I Hate Confrontation Quotes

I was always either so unreasonably and pointlessly happy that no one place could seem to contain me, or so melancholy, so sick and silly with sadness that there was no place I could stomach the thought of entering. I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True.

I hate confrontations. It's so much easier to walk away than it is to explain to someone that you never want to see them again.

Haters' don't hate you, they hate self and project the energy outward because there is no courage to confront internal fears. Therefore, ignore hate or else it becomes you, also.

In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development into their arsenal of invectives. "You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled. "Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me." "Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person.

I am continuously struck by how frequently the various thought processes of the inner critic trigger overwhelming emotional flashbacks. This is because the PTSD-derived inner critic weds shame and self-hate about imperfection to fear of abandonment, and mercilessly drive the psyche with the entwined serpents of perfectionism and endangerment. Recovering individuals must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the many inner critic processes that tumble them back in emotional time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust that were part and parcel of their original childhood abandonment.

I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True.

Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was.

Williamson Starr doesn't use slang - if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood". Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl". Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is no confrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

Nate had been born and raised in British Columbia, and Canadians hate, above all things, to offend. It was part of the national consciousness. "Be polite" was an unwritten, unspoken rule, but ingrained into the psyche of an entire country. (Of course, as with any rule, there were exceptions: parts of Quebec, where people maintained the "dismissive to the point of confrontation, with subsequent surrender" mind-set of the French; and hockey, in which any Canadian may, with impunity, slam, pummel, elbow, smack, punch, body-check, and beat the shit out of, with sticks, any other human being, punctuated by profanities, name-calling, questioning parentage, and accusations of bestiality, usually-coincidentally- in French.)

My spirituality is most active, not in meditation, but in the moments when: I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being’s suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don’t deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting, and when I end up changed by loving someone I’d never choose out of a catalog but whom God sends my way to teach me about God’s love.

The post-war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham, I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate I had for you. Christ said, “Forgive your enemies and pray for them.

Aren't you feeling lonely? You should go home and confront things, the dark room whispered. I had always hated how things seemed ever so slightly worse, ever so slightly more insane at night.

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself.

And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate this "both" shit. "Both" comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. ... But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from.

This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confront fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one’s fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it.

I was mad because I wanted you, but I gave my word I wouldn't touch you. I started this stupid plan to be late even though I hate being late. I was angry because I wanted you to be mine, but I knew it was impossible.

One of the most troubling facts I have had to accept is that people are not all angel or all devil. They are both good and awful to varying degrees and in varying circumstances. On any given day, dependent upon the situation, you will be confronted by either the devil of a person or the angel of the same person or a curious mix of both. This means you can, and most likely will, love and hate the same individual alternately throughout your life. This truth I find painfully heartrending.

And what about ageing? Do men force the fear of ageing upon us -- or are we ourselves terrified because we only know one kind of power -- the power of youthful beauty? Isn't it possible that if we became comfortable with other forms of female power, men might too? In her wonderful futurist novel, He, She, and It, Marge Piercy imagines a cyborg who is taught to love the bodies of older women. A delicious proposal -- because it tells that whatever we may imagine can come true. Women often hate their own bodies. Sometimes I think that the most important things about having at least one relationship with someone of your own gender -- especially if you are a woman -- is to confront the female self-hatred and turn it into self-love.

I keep encountering this person, who is myself, and I hate her with all my energy. I hate her ways of expressing herself, I hate her appearance, and I hate her opinions about everything. And yet when other people read about her, they believe that she is me. Confronting this fact makes me fells I am already dead.

I was glad the poems were only ever performed and never published. They floated away ethereally to the sound of applause. Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was.

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot, he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying, “Yes, but I love myself.” A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.

I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was.

The SET-UP system evolved as a structured framework of communication with the borderline in crisis. During such times, communication with the borderline is hindered by his impenetrable, chaotic internal force field, characterized by three major feeling states: terrifying aloneness, feeling misunderstood, and overwhelming helplessness. As a result, concerned individuals are often unable to reason calmly with the borderline and instead are forced to confront outbursts of rage, impulsive destructiveness, self-harming threats or gestures, and unreasonable demands for caretaking. SET-UP responses can serve to address the underlying fears, dilute the borderline conflagration, and prevent a “meltdown” into greater conflict.

I'll be right here. Good luck, or break a leg, or something.” As Jay and Gregory turned and headed into the crowd, my traitorous eyes returned to the corner and found another pair or eyes staring darkly back. I dropped my gaze for three full seconds, and then lifted my eyes again, hesitant. The drummer was still staring at me, oblivious to the three girls trying to win back his attention. He put up one finger at the girls and said something that looked like, “Excuse me.” Oh, my goodness. Was he...? Oh, no. Yes, he was walking this way. My nerves shot into high alert. I looked around, but nobody else was near. When I looked back up, there he was, standing right in front of me. Good gracious, he was sexy-a word that had not existed in my personal vocabulary until that moment. This guy was sexy like it was his job or something. He looked straight into my eyes, which threw me off guard, because nobody ever looked me in the eye like that. Maybe Patti and Jay, but they didn't hold my stare like he was doing now. He didn't look away, and I found that I couldn't take my gaze off those blue eyes. “Who are you?” he asked in a blunt, almost confrontational way. I blinked. It was the strangest greeting I'd ever received. “I'm...Anna.” “Right. Anna. How very nice.” I tried to focus on his words and not his luxuriously accented voice, which made everything sound lovely. He leaned in closer. “But who are you?” What did that mean? Did I need to have some sort of title or social standing to enter his presence? “I just came with my friend Jay?” Oh, I hated when I got nervous and started talking in questions. I pointed in the general direction of the guys, but he didn't take his eyes off me. I began rambling. “They just wrote some songs. Jay and Gregory. That they wanted you to hear. Your band, I mean. They're really...good?” His eyes roamed all around my body, stopping to evaluate my sad, meager chest. I crossed my arms. When his gaze landed on that stupid freckle above my lip, I was hit by the scent of oranges and limes and something earthy, like the forest floor. It was pleasant in a masculine way. “Uh-huh.” He was closer to my face now, growling in that deep voice, but looking into my eyes again. “Very cute. And where is your angel?” My what? Was that some kind of British slang for boyfriend? I didn't know how to answer without continuing to sound pitiful. He lifted his dark eyebrows, waiting. “If you mean Jay, he's over there talking to some man in a suit. But he's not my boyfriend or my angel or whatever.” My face flushed with heat and I tightened my arms over my chest. I'd never met anyone with an accent like his, and I was ashamed of the effect it had on me. He was obviously rude, and yet I wanted him to keep talking to me. It didn't make any sense. His stance softened and he took a step back, seeming confused, although I still couldn't read his emotions. Why didn't he show any colors? He didn't seem drunk or high. And that red thing...what was that? It was hard not to stare at it. He finally looked over at Jay, who was deep in conversation with the manager-type man. “Not your boyfriend, eh?” He was smirking at me now. I looked away, refusing to answer. “Are you certain he doesn't fancy you?” Kaidan asked. I looked at him again. His smirk was now a naughty smile. “Yes,” I assured him with confidence. “I am.” “How do you know?” I couldn't very well tell him that the only time Jay's color had shown mild attraction to me was when I accidentally flashed him one day as I was taking off my sweatshirt, and my undershirt got pulled up too high. And even then it lasted only a few seconds before our embarrassment set in.

I guess you hate the people most who make justifiable demands. Because they go to the heart of our psyche. We know they are right, and therefore, we have to destroy them if we can. I think a lot of people are really afraid of justifiable Indian claims to land and resources. They're most afraid of the fact that the claims are morally right, because when you are confronted with a moral imperative against an immoral imperative on your part, you've got to hate the people who assert that moral imperative...We hate them because their claims are totally justified--and we know it.

It was time to confront everything I had hated about the Navy as I climbed up through its ranks, and fix it all. Though the goal was presumptuous, I told myself that it was important that I try to do this. I might never get promoted again, but I decided that the risk was worth it. I wanted a life I could be proud of. I wanted to have a positive effect on young people’s lives. I wanted to create the best organization I could. And I didn’t want to squander this leadership opportunity. I have learned over and over that once you squander an opportunity, you can never get it back.

It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!

It's very difficult to strike that balance - and I'm not convinced that many Christian filmmakers, writers, ect, are willing to take the risks necessary to even try. It's much safer and more profitable to tell a wholesome, feel good story (not that there's anything wrong with wholesome stories). But doing the opposite could mean offending potentially large swaths of your target audience by forcing them to confront the ugly truth that's present in each of our lives. I hate to say it, but a good number of Christians would rather feel safe, and good about themselves, than truly examine humanity's desperation and our need for the cross.

The world was in a confused turmoil-wars, H-bombs, confrontations, fear, hate, hate. And Hollywood was feeding the confusion with a steady diet of sex, violence, and lewdness. What wisdom needed, to catch up with our runaway technology, was time. And time might be bought not with violence, but with compassion-that divine unguent that lubricates and soothes our abrasive human hates. Compassion might just possibly slow down the ticking till we could defuse the world with reason. And we had an outside chance of buying a little precious extra time by filming the life of Schnozzola, the great compassionate clown. A chance that got lost among stars and their satellites. Pity Pity. Now what would I do? Certainly the world didn't need more films about sex, violence, and lewdness. Judging by contemporary Hollywood films, the United States was made up of sexpots, homosexuals, lesbians, Marquis de Sades, junkies too! too! beautiful people, country-club liberals, draft-card burners, and theatrical and religious figures bleeding make-believe blood for cause and camera. "Shock films," they called them; "skin flicks" that dealt not with the humorous, honest, robust, Rabelaisian earthiness that nurtures life, but with the cologned, pretentious, effete, adulterated crud that pollutes life.

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again.

Some books about the Holocaust are more difficult to read than others. Some books about the Holocaust are nearly impossible to read. Not because one does not understand the language and concepts in the books, not because they are gory or graphic, but because such books are confrontational. They compel us to “think again,” or to think for the first time, about issues and questions we might rather avoid. Gabriel Wilensky’s book, Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust is one book I found difficult, almost impossible to read. Why? Because I had to confront the terrible underside of Christian theology, an underside that contributed in no small part to the beliefs and attitudes too many Christians – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – had imbibed throughout centuries of anti-Jewish preaching and teaching that “paved the road to the Holocaust.” I cannot say that I “liked” Gabriel Wilensky’s book, Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust. I didn’t, but I can say it was instructive and forced me to think again about that Jew from Nazareth, Jesus, and about his message of universal love and service – “What you do for the least of my brothers [and sisters], you do for me” (Matthew 25: 40). As Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, the Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. The Holocaust began with words. And too many of those hate-filled words had their origin in the Christian Scriptures and were uttered by Christian preachers and teachers, by Christians generally, for nearly two millennia. Is it any wonder so many Christians stood by, even participated in, the destruction of the European Jews during the Nazi era and World War II? I recommend Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust because all of us Christians – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – must think again, or think for the first time, about how to teach and preach the Christian Scriptures – the “New Testament” writings – in such a way that the words we utter, the attitudes we encourage, do not demean, disrespect, or disregard our Jewish brothers and sisters, that our words do not demean, disrespect, or disregard Judaism. I hope the challenge is not an impossible one.

I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being’s suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don’t deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting, and when I end up changed by loving someone I’d never choose out of a catalog but whom God sends my way to teach me about God’s love.

The price tag of social change has come in the form of stress and stress-related physical disorders, such as heart attacks, strokes, and hypertension. We must now confront the possibility that mental illness has become part of the psychological price.

The bad news about this grandiosity is that trying to avoid it by being humble only indicates the enormity of your struggle. I hate to disturb anyone's good day, but a really humble person may be having more trouble with grandiosity than someone who thinks they are pretty hot stuff. If you get depressed a lot because you think you are worthless, it indicates a mighty struggle with this little god within. You need to feel like you weigh a thousand pounds in your leaden depression so you won't float off into the sun and be destroyed by an Icarus complex. From this point of view, what is depression? It is your friend. Thank God for your depression, because it is the ballast on your psychic balloon. Without it, you would be flying into the sun of psychosis.

I avoid the looming visitor, Flee him adroitly around corners, Hating him, wishing him well; Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true: That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied; And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child. Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt, There may be. But not enough to keep a bird alive. There is a flaw amounting to a fissure In such behaviour.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she did the best she could and realize that what she did was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we’d left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again

I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs later recalled. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.

Their Biggest Fear   What is a narcissist afraid of most? Narcissist who have had some insight into their own disorder will tell you that the biggest fear of the narcissist is BEING FOUND OUT.   They fear that you will recognize their facade. They fear you will realize that much of their bad behavior is intentional. When the narcissist realizes that YOU KNOW the truth about his lack of empathy; that is when you will be cut off, and he will work to turn all of your mutual relationships against you that he can.   I have written several times thus far about how most of the narcissist's motivations and behavior are subconscious. However, – from time to time, the narcissist does recognize, in brief glimpses, the truth about his envious and angry nature. The truth will rise to the surface of his conscience if he allows you to confront him. Therefore you and your voice absolutely must be suppressed. You also must not be allowed access to his other relationships – the ones he can still control, the relationships he still has fooled. For the narcissist, the  easiest way to suppress your voice is to launch a  character attack against you. He decides he must spread lies about you to everyone so that 1) he can explain your sudden absence in his life (He tells everyone that he discovered you were really a mean, hateful person, and he had to cut you off to maintain his own sanity. There is no way he can allow others to think you cut him off – as that would indicate there might be something wrong with him); and 2) he must convince others that you are a terrible, or at least an unstable person – so that if you ever have a chance to talk

You married, Zig?“ I asked him. "Yeah, twenty-one years.” He actually glanced at his wedding ring as he said it. “You?” I looked down at my bare left hand. I’d never had the compulsion to do that before. How lame. “I’m, uh… .” Great, I couldn’t say it. But I had to. The longer I waited, the worse my anxiety would be. And I couldn’t imagine it feeling any worse than it did already. “I’m moving in with someone. Just as soon as we find a place that’s not haunted.” Say it, Vic. Damn it. Tell him. “That a common problem, spirit activity in a …?” “Jacob Marks. From the Twelfth. You know him? I’m moving in with him.” Zig almost did a spit-take. The color drained from his ruddy cheeks, leaving him a strange shade of gray. His already-bulging eyes bulged even more. And then a barrier slammed down somewhere behind them and he pressed his lips together hard. Shit. I’d thought I was up for the conversation, but evidently I was a much bigger pussy than I realized. My stomach clenched up and I fought the urge to tell Zig I was just kidding, and laugh, and give him a hearty, heterosexual clap on the back. God, I hate confrontation. I steeled myself for the tirade that was sure to come. The one where I was a drug addict, a shitty cop, and a miserable excuse for a human being. Zig blinked. He cleared his throat. “Marks,” he said. “Sure. We’ve met.” And then he looked back at his notepad with every ounce of attention he had.

So let me tell you one more thing. It's something I remind myself, when confronted with hate and fear, something that I hope you keep in mind in this new era and aways. Every one of those conversations you and I have had - about being gay, being feminist, being black or being white - ended with the same question. "But why would people think that?" you asked every time, and every time, I gave you the same answer" "Because they're afraid. Because it's different from what they grew up thinking, and it's a new idea, and sometimes new things are scary." Like the first time you went swimming, I tell you, or that time you tried rock climbing, or the first time we went in a plane. You'd never done it before, and you thought it would be scary. "But then I realized it wasn't," you say, and I say, Exactly.

I'm not tormenting myself. I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds, I must have the courage to face up to them. I also learned to forgive myself and correct my mistakes. However, ever since I started out on this journey, I've had a sense of being confronted by a vast jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which are only just beginning to revealed, pieces of love, hate, sacrifice, forgiveness, joy, and grief.

When I look at our whole Earth, the galaxy and even the universe, full of beautiful constellations and Earth-like planets, I can't stop questioning why do people think they are so important to the point of using others, feeling jealousy and hatred towards those who expose them to something they can't confront, such as their weaknesses, imperfections, failures, fears and attachments. But whichever path I choose, the answer always comes as one: Everyone's reality matches them, and they will never recover from whatever occurs to them for as long as they call home to this Mental Institution called Earth, for as long as they call normal to what is abnormal, and for as long as they are satisfied with themselves. Earth can show mercy but never regret or remorse, for whenever death approaches with its message, the message always says the same, independently of who reads it: start again.

I want to be clear that when I used terms such as “pretense” and “intellectual dishonesty” when we first met, I wasn’t casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate’s dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I’m not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen. We can’t say, “Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interests of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we’re going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go … Don’t you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?” However, that’s really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. Again, this problem confronts religious moderates everywhere, but it’s an excruciating problem for Muslims.

I didn't know what caused this process, but I was glad the poems were only ever performed and never published. They floated away ethereally to the sound of applause. Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was. I had explained that theory to Philip but he'd just said: don't be down on yourself, you're a real writer.

The relationship between the Sophotechs and the men as depicted in that tale made no sense. How could they be hostile to each other?” Diomedes said, “Aren’t men right to fear machines which can perform all tasks men can do, artistic, intellectual, technical, a thousand or a million times better than they can do? Men become redundant.” Phaethon shook his head, a look of distant distaste on his features, as if he were once again confronted with a falsehood that would not die no matter how often it was denounced. In a voice of painstaking patience, he said: “Efficiency does not harm the inefficient. Quite the opposite. That is simply not the way it works. Take me, for example. Look around: I employed partials to do the thought-box junction spotting when I built this ship. My employees were not as skilled as I was in junction spotting. It took them three hours to do the robopsychology checks and hierarchy links I could have done in one hour. But they were in no danger of competition from me. My time is too valuable. In that same hour it would have taken me to spot their thought-box junction, I can earn far more than their three-hour wages by writing supervision architecture thought flows. And it’s the same with me and the Sophotechs. “Any midlevel Sophotech could have written in one second the architecture it takes me, even with my implants, an hour to compose. But if, in that same one second of time, that Sophotech can produce something more valuable—exploring the depth of abstract mathematics, or inventing a new scientific miracle, anything at all (provided that it will earn more in that second than I earn in an hour)—then the competition is not making me redundant. The Sophotech still needs me and receives the benefit of my labor. Since I am going to get the benefit of every new invention and new miracle put out on the market, I want to free up as many of those seconds of Sophotech time as my humble labor can do. “And I get the lion’s share of the benefit from the swap. I only save him a second of time; he creates wonder upon wonder for me. No matter what my fear of or distaste for Sophotechs, the forces in the marketplace, our need for each other, draw us together. “So you see why I say that not a thing the Silent One said about Sophotechs made sense. I do not understand how they could have afforded to hate each other. Machines don’t make us redundant; they increase our efficiency in every way. And the bids of workers eager to compete for Sophotech time creates a market for merely human work, which it would not be efficient for Sophotechs to underbid.

If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse would be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is inteded for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person.

More raiders came down the stairs prodding the Reverend Dr. Lionel J. D. Jones, the Black Fuehrer, and Father Keeley before them. Dr. Jones stopped halfway down the stairs, confronted his tormentors. 'All I've done, 'he said majestically, 'is do what you people should be doing.' 'What should we be doing?' said a G-man. He was obviously in command of the raid. 'Protecting the Republic,' said Jones. 'Why bother us? Everything we do is to make the country stronger! Join with us, and let's go after the people who are trying to make it weaker!' 'Who's that?' said the G-man. 'I have to tell you?' said Jones. 'Haven't you even found that in the course of your work? The Jews! The Catholics! The Negroes! The Orientals! The Unitarians! The foreign-born, who don't have any understanding of democracy, who play right into the hands of the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, the anti-Christs and the Jews!' 'For your information,' said the G-man in cool triumph, 'I am a Jew.' 'That proves what I've just been saying!' said Jones. 'How's that?', said the G-man. 'The Jews have infiltrated everything!' said Jones, smiling the smile of a logician who could never be topped. 'You talk about the Catholics and the Negroes-' said the G-man, 'and yet your two best friends are a Catholic and a Negro.' 'What's so mysterious about that?' said Jones. 'Don't you hate them?', said the G-man. 'Certainly not,' said Jones. 'We all believe the same basic thing.' 'What's that?' said the G-man. 'This once-proud country of ours is falling into the hands of wrong people,' said Jones. He nodded, and so did Father Keeley and the Black Fuehrer. 'And, before it gets back on the right track,' said Jones, 'some heads are going to roll.' I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random.

I never expected Benjamin and Emily to last that long I have to say. I suppose in a way it makes sense. Benjamin would always find it hard to split up with anyone because he hates difficulty, he hates confrontation. Anything for a quiet life is his unspoken motto, and I imagine life with Emily must be very quiet indeed. But really they are not well-suited. Benjamin always struck me as rather a self-centred person. I don't mean that he's greedy or consciously unkind, I mean that he has a strong sense of self, a good sense of self, and he doesn't really need anybody's company other than his own. He's not very giving of himself, that's for sure.

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

The old male drew himself up as though getting ready to go. “I hate romantics, Quilan. They do not really know themselves, but what is worse they do not really want to know themselves—or, ultimately, anybody else—because they think that will take the mystery out of life. They are fools. You are a fool. Probably your wife was a fool, too.” He paused. “Probably you were both romantic fools,” he said. “Fools who were doomed to a life of disillusionment and bitterness when you discovered that your precious romanticism faded away after the first few years of marriage and you were left to confront not just your own inadequacies but those of your mate. You were lucky she died. She was unlucky it was her and not you.

I purposely used a pretty cocky, abrasive writing style in Sex and Crime, to stir up some drama. My confrontational style quickly became the talk of the scene. Some of the things I wrote were so inflammatory, people had to vent about it on online forums. So suddenly everyone in the scene was talking about Sex and Crime, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed playing the role of agitator, and people from competing hacking crews didn't even realize that the more they bitched about the things I wrote, the more credibility and notoriety they were adding to my scene mag. Thanks to all the positive as well as negative feedback I was getting, the things I wrote actually mattered. Suddenly I was the most important opinion maker in the scene.

She had left an annotation beneath my last entry, using the same black ink from the same pen. In an unsteady hand, she had written: With your inky pen to make you hate me. I didn’t accuse her of rifling my desk, reading my notebook, writing in it. I could imagine her saying, in a tone of polite protest, “No, I don’t think so.” I was weary of constant confrontation. But then, I was equally weary of a constant pretence that all was well, a constant evasion of the truth. I also realised that it would be impossible for me to write anything down in the future without picturing her at my desk studying my latest denunciations. This would be intolerable for both of us: the annotation of pain on my part, the dim yet irate acknowledgement of pain caused on her part. So I threw away the notebook.

At that time I was still naive enough to try to make clear to them the madness of their ideas; in my small circle I talked until my tongue was weary and till my throat was hoarse, and I thought I could succeed in convincing them of the destructiveness of their Marxist doctrine of irrationality; but the result was contrary. It seemed as though the increasing realization of the destructive influence of Social Democratic theories would serve only to strengthen their determination. The more I argued with them, the more I got to know their dialectics. First they counted on the ignorance of their adversary; then, when there was no way out, they themselves pretended stupidity. If all this was of no avail, they refused to understand or they changed the subject when driven into a corner; they brought up truisms, but they immediately transferred their acceptance to quite different subjects, and, if attacked again, they gave way and pretended to know nothing exactly. Wherever one attacked one of these prophets, one's hands seized slimy jelly; it slipped through one's fingers only to collect again in the next moment. If one smote one of them so thoroughly that, with the bystanders watching, he could but agree, and if one thus thought he had advanced at least one step, one was greatly astonished the following day. The Jew did not in the least remember the day before, he continued to talk in the same old strain as if nothing had happened, and if indignantly confronted, he pretended to be astonished and could not remember anything except that his assertions had already been proved true the day before. Often I was stunned. One did not know what to admire more: their glibness of tongue or their skill in lying. I gradually began to hate them.

Here are all the reasons I hate Mark, the boyfriend Jess has had since last September. 1. He makes her cry sometimes. 2. Once, I saw bruises on her side and I think he's the one who gave them to her. 3. He always wears a big orange Bengals sweatshirt. 4. He calls me Chief, when I have explained multiple times that my name is Jacob. 5. He thinks I am retarded, even though the diagnosis of mental retardation is reserved for people who score lower than 70 on an IQ test and I myself have scored 162. In my opinion, the very fact that Mark doesn't know this diagnostic criterion suggests that he's a lot closer to actual retardation than I am. 6. Last month I saw Mark in CVS with some other guys when Jess was not around. I said hello, but he pretended that he did not know me. When I told Jess and she confronted him, he denied it which means that he is both a hypocrite and a liar.

They destroyed all the equipment, all the medicines. The Harijans – the people we used to call Untouchables – used to come a hundred miles for treatment.’ ‘But I thought Untouchability was outlawed at independence,’ I said. ‘Technically it was,’ replied Tyagi. ‘But do you know the saying “Dilli door ast”? It means “Delhi is far away.” The laws they pass in the Lok Sabha [Indian parliament] make little difference in these villages. Out here it will take much more than a change in the law to alleviate the lot of the Dalits [the oppressed castes, i.e. the former Untouchables].’ ‘But I still don’t understand why the Rajputs did this. What difference does it make to them if you educate the Untouchables?’ ‘The lower castes have always been the slaves of the higher castes,’ replied Tyagi. ‘They work in their fields for low wages, they sweep their streets, clean their clothes. If we educate them, who will do these dirty jobs?’ Dr Tyagi waved his hands at me in sudden exasperation: ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘The Rajputs hate this place because it frees their slaves.’ ‘And what did you do,’ I asked, ‘while the Rajputs were beating the place up?’ Dr Tyagi made a slight gesture with his open palm: ‘I was just sitting,’ he said. ‘What could I do? I was thinking of Gandhiji. He was also beaten up – many times. He said you must welcome such attacks because it is only through confrontation that you can go forward. An institution like ours needs such incidents if it is to regenerate itself. It highlights the injustice the Harijans are facing.’ He paused, and smiled. ‘You yourself would not have come here if this had not happened to us.’ ‘What will you do now?’ I asked. ‘We will start again. The poor of this desert still need us.’ ‘And if the higher castes come for you again?’ ‘Then we will welcome them. They are also victims of their culture.

It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we’d left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.

When you encounter another person…it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it…I am reminded of this precious instruction by my own great failure to live up to it recently…

The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?

WILL NEVER BE AN OPTION Why do you think I should be an option Or the side piece for any man? My deepest sympathy For your illusions. Assumptions are worse than demons; Bombs and bullets get more respect Than your disrespect. You are used to women Who have no problem Being an option or fighting with the Next woman for your attention. Reality check: I am not the one. I will create my kingdom Until the right man comes along. I will never be an option Or make him one. Hate me, slander me... Have your whole army of community Rise up against me... Grounded, I stand. I fear no man. I PROMISE YOU I will never share a man Or entertain a woman’s man. A woman who tears another woman down Needs to go within and heal her demons. I walk with queens Who fix another woman’s crown. Ironically, my self-respect started a war To tear me down on the internet. Your tongue became so poisonous, It reeks of death. For the attack I received, My Healing Journal ~ From Once Broken to I AM No remorse has come from you yet. I do not expect it. You will never acknowledge your wrongs. If you confront me, Expect the silence of resilience. My confidence is not cocky, Nor is it a red flag. I do not share. Never will. Never had.

was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”20 At around that time, our neighbor—one of Mamaw and Papaw’s oldest friends—registered the house next to ours for Section 8. Section 8 is a government program that offers low-income residents a voucher to rent housing. Mamaw’s friend had little luck renting his property, but when he qualified his house for the Section 8 voucher, he virtually assured that would change. Mamaw saw it as a betrayal, ensuring that “bad” people would move into the neighborhood and drive down property values. Despite our efforts to draw bright lines between the working and nonworking poor, Mamaw and I recognized that we shared a lot in common with those whom we thought gave our people a bad name. Those Section 8 recipients looked a lot like us. The matriarch of the first family to move in next door was born in Kentucky but moved north at a young age as her parents sought a better life. She’d gotten involved with a couple of men, each of whom had left her with a child but no support. She was nice, and so were her kids. But the drugs and the late-night fighting revealed troubles that too many hillbilly transplants knew too well. Confronted with such a realization of her own family’s struggle, Mamaw grew frustrated and angry. From that anger sprang Bonnie Vance the social policy expert: “She’s a lazy whore, but she wouldn’t be if she was forced to get a job”; “I hate those fuckers for giving these people the money to move into our neighborhood.” She’d rant against the people we’d see in the grocery store: “I can’t understand why people who’ve worked all their lives scrape by while these deadbeats buy liquor and cell phone coverage with our tax money.

People who worked and proselytized on behalf of homeless people formed a loose confederation, with one shared interest and many differing opinions. In recent years Jim had heard that some in the alliance claimed that the Program belonged to "the homelessness industry," which misspent resources that should be used for creating permanent supportive housing. Also that the Program was an insidious part of that status quo: It propped up an unjust system by successfully treating homeless people with diseases like AIDS, weakening one of the housing movement's chief arguments— "housing is health." Almost always the criticism came indirectly, from friends of friends. This was convenient for a person who hated confrontations. Jim could reply forcefully but indirectly, to a friend of the critic, or sometimes to me in the privacy of his office or car. Often he'd start by invoking Barbara, "The older I get, the more I realize how wise she was. I remember somebody coming into the clinic, and saying to Barbara, who was working like hell, 'What are we going to do to fix this problem of homelessness?' And she looked up and said, 'Are you kidding me? I'm too busy. Don't ask me a question like that.' That was her way of saying, 'Stop torturing me with what society isn't about to do. Let's just do the best we can right now and take care of these folks.

There is a great deal of testing going on early in the relationship. The misogynist is defining for himself—often without even realizing it—just how far he can go. Unfortunately, his partner believes that by not confronting or questioning his behavior when he hurts her feelings, she is expressing her love for him. Many women fall into this trap. We have been taught since we were little girls that love is the answer. It will make everything better, all we have to do is to get a man to love us and then life will be good and we will live happily ever after. We have also been taught that in the service of getting that love, certain behaviors are expected of us. Some of those are "smoothing things over," backing down, apologizing, and "making nice." As it turns out, these are the very behaviors that encourage the misogynist to mistreat his partner. It is as if we've made both a spoken and an unspoken contract, or agreement, with the misogynist. The spoken agreement says: I love you and I want to be with you. The unspoken agreement, which comes from our deepseated needs and fears, is far more powerful and binding. Your part in the unspoken agreement is: My emotional security depends on your love, and to get that I will be compliant and renounce my own needs and wishes. His part of that agreement is: My emotional security depends on my being in total control.

Just like rain, let it all flow incessantly until the sky clears out. Sometimes a part of me asks how is it that the ones who love the most, dearly, tenderly giving their all, find their hollow end meeting with scars that they never deserved. How is it that sometimes Life turns cold for those who sprinkle the most amount of sunshine, the hand that wipes other's pain how is that parched with betrayals and misunderstandings. But I guess it is about life lessons, how a soul grows through it all, as if the soul walks across the pyre of fire to know and eventually become its own mettle. Through it all the heart becomes more open and the mind more understanding, a unique strength of peace walks inside the very fire that rages the soul. Patience flows in through perseverance and the ashes mould in the teardrop of resilience to wear the smile of kindness. I have realised that when the worst happens to us, the soul is confronted with two choices, either to become bitter with repeating the question why or to become better with understanding the way how to walk ahead. Eventually it boils down to two simple emotions, love and hate, astonishingly born out of the same part of our mind and heart. It is a selection of either vengeance or forgiveness, not an easy choice to make especially when we are at our most vulnerable self. Whatever we choose becomes our reality, as if we get soaked in it, and somehow Time runs by. And when years pass by and we look back and see the path, and reflect on our choice we understand the meaning of both the choices, to some they take the shape of peace and to some they take the shape of agony, but looking closely we can see that the agony is the pathway leading to peace, forgiveness is the destination, sooner or later we all reach that space to find it in us to forgive, some in years while some in lifetimes. And perhaps, that is why we all undergo all that happens to us, chained in our Karma. So even when Life seems unfair, give it your all. Love with all your soul and no matter what comes by, don't stop walking along this shore of Time, because no matter how long it takes, you will find your Home. And when Life puts up a question as to why some who broke your soul find pleasure so easy, remind yourself the difference between pleasure and peace and don't forget to acknowledge the fact that perhaps you have paid your Karmic debt in full while theirs might just be beginning. So break if you must, but remind yourself about the gift of Life and Love every passing moment that breathes like a dream in an illusion of Time. Let your Faith walk hand in hand with you as you tread softly towards your destination, because no matter the years or the lifetimes, someday the sky shall be clear for the rainbow of your soul to smile in the Justice of Him, who knows all, sees all, feels all and does all.

Wyn and Harriet’s version of a comedy of remarriage looks a bit different. Their history is less gags and hijinks, and more quiet failures, small untruths, imagined slights, accumulations of little hurts. And sure, miscommunication. Which we all hate. We hate it so much we’ve come to consider it a trope in itself. Just talk about it, we scream at our books and TVs. But in real life, for many of us, confrontation is terrifying. The thought of telling someone they hurt us, or asking if we’ve hurt them—starting a conversation whose ending we can’t predict—is terrifying. Even if we can’t name the thing we’re so afraid of on the other end. Being rejected? Knowing for certain that the person we care about doesn’t care for us in the same way? Deepening a shallow cut past the point of being able to heal? I think, sometimes, we are simply afraid to need. We’re afraid that if we ask too much, if we bare our tenderest wounds and show our ugliest sides, we’ll find out that we aren’t lovable. That we can only keep the ones we love around us as long as we cost them nothing, create no burden. That, at least I think, is the plight of the people pleaser. And though I set out to write one kind of story (and hopefully, on some level, succeeded!), that’s what Happy Place has really come to be about: the ways in which we fail ourselves, cut ourselves off from true, deep, fulfilling joy by trying to bend ourselves into acceptable shapes. This book, like every novel I’ve written so far, has been a kind of exorcism. It’s helped me look more closely at my own relationships, most especially my relationship to myself, and the ways in which I’ve tended to fail myself.

She’s smart, but it’s not just that she’s smart. She works harder than anyone I know, yet she’s too hard on herself. Everyone likes Mia. From the geeks to the jocks to the stoners, every single group of kids in our class has nothing but the best to say about her because she never judges. She’s not petty like other people. She doesn’t gossip, but instead, she gives people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen her put others first, one too many times because she hates confrontation. Unless it’s with me, of course, and then she’s brutal.” Carson’s voice grew soft as he turned me around in his arms to face him. “But she puts too much pressure on herself to be perfect. And I hate that. It eats away at me when I see it.” My heart pounded like a drum in my chest until I thought it might burst. All I could do was stare up at him, my lashes fluttering as I blinked away my shock. He reached up to my hair and smoothed a hand through my locks, and for a moment, I wondered if he remembered we weren’t alone, that there was someone—a stranger—standing only feet away from us, but he just continued, dragging his fingers through the length of my locks as he said, “Her hair. . .it reminds me of the sunset—both orange, and fiery pink, and pale yellow at the same time. She’s a good friend—loyal to the core and trustworthy, the kind who will be on your side through anything. And her laugh. . .She has this laugh. The one where she doesn’t think someone’s funny, but she’s pretending anyway. That laugh doesn’t reach her eyes. But her real laugh, now that’s something to see because her whole face gets into it. It’s uncontrollable. It sounds like wind chimes, and she crinkles her nose and eyes.” Reaching up, he touched the bridge of my nose, making me gasp. “And every time I hear it, I think, I want to be the one to make her laugh like that because it’s impossible to hear and not smile. It pulls you in, that laugh.

Say I decide that it would be a good thing to insert pictures here demonstrating cultural relativism, displaying an act that is commonsensical in one culture but deeply distressing in another. I know, I think, I'll get some pictures of a Southeast Asian dog meat market. Like me, most readers will likely resonate with dogs. Good plan! On to Google Images and the result is that I spend hours transfixed, unable to stop, torturing myself with picture after picture of dogs being carted off to market. Dogs being butchered, cooked and sold. Pictures of humans going about their day's work in a market indifferent to a crate stuffed to the top with suffering dogs. I imagine the fear those dogs feel. How they are hot, thirsty, in pain. I think, what if these dogs had come to trust humans? I think of their fear and confusion. I think, what if one of the dogs whom I've loved had to experience that? What if this happened to a dog my children loved? And with my heart racing, I realize that I hate these people. Hate! Every last one of them and despise their culture. And it takes a locomotive's worth of effort for me to admit that I can't justify that hatred and contempt. That mine is a mere moral intuition. That there are things that I do that would evoke the same response in some distant person whose morality and humanity are certainly no less than mine. And that but for the randomness of where I happen to have been born, I could have readily had their views instead. The thing that makes the tragedy of commonsense morality so tragic, is the intensity with which you just know that They are deeply wrong. In general, our morally tinged cultural institutions, religion, nationalism, ethnic pride, team spirit, bias us toward our best behaviors when we are single shepherds, facing a potential tragedy of the commons. They make us less selfish in Me versus Us situations, but they send us hurtling toward our worst behaviors when confronting Thems and their different moralities.

When I returned from the restroom and Jase saw how much I was bleeding, he began to grill the doctor with every question imaginable. She remained completely stoic, no matter what he said. Every time he asked her a question, she provided the same measured response: “I will not know until I begin to operate.” She began trying to offer various common medical possibilities for this incident, such as a ruptured cyst and other diagnoses. Jase shot down every explanation with the power and speed he would use to blast a duck out of the sky with a shotgun. He was never disrespectful toward her, but he was intense. Due to the pain I was experiencing, I did not realize exactly what was going on, but I did know I was lying on the bed while the doctor and my husband were in a Western movie standoff on either side of me. These two strong personalities were about to collide, and I was in the direct line of fire! At one point, the telephone in my pre-op room rang. Without saying a word, the doctor picked up the phone, stretched it across my bed, and handed it to Jase, never taking her eyes off his. To say that one could cut the tension in the room with a knife is a complete understatement. I was not happy about Jase’s confrontational manner, but at the same time, I was grateful that he was asking the questions I never thought to ask and telling the doctor exactly how he wanted her to treat me. “Like your own daughter,” he said. Jase clearly communicated that he wanted the doctor to rectify the situation. He went on to tell her, “You better not start taking out a bunch of things that need to be left inside of her. I understand that you have to operate, but do not remove anything that does not have to come out.” She confirmed her understanding of his expectations and left the room. “Jason,” I said, using his full name, “she is my boss.” I hated the thought that he might say something to offend her, something that might make my working for her difficult or awkward in the future. “I don’t care,” Jase said, “my main concern is you. I am about to send you back into that operating room with her, and I want to make sure she knows my expectations are high.

It’s true I sometimes imagine my life is different. That I’m somebody else. Maybe more than sometimes. But I’m not the only one around who makes stuff up. Adults are always telling you you can be whatever you want when you grow up, but they don’t mean it. They don’t believe it. They just want you to believe it. It’s a fairy tale. Like the tooth fairy. Something they tell you that gets you excited about something not so fantastic. If you think about it, it’s pretty gross—your teeth just falling out of your head, leaving bloody sockets for your tongue to poke through. But the story makes it better and the dollar makes it worth it. Then one afternoon you sneak into their bedroom and open the drawer of their nightstand, looking for the DS that they confiscated as punishment for your jumping on the roof of the car again, and you find the little Tupperware full of a dozen jagged pearls, caked brown with your own dried blood, your name written in black Sharpie across a piece of Scotch tape, and you stare at them for a moment in disbelief, wondering if maybe they aren’t what you think they are. Maybe they are somebody else’s teeth. They can’t be yours, because your teeth are in Neverland. Or Toothtopia. Or outer space. Or wherever kleptomaniac fairies live. So you confront them, your lying, scheming parents. Over breakfast, you ask your mom about the tooth fairy: where she lives, what she does during the day, how she manages to collect so many teeth each night, and how come some kids’ teeth (like Robbie Dinkler’s) are worth five bucks when yours only fetch a dollar apiece. And you see her search for some explanation that is at once both magical and believable, but you know she’s just making it up as she goes. It’s the same with all grown-ups. They tell you what they think you want to hear and let life tell you the truth later. You can be an astronaut or the president of the United States or second baseman for the White Sox, but you can’t really because you hate math, aren’t rich, and can’t even hit the ball. It’s just another fairy tale. So when your next tooth falls out, you figure you’ll just ask them if they’d like to keep it or throw it away, because you’re not buying it anymore. Or maybe not. Maybe you won’t tell them. Maybe you’ll still put your teeth under your pillow. Because sometimes it’s better to believe in the impossible. To believe you are a secret agent or a private detective or a superhero and not just a kid with freckled cheeks and gangly arms who is too clumsy to leap a tipped-over garbage can in a single bound. Until you are lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with a throbbing ankle and bloody chin, wishing you hadn’t even tried.

The Civil War that I rarely thought about had ended more than a century ago, yet in 1979, I knew the seeds of hatred were still fertile back home, the anger and prejudice still alive. I remember my heart growing a bit colder that day, my vision clearer, the proof of man's capacity to do horrible, wicked things in what my own eyes had seen. Hate unchecked knows so bounds, and when it rises up it must be confronted and rejected or it will spread like an endless cancer. I had not yet thought about why there were no markers of the atrocities committed on our land, in our city. Why no slave ship markers? Why no plantation histories told through the eyes of the enslaved Africans who worked them? That would come to me later.

Your Personal Angel A story about an angel who has been taking care of you even before you were born and will always take care no matter how much you grow old.... you know that angel as Mother, Mamma, Mom... My mom only had one eye. I hated her… She was such an embarrassment. She cooked for students and teachers to support the family. There was this one day during elementary school where my mom came to say hello to me. I was so embarrassed. How could she do this to me? I ignored her, threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school one of my classmates said, ‘Eeee, your mom only has one eye!’ I wanted to bury myself. I also wanted my mom to just disappear. I confronted her that day and said, ‘ If you’re only gonna make me a laughing stock, why don’t you just die?’ My mom did not respond… I didn’t even stop to think for a second about what I had said, because I was full of anger. I was oblivious to her feelings. I wanted out of that house, and have nothing to do with her. So I studied real hard, got a chance to go abroad to study. Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. I had kids of my own. I was happy with my life, my kids and the comforts. Then one day, my Mother came to visit me. She hadn’t seen me in years and she didn’t even meet her grandchildren. When she stood by the door, my children laughed at her, and I yelled at her for coming over uninvited. I screamed at her, ‘How dare you come to my house and scare my children!’ Get Out Of Here! Now!’ And to this, my mother quietly answered, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,’ and she disappeared out of sight. One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. So I lied to my wife that I was going on a business trip. After the reunion, I went to the old shack just out of curiosity. My neighbors said that she died. I did not shed a single tear. They handed me a letter that she had wanted me to have. My dearest son, I think of you all the time. I’m sorry that I came to your house and scared your children. I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion. But I may not be able to even get out of bed to see you. I’m sorry that I was a constant embarrassment to you when you were growing up. You see... when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn’t stand watching you having to grow up with one eye. So I gave you mine. I was so proud of my son who was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye. With all my love to you, Your mother 

I’d rather be hated by standing for what’s right than enduring emotional anguish for remaining silent; by remaining silent there is no confrontation nor truth and peace prevails.

DBT posits that borderline patients possess a genetic/biological vulnerability to emotional overreactivity. This view hypothesizes that the limbic system, the part of the brain most closely associated with emotional responses, is hyperactive in BPD. The second contributing factor, according to DBT practitioners, is an invalidating environment: that is, others dismiss, contradict, or reject the developing individual’s emotions. Confronted with such interactions, the individual is unable to trust others or her own reactions. Emotions are uncontrolled and volatile. To calm these erratic emotions, DBT emphasizes mindfulness, the process of paying attention to what is happening at the moment, without extreme emotional reactivity, judgment, or invalidation. In the initial stages of treatment, DBT focuses on a hierarchical system of targets, confronting first the most serious and then later the easier behaviors to change. The highest priority addressed immediately is the threat of suicide and self-injuring behaviors. The second-highest target is to eliminate behaviors that interfere with therapy, such as missed appointments or not completing homework assignments. The third priority is to address behaviors that interfere with a healthy quality of life, such as disruptive compulsions, promiscuity, or criminal conduct; among these, easier changes are targeted first. The fourth priority is to focus on increasing behavioral skills.

I find it hilarious when someone says "science has proven this" and "science did not prove that". As a teacher, I was always proving my students wrong whenever they said those things. But I can't do the same with the many stupid from the western world who are obsessed with the appearances of the physical world. They shout louder when someone proves them wrong, like a little child would if confronted with a lie. People know nothing about science. The real scientists hate people like me, because I ask questions they never considered. You see, science evolves at the exact same level as consciousness, and if your consciousness is not evolved enough, you will think that you can make gold out of iron or that maggots appear spontaneously out of rotten meat. The great philosopher Aristotle believed that life can arise from nonliving matter. There was an equal level of stupidity and absurdity to his rationalizations, albeit often wise. Until a few centuries ago, it was scientifically proven that the earth was not round but was the center of the universe. It was also scientifically proven that if you are cut and bleed when sick, that will make you feel better, unless, of course, you die. Today, everyone tells me that learning disabilities have no cure and that intelligence can't be increased, even though I have always proven those beliefs to be false. Does anyone care? No! Because science is never scientific but a rationalization at the exact same level of consciousness of a people. If consciousness evolves nearly everything that you are being told now will be proven to be false, and scientists are afraid of that, which is why they stop any among them from being an heretic and prove the religious science of today to be wrong. Now, that requires quite a high level of consciousness, to not be emotionally affected by the fact that you have been fooled by everyone on almost everything you consider to be true, and worse - restart again!

She writes that “Pride and self-hate go inseparably together; they are two expressions of the one process.”144 Horney suggests that neurosis develops when people are confronted with their anxieties about life and their own sense of inadequacy, yet instead of facing this fear head on, or building up self-confidence through real achievements or genuine character development, they enlist their imagination to produce a fantasy about themselves.

This is actually how most of my relationships ended over the years. I hate confrontations, so I always tried to ghost the person.

Though I had fallen in love with Narian a long time ago, I was continually learning more about him. I’d always been familiar with his principles and his personality, but it was the little things that made a human being. Little things like how he was not accustomed to sharing his space--had I not been forced to hide in his bedroom during his exchange with the High Priestess, I would not yet have seen it. There were other things, as well. He was nearly fluent in three languages in addition to our own; he absolutely could not sleep on his back; and he didn’t know how to handle being irritated with me. Had I lied for Shaselle? Yes. But he would have a difficult time confronting me about it. He never hesitated in handling issues with other people, but with me, he seemed to try his hardest to convince himself that there was nothing to handle. It was late afternoon before he finally raised the matter. After holding audiences in the Hearing Hall, I had entered my office and was about ready to retire when there was a knock on the door. I knew it would be Narian, and that his countenance would be inscrutable. Indeed, when I granted him permission to enter, he was closed off, exactly as I hated him to be. “I thought you would meet me in my quarters,” I said, attempting to keep things light. “I will. But I need to talk to you first.” It was plain from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t about to mix business with pleasure. “Of course.” I rose from my desk chair, straightening a few papers and avoiding eye contact with him, though I wasn’t sure of the reason. “The knife I took from Shaselle didn’t belong to Baelic.” “Oh?” I looked up to meet his disconcerting eyes. If he wouldn’t let me in, I wouldn’t let him in. “Alera, it was Sarteradan. You lied for her. Why?” “And what of Steldor’s dagger?” I asked, ignoring his inquiry. “Hytanican. No doubt he managed to keep one of his own from my troops.” “What were you and he arguing about?” “That’s of no importance. But you needn’t worry--I’m not going to arrest him.” He scrutinized me, and I squirmed like a bug under a magnifying glass. “What is important, Alera, is the question you’re trying to avoid--why did you lie for Shaselle?

The other day I saw my girl walking with some other man They were walking and giggling and having a time And I saw she was holding his hand! I stood back and spied, my eyes filled with tears As I watched this foul display Some overly cheerful bleep with legs Was taking my baby away! As I spied over Dumpsters with feelings of hate I saw them in a close embrace! Now I’m broken-hearted ‘Cause before they parted, I saw her kiss his face. That ended my garbage-can espionage I thought I had seen quite enough I decided to confront that devilish girl Who I had once called my true love. So I typed up an e-mail to that wicked female And gave her a piece of my mind. But I won’t say what I said, in case there’s kids present But I will say my words were unkind. I said it was the end, and right when I clicked send I heard my telephone ring. I picked up the receiver and couldn’t believe her It was my little ex...thing. She said “Sorry babe that I haven’t seen you all day But my older brother’s in town! Did I ever tell you that he is a boxer And one of the biggest around?! “He’d like to meet you but he’s quite protective So behave whatever you do, I’ll just check my e-mail and then we’ll come by And...oh look! Here’s an e-mail from you.

Quattro" Only for a piece of broken glass I will be there waiting For it Always Taken to another place Where I see it happen Bear witness to a spectacular Spectacle One day we'll be up as gods on high That praise the beats of undeniable bliss And kiss the stars of harmony gone blind But all of this could be averted All of this could be unearthed We could go get gowns, spread loss And force invisible lines and flaws Take our time, and hurry up to die Save it all or try, try, try To be free, to be us To be something real to us Catered affairs, daytime nightmares Standing on chairs three nights straight County fairs, I said "who cares?" And what he wears ain't that great Freight train antics, slick camera tricks Forty licks and I'm alright Late night comics, black and white flicks White trash hicks on TV tonight, alright Living with weak CD compilations Driving downtown again Pop culture confrontations Eye rolling people spend Forgotten dates, old dinner plates Rush the gates and we'll let you in What she hates is how he waits And fifty states are wrong again Limousine got no time for you Limousine got no time for you Dollar bills soaked up red wine for you Dollar bills soaked up red, white and blue Living with weak CD compilations Driving downtown again Pop culture confrontations Eye rolling people spend Forgotten dates, old dinner plates Rush the gates and we'll let you in What she hates is how he waits And fifty states are wrong again

Early July 2012 True to his words, questions from Dr. Arius continue to arrive as quickly as I responded to his queries. In one of his emails he wrote: Dear Young, You are certainly diligent in answering my questions. Like you, I had similar experiences with my father in that we had a love/hate relationship. If I am not mistaken Andy’s relationship with his dad was very much the same, am I correct? According to my analysis after years of psychiatric research in the field of homosexuality; close to 80 percent of gay boys had or continue to have love/hate relationships with their fathers. It is often the patriarch who has difficulties accepting the feminine aspect of their own machismo attributes. Patriarchs are often threatened by the effeminine energies that co-exist in all human beings. As is usually the case, when confronted by a gay son/sons or lesbian daughter/daughters, it upsets the traditional supercilious male dominance in the animal hierarchy; thus throwing the father figures off the balance scale. Some dads choose not to deal with their own fears which they unconsciously project onto family members closes to them, especially their homosexual children. On the other hand for those fathers that choose to reject their gay children; disowning their flesh and blood, they are on many occasions afraid to face their own fears head-on. In the majority of cases, throughout my research dads or parents with conventional religious background also have difficulties accepting their homosexual children due to religious indoctrinations. Although we are currently living in a more enlightened moment in the history of mankind, age old customs and traditions continues to exist in conjunction with new ideologies. I believe your stories will assist to further enlighten our society and culture, propelling us humans towards a new dawn to understanding the future. As the saying goes; “It is a necessity to learn from the past to live in the present, in order to choose where we want to go in our future.

Every time the gospel has been proclaimed boldly and accurately in church history, there has been persecution. Every time the church speaks out to confront ungodliness in the culture, there is a backlash. I have no desire to go looking for persecution and conflict, but the fact that I live so free of persecution makes me question my commitment to the things of God. I don't like conflict, but I hate to stand among people like Caiaphas.

Truth statements made during angry confrontations are often better directed toward the underlying dynamics than toward the specifics of the clash. Further debate about whether taking Pat to lunch is more important than going to the office will probably be unproductive. However, Jake might address Pat’s apparent need to fight and her possible wish to be overpowered and hurt. He might also confront Pat’s behavior as a need to be rejected. Is she so fearful of anticipating rejection that she is precipitating it in order to “hurry up and get it over with”? The primary Truth message is that this behavior is driving Jake away. He may ask if this is really what Pat wants.

I hate to admit I was enjoying this experiment in naked confrontation. There are not many occasions in a fellow’s life when he gets to really dig into the primal meat of fighting for his life while not wearing a stitch of clothing and armed only with a knife and toilet bowl cleaner.

If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person.

Thus I was placed into the world without being able to see through it—because I had never come to grips with it, because I imagined it was governed by the rules of the orphanage in which I grew up. Quite unprepared, was cast into the system in which humans prey upon one another; quite unprepared, I saw myself confronted by the instincts that form them, greed, hate, fear, cunning, the thirst for power, but I was equally helpless when subjected to the feelings that make that predatory system humane: dignity, moderation, reason, and, ultimately, love.

And then I wailed. No tears came, just a series of loud brays that coursed through my body so hard I couldn’t stand up. I had to bend over, keening, while bracing my hands on my knees, my pack so heavy on top of me, my ski pole clanging out behind me in the dirt, the whole stupid life I’d had coming out my throat. It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we’d left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.

I hate the fact I feel obliged to do anything because I was stupid enough to initiate this. Thinking I’m now committed to some sort of sexual encounter is everything I would hotly and passionately argue against, if it was a hypothetical, and especially if it was someone else. It’s one of those unpleasant moments in life you confront the fact your beliefs in theory and behavior in practice can be two entirely different things.

Cat is magnificent. She hates public confrontations. She’d never defend herself like this, but for me, she’ll go to war. She’s not the woman I thought she was.

I hate romantics, Quilan. They do not really know themselves, but what is worse they do not really want to know themselves—or, ultimately, anybody else—because they think that will take the mystery out of life. They are fools. You are a fool. Probably your wife was a fool, too.” He paused. “Probably you were both romantic fools,” he said. “Fools who were doomed to a life of disillusionment and bitterness when you discovered that your precious romanticism faded away after the first few years of marriage and you were left to confront not just your own inadequacies but those of your mate. You were lucky she died. She was unlucky it was her and not you.

Nukes and Peace It takes hundreds of years of hard work to build a civilization, and yet with the press of a button we can destroy it all in a day. Let us not press the button my friend. In fact, if we must destroy something let us destroy the very button of destruction, both from outside and inside. Let us incapacitate every single button of death and destruction, be it technological or psychological, and redirect that energy towards creation and conservation. You see, destroying the nukes mean nothing. Destroy one, another will be built in its place in a matter of months. We have to nuke the hate in us first, so that we no longer feel the need for nukes against our own kind. However, for the sake of investigation, let us forget the common sense of peace, and talk defense strategy for a moment, in a way that might make sense to world leaders. You see, the best defense against a nuke is not another nuke, but a code. It is the best defense because it is exponentially less expensive. In a technologically advanced world, the most powerful nation is not the one with nuclear power, but the one with coding power. So, to the so-called leaders of the world I say - if you're still foolishly worried about your neighbor's nuclear capabilities, don't go about wasting billions of dollars on a nuclear program, just spend a fragment of those funds on post-launch warhead hacking. But then again, it would open up a new realm of problems at a different level, because any nation with exceptional wireless channel manipulation expertise can remotely take over the command of another nation's nuclear warheads. So, at the end of the day, so long as there is animosity among the nations of the world, between mind and mind, sustained by stupid borders and foul ideologies, there is no safe way out. I'll say it to you plainly. Wasting nuclear power on warheads is a barbaric use of a scientific revolution. Let me elaborate with some numbers. A single nuclear warhead contains nearly 4 kilograms of Plutonium-239, which in a nuclear power plant can produce sufficient heat to generate about 32 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, that is, 32 Gigawatt-hours (GWh). 1 GWh of electricity powers about 700,000 households for one hour, hence 32 GWh would power about 22.4 million households for one hour. Now, if we divide that number by the number of hours in a year, that is, 8760, we are confronted with an astounding revelation. It is that, the radioactive material from one nuclear warhead can power over two thousand households for a year (2557 to be exact). And that's just the radioactive material we are talking about. Many more resources are required to set up a nuclear program. The point is, instead of wasting such potent and precious resources on fancy, frivolous and fictitious geopolitical insecurities, let us redirect those resources to alleviate actual, real human suffering from society. Let us use them to empower communities rather than to dominate them - let us use them to elevate the whole of humankind, rather than to downgrade the parts that we do not like. Because by degrading others, we only degrade ourselves, whereas by lifting others, we rise ourselves. Remember, there is no world peace, so long as fear is off the leash.

This day I remember well. It is the very first moment in my life when I saw desperation enacted by hate. I watched as the second plane flew into the second tower, the pit in my stomach plummeting to a place I have yet to recover. The devastation of those jumping, the visions of cement and debris falling from the sky like thunder. I remember not being able to reach my friends and coworkers, the fear paralyzing me as I imagined them fighting for their lives and the lives of countless others. I remember my cousin who was in the Pentagon who was narrowly spared that day. That day — like it did for so many — that changed me. Forever. And while we honor those lost and remember those who did such things, remember that it was everyone coming together that saved this nation. It was us standing beside one another regardless of politics or religion, race or gender, and no one cared about wealth or poverty, or anything else for that matter. In that moment America stood tall. Today we are completely undone … unraveled and our excuse is moot. I wish we could, as a nation, realize that 9/11 represented a multitude of things. Our freedom, our fear, our triumphant spirit to overcome tragedy and terrorism—foreign and domestic—and our ability to eliminate prejudice when confronting human decency. Today we remember the many lives lost, those still suffering, and those who bravely and courageously continue to do all they can to protect our freedom to speak out, to challenge oppressors, and to rise above the lunacy. New Yorkers are proof that communities of all colors, beliefs and socio economic statuses can come together in the face of adversity. I hope this country — state by state — can stop acting like children and instead act like human beings. That we can be worthy of the months and weeks and days that followed 9/11 when we rose to the occasion as a collective whole.

I got out my phone to research Croatia, and spent the night going down a rabbit hole learning about the country and its immigration policies. Because when you are confronted with that kind of perceived threat of violence, it plays with your head. You wonder what you might have done to incite it, when really, you just existed in a public space that did not want you. In 2019, there’d been a spike in nationalistic hate crimes in Croatia, one of the whitest countries in the world with Croats making up more than 90 percent of the population, and Serbs being its largest “minority.” That night I read countless accounts of Black travelers horrified by racism in Croatia, including apparent poisoning of meals at restaurants where waiters stood around and giggled as Black people ate. Beatings, intimidation, and refusal of service. I

The deadly poison of hate for the other race in American can be cleansed by spreading kindness and love. I know it can be done! We are the remedy, but it takes all of us to make a difference. We should confront the past. Once we do that, this damaged country will be healed.

I hate … and I will wreak that hate upon him”; and in Ahab’s mismatched confrontation with his decent but weak first mate, Mr. Starbuck (now of coffee-bar fame), there seemed a prescient anticipation of Yeats’s twentieth-century lament that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Like those horrific charismatics—the Generalissimo, the Führer, and Il Duce—Ahab had his private squad of secret police, five “dusky phantoms” chosen for their proficient delight in killing, whom he keeps hidden and hungry, as if they are a pack of carnivores left to starve in their cage. Once released, they leap to the chase whenever he spies a breeching whale that might be the one he is looking for. By the early 1950s, the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James could describe Moby-Dick as “the biography of the last days of Adolf Hitler.

The silver lining is that people have stopped busting my chops. I confronted Dad about the phone calls, and I check in every day, and he says they’ve stopped. I have no idea if he’s blowing smoke up my ass or not, but he seems more chill. Then there’s the added bonus that having Cash around drives Toby nuts. The downside is that Toby’s decided to turn up the PDA with his new girl, Samantha, to twelve. And I don’t care. I really, really don’t. I don’t want him back. I don’t miss feeling the way I felt with him—at all. But I know he’s doing it to mess with me, even though he’d never admit it, probably not even to himself. I have to act like it’s fine. I’m chill. And that’s too much like how it was being in a relationship with him. Playing it cool reminds me of how long I had shit in my mouth and didn’t say a word. So I’m constantly flustered, clumsy, hot, and cranky. I can’t possibly seem like a woman with a new boyfriend, but people buy it ‘cause Cash Wall says it’s so. And of course, if he showed the slightest bit of interest in me—out of guilt or pity or whatever—I’d fall over myself saying yes, please, sign me up. And that’s exactly what it looks like I did. It sucks, and tonight, Cash wants to take it to the next level. It’s Friday, and he’s taking me out on our first fake date. We’re going to Birdy’s Bar. Everyone under thirty goes to Birdy’s on Friday night. I’ve never been. I’m getting ready. On the one hand, I don’t want Cash to think I’m putting forth an effort. On the other, I don’t want everyone in town to gawk at me all night, thinking I really need to put forth more effort. So, I’m wearing a teal, silk cami and my best-fitting jeans. I swapped my nose ring out for a diamond stud and curled my hair in big, beachy waves. I’m going the whole nine yards with primer and foundation and concealer and bronzer and blush and highlighter and powder and setting spray. Toby would hate it. Goes against his oft-stated “natural beauty” preference. It’s been so long since I’ve done my face in

Confrontational is one of the last words I would have used to describe him. He never held grudges or got aggressive. If anything, he worked hard to ignore conflict as much as possible. Who would he hate so much that he would try to murder them? My mind went back to the guy he saw at the mall yesterday who triggered this whole breakdown, but it seemed impossible Tom could have somehow tracked down a total stranger over the course of one night and then made the decision to try and end their life, with fire of all things.

Oh creator of all things, help me. For this day I go out into the world naked and alone, and without your hand to guide me I will wander far from the path which leads to success and happiness. I ask not for gold or garments or even opportunities equal to my ability; instead, guide me so that I may acquire ability equal to my opportunities. You have taught the lion and the eagle how to hunt and prosper with teeth and claw. Teach me how to hunt with words and prosper with love so that I may be a lion among men and an eagle in the market place. Help me to remain humble through obstacles and failures; yet hide not from mine eyes the prize that will come with victory. Assign me tasks to which others have failed; yet guide me to pluck the seeds of success from their failures. Confront me with fears that will temper my spirit; yet endow me with courage to laugh at my misgivings. Spare me sufficient days to reach my goals; yet help me to live this day as though it be my last. Guide me in my words that they may bear fruit; yet silence me from gossip that none be maligned. Discipline me in the habit of trying and trying again; yet show me the way to make use of the law of averages. Favor me with alertness to recognize opportunity; yet endow me with patience which will concentrate my strength. Bathe me in good habits that the bad ones may drown; yet grant me compassion for weaknesses in others. Suffer me to know that all things shall pass; yet help me to count my blessings of today. Expose me to hate so it not be a stranger; yet fill my cup with love to turn strangers into friends. But all these things be only if thy will. I am a small and a lonely grape clutching the vine yet thou hast made me different from all others. Verily, there must be a special place for me. Guide me. Help me. Show me the way. Let me become all you planned for me when my seed was planted and selected by you to sprout in the vineyard of the world. Help this humble salesman. Guide me, God.

When I visit countries around the world, I'm usually asked the same four questions about America: 1. Why do you all love guns so much? 2. Why doesn't your government give you free health care? 3. Why did you vote for Trump? 4. Why does America hate Black people so much? I assure them I don't own a gun, I'm all for the government providing affordable health care, I didn't vote for Trump, and the country has a diseased history of racism and anti-Blackness that it has yet to truly confront and acknowledge.