays a useful role in our lives. It is active when we are thinking about others, considering our safety, remembering the past, and planning for the future. It is also active in self-oriented and social tasks, including memorizing the experiences we collect during task-oriented activities. The path of your inner mystic will elevate you to enlightenment. The goal of your inner demon is to keep you safe. You can’t get enlightened if you’ve been eaten by the tiger.

Don’t Take the Bait Since the narcissist believes you have severely hurt them, they will want to get revenge on you. To do so, they will throw everything they think you’ve ever done to them back in your face, and on top of that, remind you of how selfish you are being now. Their main aim is to get you to react emotionally, so your best response is to ignore the comments. By responding, you will simply encourage another argument, which is what you are trying to avoid.

You don’t ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from your life. It’s one thing if a person owns up to their behavior and makes an effort to change. But if a person disregards your feelings, ignores your boundaries, and continues to treat you in a harmful way, they need to go.” – Daniell Koepke Hate is the complement of fear and narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence.” – Sam Vaknin The happy family is a myth for many - Carolyn spring “You’re just like a penny, two-faced and worthless.” - unknown Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles, and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters. - John Mark Green Some people play victims of crimes they committed - unknown Just because someone gives you life doesn’t mean they will love you the right way - unknown You can’t change someone that doesn’t see a problem with there actions - unknown Let’s get out of the habit of telling people, “that’s still your mom, your dad, or your sister.” Toxic is toxic. You are allowed to walk away from people that constantly hurt you - unknown Ask yourself, “will you do this to your family?” If not, why let them do this to yours? - unknown Living well is the best revenge - unknown Sharni, Nevera and Isaiah you are the best gift I’ve ever received no work is more important then my love for yourselves I made a wish on a star and got youse to god I am grateful.

Here are a few of the defenses that many people carry inside, sometimes for the rest of their lives: AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships. People who are avoidant feel most comfortable when the conversation stays superficial. They often overintellectualize life. They retreat to work. They try to be self-sufficient and pretend they don’t have needs. Often, they have not had close relationships as kids and have lowered their expectations about future relationships. A person who fears intimacy in this way may be always on the move, preferring not to be rooted or pinned down; they are sometimes relentlessly positive so as not to display vulnerability; they engineer things so they are the strong one others turn to but never the one who turns to others. DEPRIVATION. Some children are raised around people so self-centered that the needs of the child are ignored. The child naturally learns the lesson “My needs won’t be met.” It is a short step from that to “I’m not worthy.” A person haunted by a deprivation schema can experience feelings of worthlessness throughout life no matter how many amazing successes they achieve. They often carry the idea that there is some flaw deep within themselves, that if other people knew it, it would cause them to run away. When they are treated badly, they are likely to blame themselves. (Of course he had an affair; I’m a pathetic wife.) They sometimes grapple with a fierce inner critic. OVERREACTIVITY. Children who are abused and threatened grow up in a dangerous world. The person afflicted in this way often has, deep in their nervous system, a hyperactive threat-detection system. Such people interpret ambivalent situations as menacing situations, neutral faces as angry faces. They are trapped in a hyperactive mind theater in which the world is dangerous. They overreact to things and fail to understand why they did so. PASSIVE AGGRESSION. Passive aggression is the indirect expression of anger. It is a way to sidestep direct communication by a person who fears conflict, who has trouble dealing with negative emotions. It’s possible such a person grew up in a home where anger was terrifying, where emotions were not addressed, or where love was conditional and the lesson was that direct communication would lead to the withdrawal of affection. Passive aggression is thus a form of emotional manipulation, a subtle power play to extract guilt and affection. A husband with passive-aggressive tendencies may encourage his wife to go on a weekend outing with her friends, feeling himself to be a selfless martyr, but then get angry with her in the days before the outing and through the weekend. He’ll let her know by various acts of withdrawal and self-pity that she’s a selfish person and he’s an innocent victim. —

That looming feeling of being unloved is but a lie from the demons, from the legions in the deepest pit of Hell, specifically designed to hurt, harm and therefore harden a man's heart. But still, suppositionally, if the entire earth really did despise him for whatever reason (or lack thereof), or rather ignored him or showed a complete and utter indifference toward him, the love which comes from Above reins more than enough to lift him up from even the deepest and darkest of mires. 'For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.' And thus, one must never, ever forget God's grace, and always, always remember God's love.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could ever improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished. It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.

When out and about, point out social situations in which one person is ignoring the other through their use of a phone (bad dates, parents ignoring soccer games, concerts, Starbucks where every single person is on a phone). Ask them, “What do you think the other person is feeling?” If you’re ready to give a younger child a phone or Internet access, study resources such as Adam Pletter’s iParent101.com and the American Pediatrics Association’s Media and Children Communication Toolkit to educate yourself about the games and apps your kid uses. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (esrb.org) offers useful information about setting parental controls on games. Other sources we recommend are OnGuardOnline, which offers tips for protecting your computers; Common Sense Media, which rates programs and apps; and iKeepSafe.org, a fount of information about keeping kids safe online. Above all, talk to your children and let them know that it’s your job to help them learn to use technology well. Say, “There’s a whole world available on this gadget. If you get into something that’s scary for you, I want you to let me know.” Let kids know you’ll check their texts and Twitter page randomly until you feel they are not using it in a way that’s hurtful to others or that makes them vulnerable to being hurt—and then do it. Make video game use contingent on not freaking out when it’s time to quit. If your kid is using technology excessively, consider consulting with a psychologist or counselor.

If, on the other hand, your experiences have been those of being harshly criticized, ridiculed, ignored, abused, or made to feel inadequate, then you’re likely to experience low self-esteem.

She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.

What did they seek from him?—thought Rearden—what were they after? He had never asked anything of them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him—and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. He wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner—if his response was what they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those constant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference? Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt? He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his being.

The island spirits are those who have much to atone for before they can cross over. Meemaw has experience." "Can she harm me?" I asked softly. "You're being ridiculous," Mama said. "Said the spirit who must atone for bad deeds," I retorted. "Well, can she?" Betsy was busy staring at her hands, which she was clenching and unclenching. "She can't curse or hurt anyone in any way. She can only do good or she'll be stuck roaming for all eternity." I turned and made eye contact with Mama. "You can also ignore her and she'll be forced to leave," Betsy added. "So, it's up to me." An involuntary smile spread across my face. "I'm in charge." "I'm doing the best I can. I wasn't a perfect mother, but I'm here now doing everything in my power to help you girls." Her lips quivered slightly.

I'm afraid to die, that's my trouble. Afraid of getting hurt. Acting a fool. Being made ridiculous. Being offended, ignored, despised. Afraid to make the one final decision in my soul that would settle everything one way or another forever.

I’m going to finish up work here. And then we’ll go get your name changed. I already know what I want it to be.” Her blue eyes slide to mine, bewildered. “You know what you want it to be?” she asks sassily. I grin, and Troy gasps dramatically. “Yo, did he just smile?” Ignoring him, I declare, “I’m choosing your last name, bella.

He ignored me and said, “But you’re so caught up in this idea of who you think your mom wants you to be, or Michael, or even me. Forget me! Be who you want to be. Just do it, and quit playing games, because you’re hurting people.

1. Body Language: Have a confident body posture, but don’t look too aggressive. Pay close attention to your emotions, and be cautious to avoid tensing up your shoulders, neck, hands, or face. If you’re unable to compose your emotions, they can (and likely will) be felt by the aggravated person and may cause your de-escalation efforts to fail, despite using an appropriate tone and words. Stand relatively still, avoiding sudden jerky or excessive movements. Make sure to keep your hand gestures to a minimum. Basically, think similarly to how you would deal with an angry dog. 2. Voice: You generally want to keep your voice calm, firm, and low while speaking slowly and evenly. The tone, inflection, and volume of your voice can increase or decrease the other person’s anxiety and agitation. However, if the person is yelling, you may need to initially speak in a louder tone in order to be heard, and then guide them to a softer and slower pace. • Listen actively. Gather information by asking questions to develop a rapport, if possible under the circumstances, and gather information in order to begin to guide the communication in a less volatile direction. • Acknowledge their feelings. Some agitated people are unable to problem solve until their feelings are dealt with. By acknowledging their feelings, it often lets them know that they’re being heard. • Communicate clearly by explaining your intentions and conveying your expectations. Repeat yourself as much as necessary until you’re heard. Certain behaviors have been found to escalate agitated people: • Ignoring the person • Making threats • Hurtful remarks and/or name calling • Arguing • Commanding or shouting • Invading personal space • Threatening gestures with your arms or hands, such as finger wagging or pointing Keep in mind that our natural instincts when in an aggressive or potentially violent encounter are to fight, flight, or freeze. However, in using de-escalation, we can’t do any of these. We must appear centered and calm even when we’re terrified. Therefore, these techniques must be practiced before they’re needed, so that they can become second nature. But keep in mind: It’s always important that you trust your instincts. If you feel that de-escalation is not working, STOP! You’ll know within as little as a few minutes to sometimes only a few seconds if it’s beginning to work. If not, tell the person to leave, escort him/her to the door, call for help, walk away, and/or call the police.

Our karmic love is never supposed to last, no matter how many we have, no matter how long we’re together or if we even marry and have children. There’s too much left undone here. Its sole purpose is to be that mirror so that we can no longer ignore our own issues. This love comes into our lives and hurts us so deeply so that we stop projecting and blaming, and start being accountable for ourselves, our actions, and specifically our wounds.

I think ghosts are the least of our worries,” I answer. “Starvation and dehydration are a little more fucking concerning.” “Well, which is worse? Dying of hunger or dying of scary ghosts?” she volleys back. “Which is quicker?” She nods. “Okay, you got me there. May the bean gods bless us then.” “The what?” I snap, my annoyance deepening. Even shipwrecked, she can’t stop fucking talking. “The bean gods,” she repeats, reaching the last step and coming up to a cement pathway. “Canned beans survive the apocalypse. They’re always the number one thing left in cabinets after the world ends. So, I imagine they’ll be in this abandoned lighthouse that potentially hasn’t seen life since the dinosaurs.” “There is so much wrong with what you just said.” Ignoring me, she shoots me a look over her shoulder. “Be careful, though. The beans will give you flatulence.” “Sawyer, stop fucking talking.” “It’s helping with my anxiety.” “Yeah, well, it’s not helping with my headache. Now get behind me. I want to make sure it’s safe first.

Choosing to act like you don’t care or you don’t feel anything, meanwhile you do. It is what will hurt you the most. It is like being next to a ticking time bomb and thinking it won't hurt you if you are ignoring it. Never choose to ignore the things that matters to you. They will haunt you.

Feeling lost, I wondered if I was being too sensitive for not being able to cut chords with people who didn’t think twice before leaving me or if they were too inhuman to cut me off like I never mattered to them. I wondered why my relationships always ended so abruptly and suddenly, or if I ignored the red flags for too long.

In the books I read, people came to church for peace, or to talk to a god, or just to be with all their neighbors. I didn’t think this was a comfortable place to talk to a god. There was too much pain in the statues, too much relish in the way they were made. I think relish is the right word, if it means a delight in something. It felt like the sculptors had made the statues with real liking for the hurt of being nailed to that cross. Maybe that’s my ignorance rather than their fault. Maybe loving the pain was a thing that made sense if you believe in invisible things like this god. I just felt… disconnected from the meaning of all that enjoyment. Like someone was giving the punchline to a joke I hadn’t heard the beginning of. Maybe I should have read a grown-up Bible to see what the point of it all was, but we had no time for gods where I grew up. It had passed, they had passed, just like you all had passed. Gods are just stories now. Bar said that’s all they really were anyway: stories to make sense of lives of those who wanted someone else to take charge of them, rather than cut their own way.

Food-for-thoughts A moment of reflection & remembrance! Life's road signs!! Going back in life, way back, it is amazing that I can vividly remember the signs that was set up in my path! The ones I followed and the ones l ignored, amazing that I can remember all God's way of telling me which direction he chose for me. The ones l ignored, he told me that this is not my way that he designed my life to be, not necessary a bad one and not even a good one, just not the one designed for me to follow. The ones I followed, is also the same, I just followed because it took me to what God set up for me. Did I like the fact that l ignored some or maybe lots of those signs? At the time, I never thought about it in such away, never!! I thought that I just took the decision to ignore or to follow because that is what I want to !! But little that I know that I was totally blind folded to follow what God designed for me which I guess it is called the "God's chosen path". Now, rewinding, I never regret or being proud of my decision at the time of ignoring or choosing a sign, but yes, sometimes I had to face the circumstances of my choice, some hurt a lot, and many other was good for me, or at least that what I felt at the time. We always say, "I did that" , and "I didn't do that", but we forget that we just walking a designed path that we have very little to do with choosing, succeeding or failing. We are so naive and ridiculously stupid to think in such a way. I did believe in this fact a lot and maybe that's why I took roads and ways that anyone in his right mind, will never take because it was very dangerous, risky, and in sometimes life-threatening decisions and roads, however I never had any fear in walking the walk, never!! Always smiling and yes sometimes smiling mixed with tears from the pain, nevertheless, I smiled. Call me crazy, well I don't mind at all ! Now, when going back to what might had happened or the risks I was taking, I honestly say, I was so stupid and crazy to say the least. But again, it was what had been designed for me, and I will do it all over again, if it is in my choice right now to reach what I am in right now, except one thing only, which is the marriage, a bad investment emotionally and financially!! I so much believed and still believing that I just have one life that can end in any moment regardless of what decision I took or didn't take ! if it meant to be getting hurt or the end of my life, so let it be, and it is God's decision and nothing to do with me. Yes, way back, I did and still totally believe in this fact. Well, life is a rollercoaster, the deeper, faster, steeper, and crazier, the more enjoyable it is. Reaching this edge of life, give you a such sensational feelings nothing can surpass. Maybe my believe in God's gave me the power and pleasure to take chances and reach this edge of life. Just leave life in style and without worries and regrets because it will happen regardless!!! Life is always what we make it to be! Or this what we think it is !!

Most of our criteria for ethics are quite pragmatic: Is anyone being harmed? Is there any way to avoid causing that harm? Is anyone feeling hurt? How can we support them? Are there any risks? Is everybody involved aware of those risks and doing what can be done to minimize them? On the positive side: How much fun is this? What is everybody learning from it? Is it helping someone grow? Is it helping make the world a better place? First and foremost, ethical sluts value consent. When we use this word—and we will, often, throughout this book—we mean an active collaboration for the benefit, well-being, and pleasure of all persons concerned. If someone is being coerced, bullied, blackmailed, manipulated, lied to, or ignored, what is happening is not consensual. And sex that is not consensual is not ethical—period. Ethical sluts are honest— with ourselves and others. We take time with ourselves to figure out our own emotions and motivations and to untangle them for greater clarity when necessary. Then, setting aside any bashfulness we may feel, we openly share that information with those who need it. Ethical sluts recognize the ramifications of our sexual choices.

28 But It Is Hardly Credible That One Could So Persecute Jesus! Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? Acts 26:14 Am I set on my own way for God? We are never free from this snare until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Obstinacy and self-will will always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-willed and set upon our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our rights and insist that this is what we intend to do, we are persecuting Jesus. Whenever we stand on our dignity we systematically vex and grieve His Spirit; and when the knowledge comes home that it is Jesus Whom we have been persecuting all the time, it is the most crushing revelation there could be. Is the word of God tremendously keen to me as I hand it on to you, or does my life give the lie to the things I profess to teach? I may teach sanctification and yet exhibit the spirit of Satan, the spirit that persecutes Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus is conscious of one thing only—a perfect oneness with the Father, and He says “Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” All I do ought to be founded on a perfect oneness with Him, not on a self-willed determination to be godly. This will mean that I can be easily put upon, easily over-reached, easily ignored; but if I submit to it for His sake, I prevent Jesus Christ being persecuted.

One of the reasons I became a grief therapist was that my own grief work healed me. I had been an emotional cripple all of my life. I was afraid of being hurt and afraid of being close—all because of my unresolved loss. Thinking back on the losses was akin to putting my hand on a hot stove. I would recoil every single time. But when the pile got to be too big, I had to give in and work through it. I had to look at all of my losses, feel them, heal them, and then move on. Each time I did that, I became a more confident person, a more alive person. I started to heal and experience true happiness for the first time. I became a grief therapist to help others heal their broken places and experience the joy that is life once you heal your unresolved loss. Almost every client I have ever worked with resisted acknowledging his or her grief and working through the loss after a breakup. At first the process seems very difficult, because you have to face your true feelings head on. For a time it seems easier to ignore it, but when you ignore loss after loss, it takes an emotional toll that exacts a very high price.

Megan Meade’s Guide to the McGowan Boys Entry Seven Observation #1: Boys are capable of being hurt. Even the ones that seem totally happy and confident and like they pretty much rule the planet. Observation #2: When the penis takes over, it TAKES OVER. Doug slept with Hailey. He SLEPT with HAILEY. I can’t even count the number of important and obvious facts that had to be ignored in order for this to happen. Observation #3: Boys can be counted on. Finn totally bailed me out when I got stranded. He even cut his date with Kayla short to do it. Of course, when you look at observation #2, it seems they can’t ALWAYS be counted on. So maybe there’s a footnote to this one. Boys can be counted on unless they’re thinking with their penises. Of course, Finn was on a date, so he probably was in penis-thinking mode. Now I’m confusing myself. Hey, did you ever notice what a funny word penis is? Especially when you keep repeating it over and over…

The first reason why peer-oriented children have to harden emotionally is that they have lost their natural source of power and self-confidence and, at the same time, their natural shield against intolerable hurt and pain. Apart from the steady onslaught of tragedies and traumas occurring everywhere, the child's personal world is one of intense interactions and events that can wound: being ignored, not being important, being excluded, not measuring up, experiencing disapproval, not being liked, not being preferred, being shamed and ridiculed. What protects the child from experiencing the brunt of all this stress is an attachment with a parent. It is attachment that matters: as long as the child is not attached to those who belittle him, there is relatively little damage done. The taunts can hurt and cause tears at the time, but the effect will not be long lasting. When the parent is the compass point, it is the messages he or she gives that are relevant. When tragedy and trauma happen, the child looks to the parent for clues whether or not to be concerned. As long as their attachments are safe, the sky could collapse and the world fall apart, but children would be relatively protected from feeling dangerously vulnerable. Roberto Benigni's movie, Life Is Beautiful, about a Jewish father's efforts to shield his son from the horrors of racism and genocide, illustrates that point most poignantly. Attachment protects the child from the outside world.

The room was large and airy. Shelves lined the walls on three sides, shelves that stretched way above his head, bending under the weight of the hundreds of books stored there. The fourth wall was covered in old newspaper, yellowed and faded but still readable. The room had become a shrine of sorts, he supposed. The books he had saved before the last days. He ran his finger along the spines: Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, the ancients, all there alongside books from the last century. Nothing wasted, nothing lost. His private collection. He would find it difficult to let them go when the time came, but he would let them go. He couldn’t risk them being found at a later date. There were few incidents where people managed to decode words after Nicene, very few. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t take that chance. They would be destroyed along with everything the wordsmith had managed to salvage. For a second, images of the wordsmith filled his head, but he pushed them away. He turned his back on the books and walked across to the wall of newsprint. Here was a potted history of the past hundred years. The warnings. The signs. Global warming. Water levels rising. It was incomprehensible even now that man had just ignored it all. Young people talked about the Melting as if it were a single event, but it hadn’t been like that. The earth had been heating up for years. His finger touched one of the news sheets. Scientists were warning of an alarming acceleration in the melting of the polar ice caps. They predicted a dramatic rise in sea levels. That was back in the twenty-first century! He shook his head. He chose another article from around the same time. The writer was warning about the disappearing ice caps. “Until recently, the Arctic ice cap covered two percent of the earth’s surface. Enormous amounts of solar energy are bounced back into space from those luminous white ice fields. Replacing that mass of ice with dark open ocean will induce a catastrophic tipping point in the balance of planetary energy.” Torrents of words had followed. Words from politicians assuring people there was no such thing as global warming. Words from industrialists who justified their emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words… He drew back his hand and punched the wall, hurting his knuckles and leaving a trail of blood on the yellowing paper.

I looked up, my eyes pouring with tears of pain and understanding. I had to look away. I let my other hand slip from the rock and hang loose. “Don’t, Violet!” Lincoln’s voice was strong and unwavering. It caught me by surprise. “Don’t. You. Dare. Look at me!” It wasn’t compulsion, but I still couldn’t stop myself. I had to see him one last time. I opened my mouth to tell him good-bye, but he didn’t let me speak. “If you let go, I’m jumping in there after you!” My hand slipped in his hold and I did little to stop it, but he clung on. “It’s better this way, Linc! You can fight him without me and then you’ll be free!” He looked at me like I was mad until his jaw set with determination. “You smell of winter dew at the first crack of dawn and when you use your power, it feels like being submerged in the most intoxicating vanilla cream that I lose myself in it every time and…and you were beautiful,” he blurted out, catching us both by surprise. But he went on, ignoring the fact my hand was still slipping. “So stunning in that dress the other night, I could hardly look at you it hurt so much. You are the thing I dread the most in myself, Violet, because…I love you so much that I can’t trust myself. I’d die for you, give up all my power for you. I’d give you my soul in an instant, even if it meant I had to spend eternity in torment—just for one moment with you as mine. Wanting you consumes me. I dread you because I know the risk, but I’m so selfish, I want you anyway. I’d take you even though it could kill you.” I cried out again, the pain now so much worse, inside and out.

When Jesus said to turn the other cheek he meant to ignore those who hurt you. When he said he is the son of God, he added that we are all sons of God too. And he didn’t really say to love your enemies, but to be compassionate with them, for their evil emerges from ignorance. In other words, we are all sons of God and we should aspire to be as Jesus, but if someone hurts you, don’t accept the pain; rather understand that he does so out of ignorance and it is better to ignore such person. Now, that sounds much more simple, doesn’t it? The Bible is full of practical suggestions that are misinterpreted by lunatics, and that’s all there is to it. He did die in the cross to save mankind from the Roman Empire, but then humans created Communism and since then have not been freed, although christianity kept expanding. We might very well say at this point that the two main forces in the world are Christianity and Communism, being Communism the army of Satan. Communism is, at present moment, the greatest threat to humanity.

Here’s the thing: Admitting I’m flirting is a big step for me. I don’t want to be ignored. It hurts, like I’m being told that it’s just me. That I’m flirting, and he’s just handing out equations.

It really is him, isn’t it? The guy we went back for. I mean . . . the way he looked at—” “Maybe he doesn’t remember me!” I said in vain, and a sharp laugh burst from Taylor. “Oh no, he definitely remembers. There was no way not to know what had happened between the two of you.” “Damn it.” I muttered, and tried to focus on the road in front of me. “This isn’t happening.” “You need to tell Decl—” “Are you insane?” I yelled, and whipped my head to the side to look at Taylor. “You saw how hurt he was just finding out that I’d been looking for another guy before I met him. There is no way that I can tell him I slept with his brother, Taylor!” Her hands flew out to the side, and she made an exasperated noise. “Declan isn’t stupid, Rorie. He’s going to find out! The tension between you and Jentry alone is a dead giveaway, but then Jentry kept giving you looks, and you were being rude to him and ignoring him in the most obvious ways tonight. Declan isn’t going to remain in this oblivious, I’m-just-so-happy-to-be-with-my-brother phase for long.” I exhaled heavily and gripped the steering wheel over and over again. When I spoke, my voice was barely above a whisper. “I also won’t be caught off guard again. Declan can’t know.” “Ro—” “It would ruin our relationship, Taylor, and possibly his friendship with Jentry. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be the same, at least. I can’t—I can’t do that to him. I love Declan, and it was just a night with Jentry.

I dropped my head and took quick steps to leave the closet, but Jentry’s arm shot out to stop me, his hand curled against my waist possessively. “Aurora—” “Don’t. Please don’t.” He ignored me and pulled me against him so my side was pressed to his chest. My body trembled as those flames got higher. But with the flames that guilt grew and grew, threatening to cripple me. “You hurt, I hurt,” he reminded me. “And, Aurora, seeing you like this and not being able to fix it is killing me. I’m sorry for what happened. I’m so damn sorry, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” Each word was laced with pain, echoing the aches in my heart and my soul. “But you are out of your mind if you think it was easy for me not being here. I have regretted letting you go, every minute of every fucking day. If I could do that first night all over again I would, and I would’ve been there for you. I would have been here.” The tears that had filled my eyes finally slipped free at his words and the memory of that night. “But you did let me go, and no matter how much we beg time to reverse, it won’t.” His body deflated against mine as regret leaked from him. “No, it won’t. But I’m here now. I’m here, and we’re going to get through this.” So

Brittany, wait!” a voice calls from behind me. I turn around and am face-to-face with the guy who’s haunting my dreams…daydreams and night dreams. Alex. The guy who I hate. The guy who I can’t get out of my mind, no matter how drunk I am. “Ignore Javier,” Alex says. “Sometimes he gets carried away tryin’ to be a badass.” I’m stunned when he steps closer and wipes away a tear from my cheek. “Don’t cry. I wouldn’t let him hurt you.” Should I tell him I’m not afraid of being hurt? I’m afraid of not being in control. Though I haven’t run far, it’s far enough from Alex’s friends. They can’t see me or hear me. “Why do you like Carmen?” I ask as the world tilts and I stumble in the sand. “She’s mean.” He holds out his hands to help me but I flinch, so he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “What the fuck do you care, anyway? You stood me up.” “I had stuff going on.” “Like washin’ your hair or getting’ a manicure?” Or having my hair ripped out by my sister and getting reamed out by my mom? I jab my finger into his chest. “You’re an asshole.” “And you’re a bitch,” he says. “A bitch with a kick-ass smile and eyes that can seriously screw with a guy’s head.” He winces, as if the words slipped out and he wants to take them back. I was expecting him to say a lot of things, but not that. Especially not that. I notice his bloodshot eyes. “You’re high, Alex.” “Yeah, well you don’t look too sober yourself. Maybe now’s a good time to give me that kiss you owe me.” “No way.” “¿Por qué no? Afraid you’ll like it so much you’ll forget your boyfriend?” Kiss Alex? Never. Although I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. More than I should. His lips are full and inviting. Oh, boy, he’s right. I am drunk. And I’m definitely not feeling right. I’m past numbness and going on delirium, because I’m thinking things I have no business thinking. Like how I want to know what his lips feel like against mine. “Fine. Kiss me, Alex,” I say, stepping forward and leaning into him. “Then we’ll be even.” His hands are braced on my arms. This is it. I’m going to kiss Alex and find out what it’s like. He’s dangerous and he mocks me. But he’s sexy and dark ad beautiful. Being this close to him makes my body shiver with excitement and my head spin. I loop my finger through his belt loop to steady myself. It’s like we’re standing on a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at the carnival.

I was just about to tell you when she came bounding in the front door. Rosie doesn’t walk anywhere.” “You were just about to tell me? A few years after the fact?” “I told you I needed a commitment, that I wanted a child…children. You were adamant—you were not interested in the same things I was.” “You might’ve left out a couple of things—like you were pregnant. That red hair and those green eyes—they’ve been in my family for generations.” “Did you really think I would tell you? After the way you acted about the whole idea?” “I didn’t have the facts,” he said, anger seeping into his tone. “Do you even remember how it was? Do you remember that I cried and said it was the most important thing to me and you said I’d have to come up with other important things because you weren’t getting into all that? Do you remember telling me not to let the door hit me in the ass? Do you remember saying, ‘Fat chance! Not in this lifetime’?” “And do you remember telling me I was a child, an irresponsible fuck-around who would never grow up? That if I couldn’t settle down and have a wife and children, you weren’t interested in wasting any more time on me? Remember, Franci? But you didn’t tell me you were pregnant!” “I couldn’t! I was afraid to!” “Aw, Jesus, Mary and Joseph—afraid? You’ve never had any reason to be afraid of me!” “I was afraid you’d marry me!” “That was what you wanted!” “I didn’t want you to marry me because I was pregnant! I wanted you to marry me because you loved me!” “I did love you! I just didn’t want to be married!” “Or have children!” she shouted back. She pinched her eyes closed and took a steadying breath. She spoke quietly. “I didn’t want you to be stuck with us. More to the point, I didn’t want us to be stuck with you, regretting our accident every day of our marriage. I wanted my child. I wanted to raise her knowing she was wanted. Loved. You will never understand this, Sean, and I don’t expect you to—but when my period was five minutes late, I started to love her. Passionately. And it grew by the day. If I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that you’d love her just as much, I wasn’t willing to take a chance on you.” “Were you never going to tell me?” he asked. “If I hadn’t bumped into you, were you—” “Yes, I was going to tell you. I was going to have to—Rosie has just started asking questions. I was dreading it, but I was going to tell you.” “Dreading it? Because you knew how pissed I’d be?” She gave a huff of laughter. Sometimes he was so dense. “No, Sean,” she said patiently. “I don’t care if you get mad at me. I was afraid you’d hurt Rosie. Reject her. Ignore her. Break her heart.” Sean

As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties perpetrated by parent figures and a remarkable indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to inhumane treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belonged to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil, however convinced they may be of their humane intentions. From an early age they were forced to suppress and ignore their true feelings. They were forced to put their trust not in those feelings but solely in the regulations imposed on them by their parents, their teachers, and the church authorities. Now the tasks facing them in their adult lives leave them no time to perceive their own feelings, unless those feelings happen to fit in precisely with the patriarchal value system in which they live and which prescribes compassion for the father, however destructive and dangerous he may be. The more comprehensive a tyrant's catalogue of crimes is, the more he can count on tolerance, provided his admirers are hermetically closed off from access to the suffering of their own childhood.

Along the banks of the river about here we found that the natives had dug a great number of pitfalls, about ten feet in depth, to entrap hippopotami, elephants, or buffaloes, which, being always placed in the pathways made by these animals, and neatly covered over with dry grass, are most difficult to detect, even when one knows there are such things about; but the unconscious traveller, ignorant of anything of the sort, is almost sure to be engulfed in one of them sooner or later. This happened to two of our party, neither of whom, luckily, was in any way hurt, after which we adopted the plan of letting one of the Kafirs walk in front, who gave us due notice of their whereabouts, by either uncovering them with an assegai or falling into them, an example which we were, of course, careful not to follow.

I personally think a lot of us feel ashamed when we try so hard to help someone, only to have that help thrown back in our face or ignored altogether, and we are doing ourselves such a disservice in feeling that way. It’s important to speak up, and to talk to those closest to you so they can help you. No one who loves you will stand for you being manipulated or hurt, and you should not be ashamed to talk about it.” He

If I ignored you at some stupid party it wasn't on purpose. I was a ____ing idiot when I was a teenager Saint. My priorities we locked firmly in my pants. If a girl was a sure thing back then you think any 18 year old guy was going to turn her down? But I heard that next week Nash, I saw you with my own eyes. It was a long time ago but my memory is clear. If it was just a case of boys being boys, it still really really hurt. I never even thought that about you Saint. So there is no way I would have said it. I thought you were shy and yeah maybe pretty awkward and a little to studious for my taste, but I always thought you were pretty. Why do you think I said hi to you everyday, try to engage you. I thought your smile was beautiful, and when you finally loosened to give it to me on a regular basis I was stoked. Your hair is awesome and wild I love that ____, and your eyes, your eyes could inspire men to go to war, to paint works of art, to rip their goddam heart out of their chests and to offer it you without a second thought. Then and now. None of that has changed over the years.

Human beings in the globe are so caught up with proving their worth to others whether it's through physical beauty, financial successes or achievements that many people become so consumed with hatred when they are not given respect. It is wise that although people do it on a daily basis, never let anyone define you or have low self-esteem if you feel rejected or ostracized. Learn to ignore people because truly they're insignificant. Although the world is extremely evil, you don't need to take out yourself or anybody else who hurt or mocked you. If you were/are in a relationship and that person cheated on you or left you when you were so accustomed to him/her, learn to be strong and never look back. They are and never were worth it.

What’s going on here?” The loud masculine voice seemed to break the connection between the priestess and herself. Sophie’s eyes, which had been shut tight while she fought the awful memory, flew open and she looked up. Sylvan was standing over her with an angry look on his face. No, not angry—enraged, Sophia realized. His ice blue eyes were blazing and his fangs were out again, razor sharp and ready. The expression on his chiseled features made him look like an avenging angel towering over her. “Oh,” she gasped, unable to stop looking at his fangs. “I don’t know. I—” “What are you subjecting her to?” Sylvan demanded of the priestess who still looked completely calm. “I am simply looking into her. There is a shadow around her heart—it is my duty to see into it.” “Not if your seeing causes her pain.” Sylvan’s voice was a low, menacing growl. “Release her.” The calm expression on the Kindred woman’s face turned to anger and her grip on Sophie’s hands tightened until she squeaked in pain. “You overstep yourself, Warrior.” “That may be, but I will not see you hurt her.” Leaning down Sylvan put himself on the priestess’s level and looked into her eyes. “Release her now.” The grip on Sophie’s hands loosened and she pulled them away gratefully. The priestess still glared at Sylvan, her green-on-green eyes narrowed. “You have a shadow on your heart as well. A secret pain that taints your very existence—I see it in your eyes.” “My pain is not your concern.” Gripping Sophie’s hand, he pulled her to her feet and pushed her behind him protectively. “Now what do you have to say?” “Only this—have a care, Warrior.” The priestess rose smoothly to her feet and frowned up at him. “Danger dogs your steps—the shadow on your heart draws it to you. Even the shielding of your Kindred mind is no protection if you allow the darkness to overcome you. Ignore my warning at your own peril.” Then she turned and walked away, her head held regally high and her bare feet whispering over the green and purple grass. When she was gone Sylvan relaxed his protective stance and turned to Sophie. To her intense relief, she saw that his fangs had gone back to their normal length. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “You sounded upset.” “I…she…she was making me remember—” She realized what she was saying and stopped abruptly. “Remember what?” Sylvan was still staring at her but she shook her head. “Nothing. I’m fine, really. Uh, thank you for rescuing me,” she added, hoping to change the subject. One corner of his thin but sensual mouth quirked up. It was the closest Sophie had ever seen him come to smiling. “Well, you looked like you needed rescuing.” “Unfortunately.

If something doesn’t seem right to you, if it raises red flags, then listen to your gut. Don’t listen to the anxious, people-pleasing part that wants you to ignore your intuition and just act nice.

The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes: “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

To increase cooperation both men and women need to understand each other better. When a man begins to ignore his wife, she often takes it personally. Knowing that he is coping with stress in his own way is extremely helpful but does not always help her alleviate the pain. At such times she may feel the need to talk about these feelings. This is when it is important for the man to validate her feelings. He needs to understand that she has a right to talk about her feelings of being ignored and unsupported just as he has a right to withdraw into his cave and not talk. If she does not feel understood then it is difficult for her to release her hurt.

You rise above your fears by facing them, not by ignoring them. And you can do that because you’re not the fear or the thought or the pain: you’re the one looking at it. Read these self-reflection quotes. They’ll help you look at your thoughts and feelings without being trapped by them. It’s how you change anything. These self-reflection quotes aren’t about lingering on what you don’t like about yourself. They’re about going beyond them by #recognising that you’re not them. By paying kind attention to what hurts or isn’t helping, you can understand those things better. You can understand yourself better, and so trust yourself more. Introspection is the opposite of self-rejection. The loving gaze you grant yourself will free you and lift everyone else. ------------------------------------------------------------ "You can be the most beautiful person in the world when you introspect yourself.

when we ignore our feelings, or suppress them, they only become stronger. The really powerful emotions build up inside us, like a dark force that inevitably poisons everything we do, whether we like it or not. Hurt feelings don’t vanish on their own. They don’t heal themselves. If we don’t express our emotions, they pile up like a debt that will eventually come due.

Monastery Nights I like to think about the monastery as I’m falling asleep, so that it comes and goes in my mind like a screen saver. I conjure the lake of the zendo, rows of dark boats still unless someone coughs or otherwise ripples the calm. I can hear the four AM slipperiness of sleeping bags as people turn over in their bunks. The ancient bells. When I was first falling in love with Zen, I burned incense called Kyonishiki, “Kyoto Autumn Leaves,” made by the Shoyeido Incense Company, Kyoto, Japan. To me it smelled like earnestness and ether, and I tried to imagine a consciousness ignorant of me. I just now lit a stick of it. I had to run downstairs for some rice to hold it upright in its bowl, which had been empty for a while, a raku bowl with two fingerprints in the clay. It calls up the monastery gate, the massive door demanding I recommit myself in the moments of both its opening and its closing, its weight now mine, I wanted to know what I was, and thought I could find the truth where the floor hurts the knee. I understand no one I consider to be religious. I have no idea what’s meant when someone says they’ve been intimate with a higher power. I seem to have been born without a god receptor. I have fervor but seem to lack even the basic instincts of the many seekers, mostly men, I knew in the monastery, sitting zazen all night, wearing their robes to near-rags boy-stitched back together with unmatched thread, smoothed over their laps and tucked under, unmoving in the long silence, the field of grain ripening, heavy tasseled, field of sentient beings turned toward candles, flowers, the Buddha gleaming like a vivid little sports car from his niche. What is the mind that precedes any sense we could possibly have of ourselves, the mind of self-ignorance? I thought that the divestiture of self could be likened to the divestiture of words, but I was wrong. It’s not the same work. One’s a transparency and one’s an emptiness. Kyonishiki.... Today I’m painting what Mom calls no-colors, grays and browns, evergreens: what’s left of the woods when autumn’s come and gone. And though he died, Dad’s here, still forgetting he’s no longer married to Annie, that his own mother is dead, that he no longer owns a car. I told them not to make any trouble or I’d send them both home. Surprise half inch of snow. What good are words? And what about birches in moonlight, Russell handing me the year’s first chanterelle— Shouldn’t God feel like that? I aspire to “a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration,” as Elizabeth Bishop put it. So who shall I say I am? I’m a prism, an expressive temporary sentience, a pinecone falling. I can hear my teacher saying, No. That misses it. Buddha goes on sitting through the century, leaving me alone in the front hall, which has just been cleaned and smells of pine.

Take responsibility for your words, meaning apologize when you're wrong and correct yourself moving forward and don't constantly look for reasons to be offended and police well meaning people's words. We want folks to talk to each other right? not just hang out with like minded people all the time? Everyone is ignorant about something and everyone is offended by something. Of people can't have a calm respectful dialogue without being hurt by ignorance or without offending with insensitivity than what the hell are we supposed to do? Surround ourselves with robots who don't challenge our ideas?

Mortals call you Buddha."  "That is only because they are afflicted with language and ignorance."  "No. I have looked upon your flames and name you Lord of Light. You bind them as you bound us, you loose them as you loosed us. Yours was the power to lay a belief upon them. You are what you claimed to be."  "I lied. I never believed in it myself, and I still don't. I could just as easily have chosen another way–say, Nirriti's religion–only crucifixion hurts. I might have chosen one called Islam, only I know too well how it mixes with Hinduism. My choice was based upon calculation, not inspiration, and I am nothing.

The other kids ignored me, and that hurt more than I cared to admit. Before long, I'd decided they had nothing on me. I could play their game. I could be happy being invisible.

And I know—I know—this is a bad idea, playing at being mates when we know how this has to end. But it’s hard to ignore the pull between us now that we’re locked up in such close quarters. Even harder to ignore the way he feels about me when it’s written all over his face…and also harder to ignore my suspicion that I’m falling for him, too. Or worse, that I’ve fallen for him already. And that the idea of giving him up hurts way more than I want it to—way more than I can stand right now. But what else am I supposed to do? Let Jaxon lose his soul—let him become what he fears most—when I have a chance of preventing it? I can’t do that. More, I won’t do that. But the pain is already there, waiting for me—waiting for us. What will it hurt if, just for a little while, I pretend that Hudson is mine? And let him pretend that I am his?

The saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ essentially means knowledge hurts, that essentially means excess of knowledge is painful.

policymakers and humanitarian practitioners often lack a basic understanding of how markets operate to coordinate activities and generate mutually beneficial outcomes to improve human welfare. In many cases, the result of this ignorance is that interventions intended to help people in the wake of crises actually end up hurting those most in need. One example of this is price-gouging laws intended to protect those already suffering from being exploited by sellers who charge a supposed “unconscionable” or “obscene” price. While the rhetoric of these laws is politically appealing, in reality they reduce the amount of goods and services available to those who are most in need because the inability to charge a higher price provides a disincentive for entrepreneurs to adapt and redirect goods to the crisis-stricken area.

Getting your feelings hurt is not an offense. Feeling ignorant around someone is not an offense. Being made angry is not an offense.

discuss him. I tried as the years went by to encourage her to give her father another chance but she remained firm on this. She was only twelve when he left but I let her watch as I shed frustrated, angry tears. She had gone from being Daddy’s girl to being ignored by her father. She saw the abuse but I believe, at the time, that she found a way to separate her and Joel’s relationship from that. He adored her and she him. Her animosity towards him came after he left, when she struggled with being dismissed along with the rest of us. It was only then that she began going over the incidents of abuse – perhaps as a way of saving herself from missing him, loving him, being rejected by him. I know how difficult that juxtaposition between the man who hurt her mother and her adoring father was for her.

Speaking and using my voice will be required. If, and when, I don’t get it quite right, I have to be open to being corrected. If, and when, I piss other people off, because their feelings are hurt or their own participation in something is questioned, I have to be ready to have the tough conversation. Because ignoring something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or it goes away.

The upside is that every rejection you face will ultimately redirect you to someone better. If a man stops pursuing you after the first couple of dates, he’s saved you from more hurt and anger if you had made an investment. When the shame of rejection passes, you will realize that being ignored was a lucky break. A Girl with Game doesn’t settle. She waits for a man to pursue her and sweep her off her feet.

Ignorance and ego, what a lethal combo.

XV. In the country of the Quadi at Granua, these. Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition?

Good relationships are built on strong connections. Don’t be swayed by superficial qualities. Make sure that you share similar values and priorities. Lust is not enough! Every relationship is a shared project. The true value of that bond isn’t in how good it is in the first month, it’s how it looks after five, then ten years. Energy never lies. We’re all constantly giving off energy that tells other people who we really are. No matter what we say about ourselves, the energy we throw out will always tell the truth. Life is too short for small talk. Avoid bullshit conversation. Talk about things that you actually care about. Find common ground. Common ground is the bridge that allows human beings to make meaningful connections. Work out what’s important to other people, then engage with them using what you’ve learned. You can learn to control your emotions. If you don’t make that effort, they will end up controlling you. Your emotional make-up is unique to you. Only you can do the work of becoming intimately familiar with your emotions. Break what you’re feeling down. What is it? Why is it happening now? Keep asking questions until you know those feelings inside out. Expose your emotions before they expose you. You have to go out and expose your emotions to the world. Make sure you know what anger or fear feels like. Never underestimate yourself. You’ve survived so much shit in life and you’re still standing. Use the resilience you already possess as a foundation, and keep on building on it. The war against pain is as much mental as it is physical. If you’re ever contemplating taking on an awesome physical challenge, don’t neglect your mental preparations. You have a body and a mind – use them both. Share the load between your mental and physical faculties. If you can lean on your body to give your mind a rest, do it. You’ll be grateful later. Confrontation doesn’t need to be aggressive. Take the emotion out of the situation. You don’t need to attack the other person; just let them know that you have a problem and you want them to help you solve it. You’re responsible for what you say and how you say it. You’re not responsible for how the other person reacts. Be as kind and considerate as possible, but don’t let the fear of hurting their feelings stop you from telling them what they need to hear. If they get upset, that’s up to them. A bully’s negativity isn’t your problem. All that bullies want is to pass their negativity on to other people. Just ignore them. Don’t give them the chance to infect you with their misery

Adara felt her jaw go slack as she turned back to look more closely at the approaching knight. That was her husband? Mercy, the man needed to discard his monk’s robes more often. She didn’t fully believe it until he reined his horse before her and his blue eyes seared her with heat. She’d known her husband was a handsome man, but this… This was unbelievable. He buried his banner into the ground beside his horse. His gaze never wavering from hers, he slung one long, well-muscled leg over his steed before he slid to the ground. She didn’t move as he approached her. She couldn’t. The sight of him had her completely riveted to this spot on the ground. Adara wasn’t sure what he had planned, but when he dropped to his knee before her, she was dumbfounded. He struck himself on his left shoulder with his fist as a salute to her, then bowed his head. “My sword is ever at your disposal, my lady.” Laughter rang out from the men around her. “As is mine,” someone called out. Christian ignored them as he looked up at her like something out of her dreams. The moment seemed surreal. Truly, it was a fantasy come to life. “What has possessed you, Christian?” she asked. “Your beauty. It has…” He paused as if searching for the words. “Your great beauty has possessed my soul and…” More laughter and taunts rang out. Her husband’s eyes flashed angrily, but still he stayed there. “I would be your champion, Adara, and—” “Simpering milksop,” one of the knights finished for him. Christian dropped his head and shook it. “This is not who or what I am,” he muttered before he looked up at her again. “I’m sorry, Adara.” “For what?” His answer came as he rose to his feet. With a determined stride, he went to the men who had been tormenting him. He struck the first man he reached so hard that he was knocked to the ground. “Milksop with an iron fist,” he snarled. “And you’d best remember that.” The knights attacked. Even wounded, Christian fought them off, then drew his sword to keep them back. “Cease!” Ioan’s Welsh accent cut through them all. He pushed his way through his men to see Christian in his finery. Ioan looked at him, blinked, then burst out laughing. “Abbot? Since when do you dress like a woman?” His expression hard, Christian tossed his sword into the air, where it twirled around. He caught the hilt upside down in his fist and in one smooth motion sheathed it. Christian paused beside Ioan and glared at him. “Be glad I carried you out of the Holy Land on my back. That fact, and that alone, is all that precludes me from hurting you. For both our sakes, don’t try my patience and make me kill you after such a sacrifice.” Ioan’s eyes twinkled in merriment. He leaned forward and sniffed. “My God, you even smell like one. What happened to you?” Christian let out a tired breath and headed for the tent they had pitched for him. Phantom tsked in her ear as soon as Christian was out of his hearing range. “Only a woman can make a man sacrifice his dignity on the altar of humility. Tell me, Adara, did Christian just sacrifice his for naught?” Nay, he didn’t.

But school shouldn't be preparation for life. For young people, it is life. Young people in America will spend well over a full decade of their lives in school, by law. Their daily life in school is their social and professional world. It isn't just preparation for it. They demand to matter in that world, every day. These children are saying, 'We are here now, to be seen.' For the people they already are, already full human beings, exactly as human as their teachers. No more, and no less. They have things to learn as citizens, and as scholars, and as family members, and they will grow and change and develop and learn. But they are already full human beings, and none of these lessons will make them more so. They already feel, and love, and hurt. They already desire to be entertained, and engaged, and embraced. They already insist on being taken seriously, and cared for deeply. They will not be ignored, and they will not be invisible. Reflecting on the school lives of these children, recognizing the refrains in their warnings, I am reminded again of the epigraph that opens this book, from Labi Siffre's song 'Something Inside So Strong,' sung each morning by children in freedom schools across the country: 'The more you refuse to hear my voice, the louder I will sing.

Getting your feelings hurt is not an offense. Feeling ignorant around someone is not an offense. Being made angry is not an offense.

(1) Having an incomplete image of Jesus that focuses on his sweet side and ignores his forceful side; (2) Giving in to the immense pressure society puts on women to hide their true selves behind a façade of niceness; (3) Encountering harmful childhood experiences, such as lacking inspiring words or role models,

You left me,” he said tersely, his gaze unwavering on her. She exhaled. “I am sorry. I am sorry for borrowing your ship, and I—” “You left me after the night we shared.” She tried not to think about being in his arms, when he had seemed to love her as much as she loved him. “I told you that morning what I intended. The time we shared didn’t change anything.” She saw him flinch. “It was wonderful, but I meant it when I said I had to go home. I know you are angry. I know I took the coward’s way, and I shouldn’t have conned Mac—” “I don’t care about the ship!” he cried, stunning her. “I am glad you took my frigate—at least you would be safe from rovers. Damn it! I made love to you and you left me!” She hugged herself harder, trying to ignore that painful figure of speech. “I knew you would want to marry me, Cliff, for all the wrong reasons. How could I accept that? The night we spent together only fueled my desire to leave.” “For all the wrong reasons? Our passion fueled your desire to leave me?” “You misunderstand me,” she cried. “I do not want to hurt you. But you ruined me, you would decide to marry me. Honor is not the right reason, not for me.” He stepped closer, his gaze piercing. “Do you even know my reasons, Amanda?” “Yes, I do.” Somehow she tilted up her chin, yet she felt tears falling. “You are the most honorable man I have ever met. I know my letter hardly stated the depth of my feelings, but after all you have done, and all your family has done, you must surely know that leaving you was very difficult.” “The depth of your feelings,” he said. His nostrils flared, his gaze brilliant. “Do you refer to the friendship you wish to maintain—your affection for me?” He was cold and sarcastic, taking a final step toward her. He towered over her now. She wanted to step backward, away from him, but she held her ground. “I didn’t think you would wish to continue our friendship. But it is so important to me. I will beg you to forgive me so we can remain dear friends.” “I don’t want to be a dear friend,” he said harshly. “And goddamn it, do not tell me you felt as a friend does when you were in my bed!” She stiffened. “That’s not fair.” “You left me. That’s not fair,” he shot back, giving no quarter. “After all you have done, it wasn’t fair, I agree completely. But I was desperate.” He shook his head. “I will never believe you are desperate to be a shopkeeper. And what woman is truly independent? Only a spinster or a widow. You are neither.” Slowly, hating her words, she said, “I had planned on the former.” “Like hell,” he spat. She accepted the dread filling her then. “You despise me now.” “Are you truly so ignorant, so oblivious? How on earth could I ever despise you?” he exclaimed, leaning closer. “Would I be standing here demanding marriage if I despised you?” She started. Her heart skipped wildly; she tried to ignore it. She whispered, “Why did you really pursue me?” “I am a de Warenne,” he said, straightening. “As my father said so recently, there is no stopping us, not if it is a question of love.

Father Joe grinned. “What is good, and what is evil?” People shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “Islam says good is doing whatever Allah has decreed is good. Evil is the opposite. Hinduism talks about ignorance that causes one to err and those errors are the karma of past lives that hurt one in the present. Not only is evil inevitable in creation, but it is said to be a good thing, a necessary part of the universe, the will of Brahma, the creator. If the gods are responsible for the existence of evil in the world, they either create it willingly—and are thus evil themselves—or are forced to create it by the higher law of karma, which makes them weak. “Buddhism disagrees. In fact, the whole of life for the Buddhist is suffering that stems from the wrong desire to perpetuate the illusion of personal existence. The Noble Truth of Suffering, dukkha, is this: ‘Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.’ Samyutta Nikaya 56, 11. According to that belief, good is the complete abolition of personhood, because that is what ends suffering. “The monotheistic religions go another route. Now listen to this: “‘When you reap your harvest, leave the corners of your field for the poor. When you pluck the grapes in your vineyard, leave those grapes that fall for the poor and the stranger. Do not steal; don’t lie to one another, or deny a justified accusation against you. Don’t use My name to swear to a lie. Don’t extort your neighbor, or take what is his, or keep the wages of a day laborer overnight. Don’t curse a deaf man or put a stumbling block before a blind man. Don’t misuse the powers of the law to give special consideration to the poor or preferential honor to the great; according to what is right shall you judge your neighbor. Don’t stand by when the blood of your neighbor is spilled. Don’t hate your fellow man in your heart but openly rebuke him. Do not take revenge nor bear a grudge. Love your neighbor’s well-being as if it were your own.’ “And overarching all these commandments is the supreme admonition not to be good but to be holy, ‘because I am holy.’” The class looked stunned. “Pretty specific, no?” He smiled. “Especially in contrast to the detachment from life of the Eastern religions. In this, we find perhaps the greatest piece of moral education and legislation ever given to mankind in all human history. Do any of you recognize the source?” “Gospels?” someone guessed. “It’s from the Old Testament of the Jews. From the book of Leviticus.

Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something [경영항목] 수면제,액상수면제,낙태약,여성최음제,ghb물뽕,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아,시알,88정,드래곤,바오메이,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,,꽃물,남성조루제,네노마정,러쉬파퍼,엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜 등많은제품판매하고있습니다 원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 더좋은제품으로 모시겠습니다 qwe114.c33.kr The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

The gondola jolted backward as Falco pulled the rope tight. Cass looked up, surprised to find herself back at the villa already. Falco hopped out of the boat and turned to her with an expectant look. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought you had someplace to be.” She couldn’t keep the hurt from leaching into her voice. “I’m going to walk you to your door, of course.” “I can walk myself, thank you.” Cass clambered over the side of the gondola, her chopines clutched in her left hand. Her cloak snagged on the boat. One of the tall wooden overshoes slipped out of her fingers and landed in the shallow water. “Mannaggia,” she muttered, reaching down to retrieve the soggy shoe. She pushed past Falco as she headed across the lawn. Falco caught up with her easily. “Cassandra, be reasonable. There’s a murderer running around.” She didn’t answer. She headed around to the back of the villa, doing her best to ignore him as he loped beside her in the manicured grass. He couldn’t just freeze her out for the whole boat ride and then pretend everything was fine. Cass tucked her hands into the pockets of her cloak. Her fingers closed around a scrap of fabric--her handkerchief. She remembered Mada’s words. If he keeps it for a little while, then he’s yours. Did she want Falco to like her? Cass wasn’t sure. “A presto,” Falco said, with a short bow. “Until very soon.” “All right.” Cass bit back the tears that were suddenly pushing at the back of her throat and eyes. If she turned around, even for a second, she knew that she would cry. But why? What had happened? She didn’t know. She let the handkerchief slip from her pocket as she pushed quickly into the house, shutting the door behind her without looking back. Leaning against the wall of the kitchen, Cass forced herself to breathe. A single tear worked its way down her cheek, and she brushed it roughly from her face. She turned and peered through the thick glass window. Falco was still there. He had picked up her handkerchief. It looked small in his hands. He paused for a moment, glanced in the direction of the back door, and then tucked the cloth square into his pocket. Overwhelmed by the evening’s events and her swirling emotions, Cass let her body slide slowly to the floor. This time she couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

Harry knows too much now about how Snape feels, and how ashamed Lupin has felt for being inactive in the face of harm, to ignore the implications of these thoughts. He’s learning that he cannot justify keeping quiet about harm, even when the victims themselves have hurt others.

129. All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill. 130. All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill. 131. One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter. 132. One who, while himself seeking happiness, does not oppress with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will find happiness hereafter. 133. Speak not harshly to anyone, for those thus spoken to might retort. Indeed, angry speech hurts, and retaliation may overtake you. 134. If, like a broken gong, you silence yourself, you have approached Nibbana, for vindictiveness is no longer in you. 135. Just as a cowherd drives the cattle to pasture with a staff, so do old age and death drive the life force of beings (from existence to existence). 136. When the fool commits evil deeds, he does not realize (their evil nature). The witless man is tormented by his own deeds, like one burnt by fire. 137. He who inflicts violence on those who are unarmed, and offends those who are inoffensive, will soon come upon one of these ten states: 138-140 Sharp pain, or disaster, bodily injury, serious illness, or derangement of mind, trouble from the government, or grave charges, loss of relatives, or loss of wealth, or houses destroyed by ravaging fire; upon dissolution of the body that ignorant man is born in hell. 141. Neither going about naked, nor matted locks, nor filth, nor fasting, nor lying on the ground, nor smearing oneself with ashes and dust, nor sitting on the heels (in penance) can purify a mortal who has not overcome doubt. 142. Even though he be well-attired, yet if he is poised, calm, controlled and established in the holy life, having set aside violence towards all beings — he, truly, is a holy man, a renunciate, a monk. 143. Only rarely is there a man in this world who, restrained by modesty, avoids reproach, as a thoroughbred horse avoids the whip. 144. Like a thoroughbred horse touched by the whip, be strenuous, be filled with spiritual yearning. By faith and moral purity, by effort and meditation, by investigation of the truth, by being rich in knowledge and virtue, and by being mindful, destroy this unlimited suffering. 145. Irrigators regulate the waters, fletchers straighten arrow shafts, carpenters shape wood, and the good control themselves.

Phoenix He already Walked through my soul, it's where he learned to fly Now I'm getting used to being ignored in a purposeful way Although it hurts when my heart shakes out of solitude’s grace To find only a mirror willing to pull my embrace Sometimes a title is dragged through its whole story like an anchor the reader's mind uses to decode ashes in the strokes It places heavy crowns on delicate heads which form into it As frail necks hurt from not being allowed to swing away from your sight I've seen the rising from death by someone who truly thought they weren't coming back And I've seen love cast into chains unexpectedly in the simpler sense of the word To accept silence in response to sincere apologies To stand in pain at requests our hearts don't want to fulfill It's the issue we created by not separating our universes

Insulting your intelligence. Not making you feel special and appreciated . All the times I continued to do things when you asked me to stop. Using the silent treatment to get what I wanted. Choosing to ignore you until you said you were sorry when we had a fight . Expecting sex whenever I wanted it but not giving it when you did . Not meeting your emotional needs and driving you to get them from another man . Not recognizing just how strong of a person you are . Making you wear a bathing suit when you were pregnant so I could make fun of you. All of the times that I didn't do things around the house because I knew you would do them eventually. Not doing more upkeep on our house. Having so many hobbies and interest and not simply appreciating you, the kids, our home, and our life. Always finding something to criticize about you. Not nurturing you . Not building you up but always tearing you down. Not complimenting you more. Taking you for granted. Not taking care of my body more to give you something pleasing to look at. Not letting go . All the emails. Expecting my needs to be the first priority of the family because I was the head of the household . Not knowing the true meaning of being the head of the household . Not reading more with you . Getting mad at you about something 3 or 4 times a week, maybe more . Not learning to enjoy your hobbies with you . Not working in the yard with you more . Interrupting you when you talk . Always acting like the victim . Limiting your spending money by giving you an allowance . Being unhappy so many days of my life . Ingraining in you and the kids "Is dad mad?". Getting mad and not staying overnight at the marriage seminar a few years ago . All the 1000's of more times I’m not remembering of "being mad because ______”. Yelling at you 1000's of times. Not providing the means for you to fix up the house the way you wanted to. Destroying your dreams. Always having to struggle for money . Not going to kids events with you . Defending myself whenever you'd point out something I was doing to upset you or the kids. You being married to a man who was still a child in his emotional development. Not recognizing how hurt you were . Being verbally abusive . Taking my misery out on you and the kids . My ego and my pride . Putting you first instead of God . Making you feel as if you never measured up . Crushing the tender flower in you . Not building the children up spiritually . Always thinking your issues were no big deal . All the tax problems . Not paying all our bills . Being lazy . Thinking I always had all the answers . Never apologizing . Never backing down. Telling you why you shouldn't feel the way you felt about things . Not learning the true meaning of a godly man and godly marriage. Having to make you suffer because of my fear of abandonment . Asking you to do things during sex that you didn’t like or were not comfortable doing . Any event(s) that are strong in your mind that I have failed to recognize in this list that was ever hurtful, disrespectful or disappointing to you. Making you have to divorce me. There was no other way for me to wake up and realize exactly the person I have been and how I was in our marriage. I am waking up.

But… maybe I can let it be, before I go back to my life of misery. Just for a little bit. How can I even ignore him anymore? It doesn’t seem to matter. Where I am. What I do to hurt myself. He’s all around me. Everywhere he shouldn’t be. Maybe if I indulge, it’ll go away.

I think ghosts are the least of our worries,” I answer. “Starvation and dehydration are a little more fucking concerning.” “Well, which is worse? Dying of hunger or dying of scary ghosts?” she volleys back. “Which is quicker?” She nods. “Okay, you got me there. May the bean gods bless us then.” “The what?” I snap, my annoyance deepening. Even shipwrecked, she can’t stop fucking talking. “The bean gods,” she repeats, reaching the last step and coming up to a cement pathway. “Canned beans survive the apocalypse. They’re always the number one thing left in cabinets after the world ends. So, I imagine they’ll be in this abandoned lighthouse that potentially hasn’t seen life since the dinosaurs.” “There is so much wrong with what you just said.” Ignoring me, she shoots me a look over her shoulder. “Be careful, though. The beans will give you flatulence.

I knocked the wind out of myself, you moron! Get off of me.” He leaned into her harder, ignoring how she put her hands on his head to push him away. “No, kefi. You only have one heartbeat. It will not be long now. I will hold you until the end.” Why did it hurt so badly to think he had lost her this early? She had said they were friends. That is what she wanted from him, and therefore, that was what he would be. He’d never wanted to be someone’s friend so badly. Perhaps more, of course. He would have been very happy with more, but he would take what he could get. And if that meant holding her until the end, guiding her soul into the deep where the sea mother would watch over her, then that was exactly what he would do. “Maketes—” “Shh, kefi. I am sorry I failed you. I should have kept you safer.” If he had been here, prepared to enter the room with her, perhaps she wouldn’t have made such a mistake. Perhaps she wouldn’t have risked her life. This was his fault. This was all his fault, and how was he going to live with this guilt? He was usually so good at thrusting aside his emotions, but right now, it was almost impossible to do. Then her fingers carded through his hair. Those talented, thin fingers brushed through the coiled tangles on his head and gently rubbed at his scalp. The same way he’d done to her.

What did they seek from him? — thought Rearden — what were they after? He had never asked anything of them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him—and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. He wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner—if his response was what they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those constant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference? Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt? He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his being. Don’t start imagining the insane—he told himself severely, struggling to face the riddle with the strictest of his ruthless sense of justice. He could not condemn them without understanding; and he could not understand. Did he like them? No, he thought; he had wanted to like them, which was not the same. He had wanted it in the name of some unstated potentiality which he had once expected to see in any human being. He felt nothing for them now, nothing but the merciless zero of indifference, not even the regret of a loss. Did he need any person as part of his life? Did he miss the feeling he had wanted to feel? No, he thought. Had he ever missed it? Yes, he thought, in his youth; not any longer. His sense of exhaustion was growing; he realized that it was boredom. He owed them the courtesy of hiding it, he thought—and sat motionless, fighting a desire for sleep that was turning into physical pain.

All my life I’d told myself I didn’t care what people thought of me. But the truth was, I did. I just didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to be who they wanted me to be. I wanted to exist, peacefully, so I’d pushed away my unease. I’d ignored the comments, I’d laughed at the rumors, I’d eaten every harsh word and joke—ingested them, then tucked them deep inside me, where no one could see how badly they hurt.

Good parents know when "Go away" means "Hug me." They barge through the door, through the noise, through the pain, and say, "I know you're hurting. I want to help." They keep coming back. Even when they're being pushed away. Good parents also miss big moments, huge moments, with their kids. They're staring at their phone or wrapped up in their jobs or just ignorant about emotional intelligence. Sometimes they're scared to help because their own hurt is a lump in their float. And they end up drowning in guilt for not being superhuman. What's a good parent? It's just so hard to know. It's especially hard that day in Roseville, New Jersey. But maybe, just maybe, we should root for this mom to be braver than she normally is.

When I look back, even I don’t understand why I was so nice to some people, why I kept choosing them. I don’t blame them, I just question myself because I don’t understand why I chose to be with them. Why I ignored my own feelings, why I stayed when they didn’t value me. Why did I keep trying when they kept hurting? Maybe I was afraid of being alone, maybe I just wanted to be understood. I don’t know what exactly the reason was, but yes, I am ashamed that I chose to be with them.