Upset With Myself Quotes

It's okay,' he tells me. 'If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.' His voice cracks with emotion. He stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. 'But that's what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you have to leave us. It's okay if you want to stop fighting.' For the first time since I realized that Teddy was gone, too, I feel something unclench. I feel myself breathe. I know that Gramps can't be that late-inning pinch hitter I'd hoped for. He won't unplug my breathing tube or overdoes me with morphine or anything like that. But this is the first time today that anyone has acknowledged what I have lost. I know that the social worker warned Gran and Gramps not to upset me, but Gramps's recognition, and the permission he just offered me--it feels like a gift. Gramps doesn't leave me. He slumps back into the chair. It's quiet now. So quiet you can almost hear other people's dreams. So quiet that you can almost hear me tell Gramps, 'Thank you.

I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am. ...It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?

And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. Everything that mattered except one lousy picture was in the trash, but it felt so great. I started jogging, wanting to put even more distance between myself and school. It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.

I hated myself for needing him at such times, for craving his strength whenever I felt upset.

I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes.

HIGGINS I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another. PICKERING At what, for example? HIGGINS Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind.

You okay with all of this?" I whispered to Daemon. He shrugged. "Not like I can stop her." I knew he could if he wanted, which meant he didn't have a problem with it. "Cookie?" he offered, holding a cookie full of chocolate chips. Upset tummy or not, there was no way I could refuse that. "Sure." His lips tipped up one side and he leaned toward me, his mouth inches from mine. "Come and get it." Come and get...? Daemon placed half the cookie between those full, totally kissable lips. Oh, holy alien babies everywhere... My mouth dropped open. Several of the girls at the table made sounds that had me wondering if they were turning into puddles under the table, but I couldn't bring myself to check out what they really were doing. That cookie—those lips—were right there. Heat swept over my cheeks. I could feel the eyes of everyone on else, and Daemon... dear God, Daemon arched his brows, daring me. Dee gagged. "I think I'm going to hurl." Mortified, I wanted to crawl into a hole. What did he think I was going to do? Take the cookie from his mouth like something straight out of an R rated version of Lady and the Tramp? Heck, I kind of wanted to and I wasn't sure what that said about me. Daemon reached up and took the cookie. There was a gleam to his eyes, as if he just won some battle. "Times up, Kitten." I stared at him. Breaking the cookie into two, he handed me the larger piece. I snatched it away, half tempted to throw it back in his face, but it was... it was chocolate chip. So I ate it and loved it.

I always considered myself a loner. I mean, not like a poor-me, Byron-esque, I-should-have-brought-a-swimming-buddy loner. I mean the sort of person who doesn’t feel too upset about the prospect of a weekend spent seeing no one, and reading good books on the couch. It wasn’t like I was a people hater or anything. I enjoyed activities and the company of friends. But they were a side dish. I always thought I would be happy without them.

I think you know if you disappeared from my life I’d be upset, but ultimately I’d make myself a new invisible cloak, to replace the one you stole.

I wasn't paying attention," said Myrtle dramatically. "Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm -- that I'm --" "Already dead," said Ron hopefully. Myrtle gave a tragic sob, rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, splashing water all over them and vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend.

Of course it's jealousy," said Adrian nonchalantly. "What do you expect? The former love of your life comes back—from the dead, no less. That's not something I'm really excited about. But I don't blame you for feeling confused." "I told you before—" "I know, I know." Adrian didn't sound particularly upset. In fact, there was a surprisingly patient tone in his voice. "I know you said him coming back wouldn't affect things between us. But saying one thing before it happens and then actually having that thing happen are two different things." "What are you getting at?" I asked, kind of confused. "I want you, Rose." He squeezed my hand more tightly. "I've always wanted you. I want to be with you. I'd like to be like other guys and say I want to take care of you too, but...well. When it comes down to it, you'd probably be the one taking care of me." I laughed in spite of myself. "Some days I think you're in more danger from yourself than anyone else. You smell like cigarettes, you know." "Hey, I have never, ever said I was perfect. And you're wrong. You're probably the most dangerous thing in my life.

I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face—not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt.

...and we sat like that, one creature in two bodies, for a long time, until I forgot what I'd been upset about and I was myself again.

always thought of myself as a loving person. But she was right. I had been a fair-weather friend. As long as she was happy and nice, I loved back. But if she was unhappy or upset, I would feel blamed and then argue or distance myself

I take a few breaths to calm myself, step back, and lift Buttercup by the scruff of the neck. 'I should have drowned you when I had the chance.' His ears flatten and he raises a paw. I hiss before he gets a chance, which seems to annoy him a little, since he considers hissing his own personal sound of contempt. In retaliation, he gives a helpless kitten mew that brings my sister immediately to his defense. 'Oh, Katniss, don't tease him,' she says, folding him back in her arms. 'He's already so upset.' The idea that I've wounded the brute's tiny cat feelings just invites further taunting. But Prim's genuinely distressed for him. So instead, I visualize Buttercup's fur lining a pair of gloves, an image that has helped me deal with him over the years.

Can I ask what’s upsetting you?” I take a breath, try to work out the words, but after a moment I shake my head. “It’s too big to explain,” I say. Because it’s about more than my poem being bad, or that I can’t pick a study spot without exhausting myself. It’s a darker feeling, a fear of there being something wrong with me that I won’t ever be able to fix.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.

In Plaster I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints. 
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality -- She lay in bed with me like a dead body 
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was 
 Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints. I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold. I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer. 
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior! 
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist. 
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her: She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages. 

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful. 
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose 
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain, And it was I who attracted everybody's attention, 
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed. 
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up -- 
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality. 

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it. 
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun 
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice 
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience: She humored my weakness like the best of nurses, 
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly. In time our relationship grew more intense. 

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish. 
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself, 
As if my habits offended her in some way. She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded. 
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces 
Simply because she looked after me so badly. Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal. She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior, 
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful -- Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse! 
And secretly she began to hope I'd die. Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely, 
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water. 

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her. She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp -- I had forgotten how to walk or sit, So I was careful not to upset her in any way 
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself. Living with her was like living with my own coffin: Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully. I used to think we might make a go of it together -- 
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close. 
Now I see it must be one or the other of us. She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy, 
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit. I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her, 
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me. --written 26 Feburary 1961

You just like the idea of me. You like the person I present myself under circumstances that I can control. I choose what I say and how I say things. It’s like being attracted to a fictional character in a book. They are scripted and made up. If you think about it, through writings, we all script and make ourselves up. I don’t share the person I become when I am upset. I don’t show you how I look like when I sleep. I don’t tell you about all the times I’ve made someone cry. All the guilty things I’ve done and the bad thoughts I’ve had.

Let me alone," said Mildred "Let you alone!" He almost cried out with laughter. "Letting you alone is easy, but how can I leave myself alone? That's what's wrong. We need not to be let alone. We need to be upset and stirred and bothered, once in a while, anyway. Nobody bothers anymore. Nobody thinks. Let a baby alone, why don't you? What would you have in twenty years? A savage, unable to think or talk--like us!

I think you can tell by now that I'm not the type of man to beat around the bush. I'll tell you exactly what I want from you." Maxon took a step closer. My breath caught in my throat. I'd just walked into the very situation I feared. No guards, no cameras, no one to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. Knee-jerk reaction. Literally. I kneed His Majesty in the thigh. Hard. Maxon let out a yell and reached down, clutching himself as I backed away from him. "What was that for?" "If you lay a single finger on me, I'll do worse!" I promised. "What?" "I said, if you-" "No, no, you crazy girl, I heard you the first time." Maxon grimaced. "But just what in the world do you mean by it?" I felt the heat run through my body. I'd jumped to the worst possible conclusion and set myself up to fight something that obviously wasn't coming. The guards ran up, alerted by our little squabble. Maxon waved them away from an awkward, half-bent position. We were quiet for a while, and once Maxon was over the worst of his pain, he faced me. "What did you think I wanted?" he asked. I ducked my head and blushed. "America, what did you think I wanted?" He sounded upset. More than upset. Offended. He had obviously guessed what I'd assumed, and he didn't like that one bit. "In public? You thought...for heaven's sake. I'm a gentleman!" He started to walk away but turned back. "Why did you even offer to help if you think so little of me?" I couldn't even look him in the eye. I didn't know how to explain I had been prepped to expect a dog, that the darkness and privacy made me feel strange, that I'd only ever been alone with one other boy and that was how we behaved.

Have you never outright sinned, then?” “I disobeyed Patti when she told me to stay away from you.” “Right. I remember that one. So just once, then?” “There was this other time...” I thought about the two girls in the bathroom and stopped myself, blanching. “Yes? Go on,” he urged. He watched the road, but excitement underscored his tone. I rubbed my dampening palms down my shorts. “The night we met, I sort of...well, I flat-out told a lie. On purpose.” I thought he was trying not to smile. “To me?” he asked. “No. About you.” Now he unleashed that devastating smile of his, crinkling the corners of his eyes. My face was aflame. “Continue. Please.” “There were these girls in the bathroom talking about you, and for some reason, I don't know why, it upset me, and I told them...thatyouhadanSTD.” I covered my face in shame and he burst into laughter. I thought he might drive off the road. Well, it was kind of funny in an ironic way, because he couldn't keep a disease anyhow, even if he had gotten one. I found myself beginning to giggle, too, mostly out of relief that he wasn't offended. “I wondered if you were ever going to tell me!” he said through spurts of hilarity. Duh! Of course he'd been listening! My giggles increased, and it felt so nice that we kept going until we were cracking up. It was the good kind of laughter: the soul-cleansing, ab-crunching, lose-control-of-yourself kind. We started catching our breath again a few minutes later, only to break into another round of merriment. “Do you forgive me, then?” I asked when we finally settled down and I wiped my eyes. “Yes, yes. I've had worse said about me.

Cookie?” he offered, holding up a cookie full of chocolate chips. Upset tummy or not, there was no way I could refuse that. “Sure.” His lips tipped to one side and he leaned towards me, his mouth inches from mine. “Come and get it.” Come and get…? Daemon placed half the cookie between those full, totally kissable lips. Oh, holy alien babies everywhere… My mouth dropped open. Several of the girls at the table made sounds that had me wondering if they were turning into puddles under the table, but I couldn’t bring myself to check out what they were doing. That cookie – those lips – were right there. Heat swept over my cheeks. I could feel the eyes of everyone else and Demon… dear God, Daemon arched his brows, daring me. Dee gagged. “I think I’m going to hurl.” Mortified, I wanted to crawl into a hole. What did he think I was going to do? Take that cookie out of his mouth like something straight out of an R-rated version of Lady and the Tramp? Heck, I kind of wanted to, and I wasn’t too sure what that said about me. Daemon reached up and took the cookie. There was a gleam in his eyes, as if he’d just won some battle. “Time’s up, Kitten.

Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colors, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with people is torture and immediately leads to scenes... Anger, suffering, and complaints are directed at everything, at people, at animals, at the weather, at God, at the paper in the book one is reading, at the material of the very clothing one has on. But anger, impatience, complaints and hatred have no effect on things and are deflected from everything, back to myself.

Sometimes when I get really sad and depressed, you know, I lie in bed and think about you. I don’t mean in a sexual way. I just think about the goodness of you as a person. And since you like me, or you love me, I must be okay. I can feel that feeling inside myself even now while I’m describing it to you. It’s like, when everything is really bad, it’s this one small feeling the size of an acorn, and it’s inside me, here. She gestured to the base of her breastbone, between her ribs. It’s like the way, when I’m upset, I know I can call you, and you’ll say soothing things to me, she said. And when I think about that, most of the time I don’t even need to call you, because I can feel it, the way I’m describing. I can feel that you’re with me. I know that probably sounds stupid. But if we got together and then broke up, would I not be able to feel that anymore? And what would I have inside here instead? She tapped the base of her breastbone again with anxious fingers. Nothing? she asked.

But why did you go,” my mother asked him, “when it was bound to upset you like this?” “I went,” he told her, “because every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.

But I mind," Bart said savagely. "I'd like to see a world where I could have my picture taken, say, with Tommy on my lap if I want to. For every woman who got upset because I wasn't, shall we say, available for her romantic daydreams, there's be some young kid reading the papers and going to movies, and he'd be able to stop hating himself and say, 'Okay Bart Reeder is queer, and he's happy and successful, and he's getting along okay, so maybe I don't have to go out and hang myself after all.' And the suicide rate would go down, and everybody would be happy

There was nothing dreadfully wrong with me, I was just upsetting myself with my irrational thinking. I just couldn't admit it until I knew for sure. Now, I feel like a whole man, and I had to call you up and let you know where I stood . . . It was hard for me to do this, and I'm sorry it took so long for me to get around to telling you.

I was upset, sad, angry - something! I needed to do something! I needed to feel myself, understand myself and this horrible world we are all trapped in, where bugs and tumors and viruses worm their way into our brains and lay their putrid eggs that hatch and eat us alive from the inside out.

Someone else is allowed to be upset when I assert myself; this doesn’t make them a bad person and it doesn’t make me unable to uphold my decision.

Three days after that, the funeral was held, and while riding from the church to the cemetery Ava looked out the widow and noticed that everyone she passed was crying. "Old people, college students, even the colored men at the gas station-- the soul brothers, or whatever we're supposed to call them now." It was such an outdated term, I just had to use it myself. "How did the soul brothers know your father?" "That's just it," she said. "No one told us until after the burial that Kennedy had been shot. It happened when we were in the church, so that's what everyone was so upset about. The president, not my father.

If I could go back in time to when I wrote sad little poems, I’d punch myself right in the fucking face because it gets worse man. It gets much, much worse and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can just start dying and I know. I know—blahblahblah, nobody gives a fuck about your broken heart, but you know something? Most days, I’m not even sure what I’m upset about.

A hedgehog flies from the safety of a bush, startling me. It darts past us in a terrible hurry. Kartik nods toward the furry little thing. "Don't mind him. He's off to meet his lady friend." "How can you be sure?" "He has on his best hedgehog suit." "Ah, I should have noticed." I say, happy to be playing this game-any game-with him. I put my hand on the tree's trunk and swing myself around it slowly, letting my body feel gravity's pull. "And why has he worn his best?" "He's been away in London, you see, and now he has returned to her," Kartik continues. "And what if she is angry with him for being away so long?" Kartik circles just behind me. "She will forgive him." "Will she?" I say pointedly. "It is his hope that she will, for he didn't mean to upset her." Kartik answers, and I am no longer sure we speak of the hedgehog. "And is he happy to see her again?" "Yes," Kartik says. "He should like to stay longer, but he cannot." The bark chafes against my hand. "Why is that?" "He has his reasons, and hopes his lady will understand them one day." Kartik has changed direction. He comes around the other side of the tree. We are face to face. A palm of moonglow reaches through the branches to caress his face. "Oh," I say, heart beating fast. "And what would the lady hedgehog say to that?" he asks. His voice soft and low. "She would say..." I swallow hard. Kartik steps closer. "Yes?" "She would say," I whisper, "'If you please, I am not a hedgehog. I am a woodchuck.'" A small smile plays at Kartik's lips. "He is fortunate to have so witty a lady friend," he says, and I wish I could have the moment back again to play differently.

Beth hates me." I chuckled, loving Echo for calling it straight. I framed her face with my hands, letting my fingers enjoy the feel of her satin skin. "You 're my world, so i'd say that evens things out." Echo's eyes widened and she paled. Why was she upset? My mind replayed every moment carefully and then froze, rewound, replayed and froze again on the words i'd said. It had been so long since i'd let myself fall for anybody. I gazed into her beautiful green eyes and her fear melted. A shy smile tugged at her lips and at my heart. Fuck me and the rest of the world, I was in love. Echo's gloved hands reached up and guided my head to hers. I let myself bask in her warmth and deepened our kiss, enjoying the teasing taste of her tongue and the way her soft lips moved against mine. Very easily, i could lose myself in her...forever.

Sometimes when I’m facing a horrendous week or am upset over a perceived slight, I remind myself that I won’t remember it (much less care about it) one month, six months, or a year from now. (The more extreme version of this strategy is to use the deathbed criterion: Will it matter when you’re on your deathbed?)

My mom used to get really upset at what she perceived as my half-assing,’ reads one splendid anonymous comment on a Washington Post article by the advice columnist Carolyn Hax. ‘I’m 48 now, have a PhD and a thriving and influential career, and I still think there is very very little that’s worthy of applying my whole entire ass. I’m not interested in burning myself [out] by whole-assing stuff that will be fine if I half- or quarter-ass it. Being able to achieve maximum economy of ass is an important adult skill.

I cannot stay in harmony if I let myself become upset by things beyond my control.

If someone liked me, I waited until she was off guard, and then I told her I didn’t want to be her friend any more. I watched the confusion and upset. The tears. Then I ran off, triumphantly in control, and very fast the triumph and the control leaked away, and then I cried and cried, because I had put myself on the outside again, on the doorstep again, where I didn’t want to be.

Can I ask how it impacts your relationships in a toxic way?” “I’m just noticing things. All the time. Bad behaviors. Like, I tend to categorize people as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe.’ And when I don’t like somebody, I see them as unsafe and I can’t deal with them. And then whenever anybody’s upset, I’m not good with sitting with their discomfort. I’m always trying to help and fix. And some people have told me I have a tendency to make things about myself. And I’m negative and I’m always complaining about my life. And I always feel like I’m having a crisis because I’m still not good enough at self-soothing.

I took a little walk outside for a while. I was surprised that I wasn't feeling what I thought people were supposed to feel under the circumstances. May be I was fooling myself. I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because we had known for a long time that it was going to happen. It's hard to explain. If a Martian(who, we'll imagine never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures-these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come--it would look to hi like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live. The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference--the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, "But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years." But that's crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?"--all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life.. We had a hell of good time together...

Use art, be creative. No more war. No more children dying. A pawn that does not move in chess upsets the game. I know there is love in the world still and that is what i wish to surround myself with. Sacrifice your time and energy into something positive instead of the negative and you will see that change around you.

Kasha didn't say a word as we ate. She sat with her back to us, staring at a mountain range far in the distance. Yorn and I made small talk about the birds, but my mind was on Kasha, wondering what she was thinking. She was the Traveler from Eelong. We needed her. Eelong needed her. Heck, Halla needed her. I wished I knew how to convince her of that. When she finally did speak, I was surprised at her question. "How many territories are there?" she asked. "Ten in all," I said. "At least that's what I've been told. They're all part of Halla." "Explain to me what halla is," she said. It was an order more than a question. I didn't know why she suddenly had this interest, but if she was willing to listen, I was ready to talk. "The way it was told to me, Halla is everything. Every time, every place, every person and creature that ever existed. It all still exists." "And you understand that?" she asked. "Well, not entirely," I answered honestly. "But you're willing to risk your life and the lives of those around you to protect Halla from Saint Dane?" Good question. I'd asked myself the same question more than once. "I wasn't at first," I began. "Far from it. I didn't want any part of Travelers or flumes and especially of Saint Dane. But since then I've been to a bunch of territories and seen the evil he's capable of." Kasha scoffed and said,"Evil? You're a fool, Pendragon. A tang is evil. What possible evil could a gar cause that's worse than that?" "I'll tell you," I said. "He's killed more people than I want to count, all in the name of creating chaos. He fueled a war on Denduron and tried to poison all of Cloral. Then he nearly crushed three territories at once, my home territories of Earth. But each time the Travelers stopped him. Until Veelox. We failed on Veelox. An entire civilization is going to collapse, millions will die, all because we failed. And Saint Dane wil be there to pick up the pieces. Or step on them." "It's all mildly interesting," she said calmly. "But like I said before, it has nothing to do with me. I don't care." That's when I snapped. Okay, I admit, maybe I should have been cool, but Kasha's total lack of concern had finally gotten to me. I jumped to my feet and said, "Well, you'd better start!" "It's all right, Pendragon," Yorn said calmly. "Relax." "Relax?" I shouted, getting more amped up by the second. "Why? So I won't upset Kasha? She should be upset. People have died fighting Saint Dane. People I've loved, people she's loved." I looked right at Kasha and said, "You don't care? I'll tell you what I don't care about. I don't care that your life is a mess. Sorry, it's true. You've got way bigger problems coming, kitty cat. You want to pretend like none of this affects you? Fine. You're wrong. If we fail, Eelong will crumble and everything you care about will crash along with it. And whether you like it or not, you're a Traveler. So why don't you just grow up and accept it!

Don’t get too upset,” said Roberta. “You may have the psychopathy of a dangerous man, but so do many cops. In fact, a lot of CEOs would have scored the same as you, or worse. Donald Trump is probably a sociopath. But it’s what makes him successful.

Those comments were borne of depression and sadness and my desire to make someone else feel as badly as I did. I get very snarky when I’m upset, which some people find endearing in a weird way but it usually ends up making me disappointed in myself.

The night we met, I sort of... well, I flat-out told a lie. On purpose.” I thought he was trying not to smile. “To me?” he asked. “No. About you.” Now he unleashed that devastating smile of his, crinkling the corners of his eyes. My face was aflame. “Continue. Please.” “There were these girls in the bathroom talking about you, and for some reason, I don’t know why, it upset me, and I told them... thatyouhadanSTD.” I covered my face in shame and he burst into laughter. I thought he might drive off the road. Well, it was kind of funny in an ironic way, because he couldn’t keep a disease anyhow, even if he had gotten one. I found myself beginning to giggle, too, mostly out of relief that he wasn’t offended. “I wondered if you were ever going to tell me!” he said through spurts of hilarity. Duh! Of course he’d been listening! My giggles increased, and it felt so nice that we kept going until we were cracking up. It was the good kind of laughter: the soul-cleansing, ab-crunching, lose-control-of-yourself kind.

I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes. Day by day I grew calmer.

Pardon me,” said Glokta, wiping his running eye with a finger, “but I spent two years in the Emperor’s prisons. I daresay, if I had known I’d be there half that long at the start, I would have made a more concerted effort to kill myself. Seven hundred days, give or take, in the darkness. As close to hell, I would have thought, as a living man can go. My point is this – if you mean to upset me, you'll need more than harsh language.

I worry that I upset people without meaning to. I worry that I don't check my privilege enough. I worry about people being imprisoned for crimes they didn't do. I worry about human rights abuses. I worry about prejudice and politics and pollution and the world my children, and their entire generation, are inheriting from us. I worry about all of the species going extinct because of humans. I worry about my carbon footprint. I worry about all of the pain in the world that I am not actively able to stop. I worry about how much I'm wrapped up in myself, which makes me even more wrapped up in myself.

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist. As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.) But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more - a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself. The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong.

We didn’t see Peeta. Only the propo on Eight. Then we turned the set off because the images upset you. Got it?” he asks. I nod. “Finish your dinner.” I pull myself together enough so that when Plutarch and Fulvia enter, I have a mouthful of bread and cabbage. Finnick is talking about how well Gale came across on camera. We congratulate them on the propo. Make it clear it was so powerful, we tuned out right afterward. They look relieved. They believe us. No one mentions Peeta.

I wouldn’t let you upset me,” she mumbles. “Good!” I laugh and smile at her. I see the tiniest smile in return. “I’m just trying to say…we’re not so different. And, maybe, because of that, you can understand how I feel. I had my own dreams, too, Rinni. I had a shop. I wanted to help people with my talents when it came to herbs and potions. The whole town depended on me and invested in me so I could do it. That profession—herbalist—was my painting. But the world wanted me to be something different. “So, no, I’m not held hostage in the literal sense. But it can feel that way, especially because the life I planned for myself is out of reach.

TINA: I’ll have to go to the Ministry with what I’ve got. (a wobble in her voice) It was nice to see you again, Mr. Scamander. She strides from the room, leaving NEWT perplexed and upset. INT. FLAMEL HOUSE, HALLWAY—AFTERNOON JACOB follows TINA into the hall. JACOB: Hey, hold on one second, will you? Well, hold on! Wait! Tina! She leaves. As the front door closes, NEWT appears at the drawing room door. JACOB: (to NEWT) You didn’t mention salamanders, did you? NEWT: No, she just—ran. I don’t know . . . JACOB (firm): So you chase after her! NEWT grabs his case. He leaves.  EXT. RUE DE MONTMORENCY—END OF DAY TINA is hurrying up the road. NEWT hastens to catch up. NEWT: Tina. Please, just listen to me— TINA: Mr. Scamander, I need to go talk to the Ministry—and I know how you feel about Aurors— NEWT: I may have been a little strong in the way that I expressed myself in that letter— TINA: What was the exact phrase? “A bunch of careerist hypocrites”? NEWT: I’m sorry, but I can’t admire people whose answer to everything that they fear or misunderstand is “kill it”! TINA: I’m an Auror and I don’t— NEWT: Yes, and that’s because you’ve gone middle head! TINA (stopping): Excuse me? NEWT: It’s an expression derived from the three heads of the Runespoor. The middle one is the visionary. Every Auror in Europe wants Credence dead—except you. You’ve gone middle head. A beat. TINA: Who else uses that expression, Mr. Scamander? NEWT considers. NEWT: I think it might just be me.

Narcissists like watching themselves on videotape, and report gaining self-confidence from gazing at their reflection in a mirror. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory contains items such as “I like to look at myself in the mirror,” “I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public,” and “I like to show off my body.” Vanity seems harmless and often is, but vanity often occurs with self-centeredness, which causes so many of the negative behaviors associated with narcissism.

To be honest, I was also upset about what I knew I was heading into. A whole new school where I’d have to make new friends (if I was lucky, which was unlikely) and avoid being stereotyped as a Native American midget (which was probably inevitable). So I was struggling between feeling worried about my mom and feeling sorry for myself, and being angry at her for deserting me and being angry at myself for being so selfish. Although I tried not to show it, my face probably looked like a battlefield that day.

There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.

said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following

Two days after the tragic events of 9/11, I found myself anxious, upset, and desperately in need of the color green.

I want all her emotions for myself, I want all her upsets, I want to be her first an last thought when she wakes and when she goes to sleep. I want every cell to vibrate only for me.

I shook my head at him. “Unbelievable. You have no claim here,” I said, gesturing to myself. “You have no right to be upset that I’m dating Jack. You had your chance.” “I guess I’m not as okay with it as I thought I was. I don’t like seeing him with you,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if it was because Jack was a known player or if Jack was suddenly playing with me.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt an inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. I’m foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of suger, and maybe I’ll calm down. I’ll even wax tenderhearted, though afterwards I’ll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom. And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.

Sebastian: Do you remember when you were eleven and had mono? Our parents wanted us to stay away from each other. Dad was afraid I'd catch it and I'd miss Little League practice. Anyway, you were upset because you were lonely and being all kinds of whiny about it... Lena: I wasn't being whiny. I was stuck in my bedroom by myself for days, and if wasn't sleeping, I was bored. Sebastian: You were sick and you didn't want to be alone. You wanted me. Lena: I didn't want you, per se. I just wanted someone... Sebastian: You've always wanted me. Not just anyone, but me. So, you not wanting me here has nothing to do with you being tired. I know why you don't Or at least I think I understand part of it, and we'll talk about the you-wanting-me part later.

I was surprised and delighted to find a lot of letters from people in the early days would say, ‘I was terribly depressed and upset until I sat down and read your book. It’s really shown me the way up again.’ I wrote it to do this for myself, and it’s seemed to have the same effect on a lot of other people. I can’t explain it. Perhaps I’ve inadvertently written a self-help book.

In 1966, after arriving in New York, I read two of Luria's books, Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Human Brain and Psychological Processes. The latter, which contained very full case histories of patients with frontal lobe damage, filled me with admiration [4]. [Footnote 4]. And fear, for as I read it, I thought, what place is there for me in the world? Luria has already seen, said, written, and thought anything I can ever say, or write, or think. I was so upset that I tore the book in two (I had to buy a new copy for the library, as well as a copy for myself).

grew up in a very invalidating environment,” I declare. “People didn’t take my problems seriously. I was blamed for everything I did. When I got upset, no one taught me how to take care of myself. And you were gone half the time on your trips around the world, and when you were around, you were constantly preoccupied. Even with you there, you weren’t there. I felt entirely alone.

This is…” She crossed her arms, and I braced myself for a rant of epic proportions. “This personal meeting you’ve been telling me about all weekend was just a ruse for you to ask me to sign an extension? “It was a ruse to ask you to be my girlfriend.” She pretended to look upset, but her cheeks gave her away. “You could’ve asked me that over the weekend.” “You would’ve said no.” “No.” She smiled. “I would’ve said that the only reason you’re asking me to be your girlfriend is because you think we might possibly have more sex that way.” “We’re definitely going to have more sex.

And finally he had upset the whole household when he arrived an hour and a half late for luncheon and covered with mud from head to foot, and made not the least apology, saying merely: “I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time. I would willingly reintroduce to society the opium pipe of China or the Malayan kriss, but I am wholly and entirely without instruction in those infinitely more per-nicious (besides being quite bleakly bourgeois) implements, the umbrella and the watch.

I read in Lessing recently: ‘I am too proud to consider myself unlucky. Just clench your teeth and let your skiff sail where the wind and waves take it. Enough that I do not intend to upset it myself

I grew up listening to my mother scoff at all the T.V shows and books that I watched or read. She told me how it was all 'rubbish' and 'garbage'. But the thing is, I think somehow, watching along the show I also grew up. I know everyone says that, like when Good Luck Charlie ended everyone was upset and was like 'I grew up now its gone!' Or 'Aww. My childhood gone' But its not like that with me. I actually grow and learn more things about myself. And some of the shows or books I watched/read, motivated me. They were always there. So if that is the definition of 'rubbish' and 'garbage' than please. Cover me in filth.

When I asked the Reb, Why do bad things happen to good people?, he gave none of the standard answers. He quietly said, “No one knows.” I admired that. But when I asked if that ever shook his belief in God, he was firm. “I cannot waver,” he said. Well, you could, if you didn’t believe in something all-powerful. “An atheist,” he said. Yes. “And then I could explain why my prayers were not answered.” Right. He studied me carefully. He drew in his breath. “I had a doctor once who was an atheist. Did I ever tell you about him?” No. “This doctor, he liked to jab me and my beliefs. He used to schedule my appointments deliberately on Saturdays, so I would have to call the receptionist and explain why, because of my religion, that wouldn’t work.” Nice guy, I said. “Anyhow, one day, I read in the paper that his brother had died. So I made a condolence call.” After the way he treated you? “In this job,” the Reb said, “you don’t retaliate.” I laughed. “So I go to his house, and he sees me. I can tell he is upset. I tell him I am sorry for his loss. And he says, with an angry face, ‘I envy you.’ “‘Why do you envy me?’ I said. “‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God. You can yell. You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But I don’t believe in God. I’m a doctor! And I couldn’t help my brother!’ “He was near tears. ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me. ‘There is no God. I can only blame myself.’” The Reb’s face tightened, as if in pain. “That,” he said, softly, “is a terrible self-indictment.” Worse than an unanswered prayer? “Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.

Oh, how sweet the first kiss of Jesus was! It was a kiss of love. I knew that I was loved and I declared: “I love You and I give myself to You for ever!” Jesus made no demand on me; He asked for no sacrifices. For a long time Jesus and little Thérèse had gazed at each other and they understood each other. On that day it was no longer a matter of gazing: it was a union. There were no longer two of us. Thérèse had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the depth of the ocean. Only Jesus remained — as Master and King. For had not Thérèse begged Him to take away her freedom? Freedom frightened her, for she knew herself to be so weak and feeble that she wished to be united with the divine Power for ever. Her joy was too great, too deep to be contained. She wept. Her companions were amazed and afterwards they said: “Why on earth did she cry? Something must have been upsetting her. Perhaps it was because her mother wasn’t there, nor her Carmelite sister she loves so much.” They couldn’t understand that such a flood of divine joy cannot be borne without tears.

Prison Moon Four a.m. work duty and I begin my solitary trudge from outer compound to main building. A shivering guard, chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searches me until content that my inconsequential nudity. poses no threat and then whispers the secret code that allows me admittance into the open quarter-mile walkway. I chuff my way into another day as ice glints on the razor wire and the rifles note my numbed passage, silent but for my huffs and scuffle on the cracked, slippery sidewalk A new moon, veiled in wispy fog and beringed in glory, hangs over the prison, its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights. The moon’s creamy pull upsets some liquid equilibrium within me and like tides, wolves and all manner of madmen, I surrender disturbed by the certainty that under the bony luminescence of a grinning moon The lunar deliriums grip me and I howl--once, then again, and surely somewhere an unbound sleeper stirs, penitence is dying a giddy death. I shake myself sane and as the echoes hang in the frigid air I explain to the wild-eyed guard that convicts, like all animals under the leash, must bay at the beauty beyond them.

I went for a walk outside. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I was surprised how I didn’t feel what I thought people would expect to feel under the circumstances. I wasn’t delighted, but I didn’t feel terribly upset, perhaps because I had known for seven years that something like this was going to happen. I didn’t know how I was going to face all my friends up at Los Alamos. I didn’t want people with long faces talking to me about it. When I got back (yet another tire went flat on the way), they asked me what happened. “She’s dead. And how’s the program going?” They caught on right away that I didn’t want to moon over it. (I had obviously done something to myself psychologically: Reality was so important—I had to understand what really happened to Arlene, physiologically—that I didn’t cry until a number of months later, when I was in Oak Ridge. I was walking past a department store with dresses in the window, and I thought Arlene would like one of them. That was too much for me.)

Sammi,” Alex said, still holding on to her arm, firmly, but not hurting her. “Don’t do that.” “Do what?” Sam asked a bit peevishly. “Don’t lie and tell me what you think I want to hear rather than how you really feel.” After a beat where Sam didn’t say anything he continued. “If you want to tell me to piss off, tell me. If I do something that hurts your feelings, tell me.” His voice suddenly lowered and he took her hands in his. Sam had to lean into him to hear him over the noise of the barn. “For the love of God, you’re the only real person here. If I can’t rely on you to tell me like it is, who will?” He paused. “Now, please tell me what upset you.” “It’s just that…..” she paused, finally continuing when Alex squeezed her hand. “I don’t fit in with the other women here, and I don’t want you to see me as…less…then they are.” “I don’t see you as less.” Alex immediately said, not even pausing to think about what he wanted to say. “We don’t really know each other, but when I’m lying in my cot at night I find myself thinking about you and what you are thinking about.” He brushed his knuckle over her reddening cheek and continued, “I would never intentionally insult you like that. I just have to learn how I can tease you and not have you take offense.

In the end, I'm always like this. Whether I get involved with people or not...before I know it, I've done something wrong and made someone upset. I'm even disappointing myself. How many times? How many more times do I have to let myself down for this to stop?

Telltale Signs That You Grew Up as a “Little Adult” It’s often so difficult for adult daughters to step back and see how they were put into the adult helper role. To help you recognize if this dynamic echoes your experience, I’ve created a pair of checklists to help you identify how mothering your mother shaped and influenced a significant part of your life. When you were a child did you: • Believe that your most important job in life was to solve your mother’s problems or ease her pain—no matter what the cost to you? • Ignore your own feelings and pay attention only to what she wanted and how she felt? • Protect her from the consequences of her behavior? • Lie or cover up for her? • Defend her when anyone said anything bad about her? • Think that your good feelings about yourself depended on her approval? • Have to keep her behavior secret from your friends? As an adult, do these statements ring true for you: • I will do anything to avoid upsetting my mother, and the other adults in my life. • I can’t stand it if I feel I’ve let anyone down. • I am a perfectionist, and I blame myself for everything that goes wrong. • I’m the only person I can really count on. I have to do things myself. • People like me not for myself but for what I can do for them. • I have to be strong all the time. If I need anything or ask for help, it means I’m weak. • I should be able to solve every problem. • When everyone else is taken care of, I can finally have what I want. • I feel angry, unappreciated, and used much of the time, but I push these feelings deep inside myself.

I struggle with how I am supposed to live as a survivor, how to present my story and myself to the world, how much or how little to disclose. There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let's tone it down. You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you're better, when what you say can make us feel good, when you have something more uplifting, affirming. This ugliness was something I never asked for, it was dropped on me, and for a long time I worried it made me ugly too. It made me into a sad, unwelcome story that nobody wanted to hear.

Sorry about you being upset. Sorry I’m so fucking obsessed with you that I will go to whatever lengths to get even the smallest piece of information about you. Sorry that I want you to myself and wish I could lock you away until you became as obsessed with me as I am with you.

Sorry about you being upset. Sorry I’m so fucking obsessed with you that I will go to whatever lengths to get even the smallest piece of information about you. Sorry that I want you to myself and wish I could lock you away until you became as obsessed with me as I am with you.

To imagine I wasted time clinging to superficial ideals with a desperate want, because I was terrified of losing things, afraid of the outcome, afraid of upsetting my husband, my family or my associates. Afraid of being alone, a single unmarried woman afraid of being a failed business owner, trusting the love of a man I'm having an affair with, and believing in myself. Afraid of taking the next step, because "What will people think?" as if it were death. Here I am having lost everything, having died, yet I am still alive, still burning with existence.

Thinking about the journey I have been on and why I might be here in this lifetime. I’m here to not repeat patterns. To not live on other people’s terms, but on my own terms. To stop trying to please everyone at the expense of myself. So here I am, to find me, and then I freak out. What? Did I upset you? It’s fucking scary. Fucking scary to take a baby step in that direction. To reveal myself? To not look in the mirror or take an iPhone selfie that will expose the inside? But this is what it takes to be my best. In this lifetime, to bare my naked soul and my scarred skin. You can love me or hate me. Or be somewhere in between. But I am who I am. We all have many scars from just living. From living life, feeling love, hurt, loss, pain. Maybe instead of hiding those scars this time I can turn them into beautiful tattoos of experience on that naked skin.

NO!” I bellowed it at him. “You say that over and over like it’s some kind of slogan. And I never knew why it made me feel as if I was going mad. I don’t ‘upset myself,’ Marco. Things ‘upset me.’ Things ‘upset’ everyone unless they’re catatonic or drugged to their eyeballs. It’s called life.

And it was this location that provides my second memory. (It must come after the first because in it I am now standing up.) I was bitten by a rabbit. Or rather, I was nibbled by a rabbit, but, because I was such a weedy, namby-pamby little pansy, I reacted as though I’d lost a limb. It was the sheer unfairness of it all that so upset me. One minute, I was saying, ‘Hello, Mr Bunny!’ and smiling at its sweet little face and funny floppy ears. The next, the fucker savaged me. It seemed so gratuitous. What, I asked myself, had I done to the rabbit to deserve this psychotic response?

how do you feel today? like my lungs are not collapsing. like everything is not a mistake. like i am not a mistake. like i do not need to erase myself to fix myself. like i am not a single branch floating in an upset sea. like there is something bright out there. that maybe. just maybe. it is for me.

I might well notice some disappointed feelings, in which case I allow myself to feel them until they pass; in effect, I choose vulnerability over victimhood. Arriving home, there is no upset, no emotional detaching, no sulking—maybe some gentle teasing, but all within the bounds of loving humor and with affinity intact.

At twenty I believed myself passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care.

I have learned,” Douglas explained, “first through my wife’s illness and then especially through the accident, not to confuse God with life. I’m no stoic. I am as upset about what happened to me as anyone could be. I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about the accident as I do—grieved and angry. I don’t blame Him for what happened… . We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair.’ But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life—by expecting constant good health, for example—then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment.”3

The ads in the papers all said 'help wanted, will train,' but wherever she went she was turned down. "The position's just been filled," she was told again and again. Or, "We wouldn't want to upset the other employees." At the department store where she had once bought all her hats and silk stockings they would not hire her as a cashier because they were afraid of offending the customers. Instead they offered her work adding up sales slips in a small dark room in the back where no one could see her but she politely declined. "I was afraid I'd ruin my eyes back there," she told us. "I was afraid I might accidentally remember who I was and ... offend myself.

They had found out. Before I could panic, I made myself stretch my fingers wide and take a calming breath. You already knew this was bound to happen. At least that’s what I told myself. The more I thought about it, the more I should have been appreciative that the people at the chapel in Las Vegas hadn’t recognized him. Or that people on the street had been oblivious and hadn’t seen us going in and out of there. Or that the receptionist at the acupuncturist hadn’t snapped a picture on her phone and posted it online. Because I might not understand all people, much less most of them, but I understood nosey folks. And nosey folks would do something like that without a second thought. Yet, I reminded myself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about. It would be fine. So, one gossip site posted about us getting married. Whoop-de-do. There was probably a thousand sites just like it. I briefly thought about Diana hearing about it, but I’d deal with that later. There was no use in getting scared now. She was the only one whose reaction I cared about. My mom and sisters’ opinions and feelings weren’t exactly registering at the top of my list now… or ever. I made myself shove them to the back of my thoughts. I was tired of being mad and upset; it affected my work. Plus, they’d made me sad and mad enough times in my life. I wasn’t going to let them ruin another day. Picking my phone up again, I quickly texted Aiden back, swallowing my nausea at the same time. Me: Who told you? Not even two minutes passed before my phone dinged with a response. Miranda: Trevor’s blowing up my phone. Eww. Trevor. Me: We knew it was going to happen eventually, right? Good luck with Trev. I’m glad he doesn’t have my number. And I was even gladder there wasn’t a home phone; otherwise, I’m positive he would have been blowing it up too. I managed to get back to looking at images on the screen for a few more minutes—a bit more distracted than usual—when the phone beeped again. It was Aiden/Miranda. I should really change his contact name. Miranda: Good luck? I’m not answering his calls. What? Me: That psycho will come visit if you don’t. Was that me being selfish? Yes. Did I care? No. Aiden: I know. Uh. Me: You’re always at practice… Aiden: Have fun. This asshole! I almost laughed, but before I could, he sent me another message. Aiden: I’ll get back to him in a couple days. Don’t worry. Snorting, I texted back. Me: I’m not worried. If he drops by, I’ll set him up in your room. Aiden: You genuinely scare me. Me: You don’t know how many times you barely made it through the day alive, for the record. He didn’t text me back after that

So, when I read of a recent study that found that children are significantly more inclined to eat “difficult” foods like liver, spinach, broccoli—and other such hard-to-sell “but-it’s-good-for-you” classics—when they are wrapped in comfortingly bright packages from McDonald’s, I was at first appalled, and then … inspired. Rather than trying to co-opt Ronald’s all-too-effective credibility among children to short-term positive ends, like getting my daughter to eat the occasional serving of spinach, I could reverse-engineer this! Use the strange and terrible powers of the Golden Arches for good—not evil! I plan to dip something decidedly unpleasant in an enticing chocolate coating and then wrap it carefully in McDonald’s wrapping paper. Nothing dangerous, mind you, but something that a two-and-a-half-year-old will find “yucky!”—even upsetting—in the extreme. Maybe a sponge soaked with vinegar. A tuft of hair. A Barbie head. I will then place it inside the familiar cardboard box and leave it—as if forgotten—somewhere for my daughter to find. I might even warn her, “If you see any of that nasty McDonald’s … make sure you don’t eat it!” I’ll say, before leaving her to it. “Daddy was stupid and got some chocolate … and now he’s lost it…” I might mutter audibly to myself before taking a long stroll to the laundry room. An early, traumatic, Ronald-related experience can only be good for her.

What did she say to you?" "Nothing." "Oh, great. I have to try to get you out of this mess after you hit a girl for nothing," he whispered angrily. "Josephine, don't waste my time. You don't seem like a violent type. She had to have said something to rile you. "I just don't like her. She's vain. She puts her hair all over my books when she sits in front of me in class." "So you hit her?" "No ... yes." "A girl puts her hair all over your books, so you break her nose?" "Well, I don't think it's broken, personally." "Doctor Kildare, we are not here to give a medical opinion. I want to know what she said to you." "God," I yelled exasperated. "She said something to upset me, okay?" "What? That you were ugly? That you smell? What?" I looked horrified. "I'm not ugly. I don't smell." He sighed and took off his glasses, sitting down in front of me and pulling my chair towards him. "I was just asking for a reason." "Never mind," I said. "That creep out there wants -you to pay for his daughter's nose-job. Because of that nose-job she will be a famous model one day and you'll be working in a fast-food chain because you couldn't finish your Higher School Certificate due to expulsion. Now tell me what she said." "There's nothing wrong with a fast-food chain," I said, thinking of my McDonald's job. "I'm really getting pissed off now, Josephine. You called me out of work for this and you won't tell me why." "Just go," I said, as he stood up and paced the room. "I'll defend myself in court." He groaned and looked up to the ceiling pulling his hair. "God save me from days like this," he begged. "Go," I yelled. "Okay. Let him win. He's a creep. Creeps always win," he said walking to the door. "But don't think you're going to make it in a court room, young lady. If you can't be honest, don't expect to stand up in a court room and defend honesty." "She called me a wog, amongst other things," I said, finally. "I haven't been called one for so long. It offended me. It made me feel pathetic." "Did you provoke her?" "Yes. I called her a racist pig due to some things she was saying." "Is she one?" "God, yes. The biggest.

I don't know how long it went on," he continued. "Not that long, likely, but it seemed like a long time to me. At last he stopped a moment and shouted at me. He was beside himself wi' fury, and I was so furious myself I could barely make out what he said at first but then I could. He roared 'Damn you, Jamie! Can ye no cry out? You're grown now, and I dinna mean to beat you ever again, but I want one good yelp out of ye, lad, before I quit, just so I'll think I've made some impression on ye at last!'" Jamie laughed, disturbing the even movement of his pulsebeat. "I was so upset at that, I straightened up and whirled round and yelled at him, 'Weel why did ye no say so in the first place, ye auld fool! OUCH!!

I started crying when the group [therapy] was over because the last thing we did upset me - we all held a piece of the same cloth, leaned back and supported each other's weight. I couldn't do it. I bent my legs and elbows and stood very firm, yet . . . I needed to feel supported, as i do in life, but i can't let myself be, and i pretend not to need that support.

When I wasn’t in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I’d spend time alone, usually in the bathroom adjacent to Joel’s room, staring into the shattered mirror as my hand gently caressed my baby bump. More often than not I would cry. Not because my pregnancy upset me, or that my hormones were getting the better of me, but because I missed Joel, my baby’s father. That the baby would grow up without a dad made me anxious. Then again, if he had survived, what irreparable damage would he have suffered and how would his pain translate to his child? Jesus, I was studying myself in the very mirror he’d smashed the night he chose to take his own life. The bump had grown slowly in the last couple of months. With these limited resources, I didn’t have the privilege of eating whatever I craved. Had that been the case, I was sure I would have been bigger by now. Still, I tried to eat as well and as often as I could and the size of my belly had proven that my attempts at proper nutrition were at least growing something in there. Nothing made me happier than feeling my baby move. It was a constant source of relief for me. In our present circumstances, with no vitamins and barely any meat products save the recent stash of jerky Earl had found in an abandoned trailer, my diet consisted of berries, lettuce, and canned beans for the most part. Feeling the baby move inside me was an experience I often enjoyed alone. I would think of Joel then as well. Imagining his hand on my belly, with mine guiding his to the kicks and punches.

I am sorry. I'm sorry that I feel as if you don't trust me enough to confide me. This is me being selfish even though this isn't about me, it's about you. I'm sorry that it makes me upset that in those times you thought about ending your life, I feel like I didn't cross your mind. I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to talk to me about those toxic thoughts that's trying to push you to end everything, because I know myself that's it is hard to share. I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to think about how horrible it is going to be for me once I learn what you've done. I'm sorry for feeling like this, it is selfish, I am selfish. I'm sorry for feeling like I'm not a good friend, I know that's now how you think, I'm sorry. I just love you and I'm hurt.

I acknowledge all of my feelings and accept that they are natural expressions of the grief over losing you. I am angry about what caused you to die. I want to shake my fist or scream at the caregivers who did not save your life. I am angry with God for taking you away too soon. It upsets me that you left this world even though I still needed you. What can I say or think or do to forgive myself or others for not being able to stop you from dying?

Sometimes the adoption - the abandonment, as I could not help but think of it when I was very young - upset me more; sometimes my differences did but mostly, it was both at once, race and adoption, linked parts of my identity that set me apart from everyone else in my orbit. I could neither change nor deny these facts, so I worked to reconcile myself to them. To tamp down the stirring anger or confusion when that proved impossible, time and time again.

You think you can count on someone,” I said, panic filling my chest. “That maybe there’s one single adult in the world you can count on, someone who won’t go off and get themselves killed or leave you so they can find a new husband or go and get some little kid’s illness. It’s not fair.” I sounded like a pouty child, but I was so upset, I couldn’t help myself. “You’re right,” David said quietly. “It’s not fair.” The way he simply agreed with me was deeply comforting.

struggle with how I am supposed to live as a survivor, how to present my story and myself to the world, how much or how little to disclose. There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let’s tone it down. You will find society asking you for the happy ending,

I stalked into the moonlit garden and lost myself in its labyrinth of hedges and flower beds. I didn't care where I was going. After a while, I paused in the rose garden. The moonlight stained the red petals a deep purple and cast a silvery sheen on the white blooms. 'My father had this garden planted for my mother,' Tamlin said from behind me. I didn't bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. 'It was a mating present.' I stared the flowers without seeing anything. The flowers I'd painted on the table at home were probably crumbling or gone by now. Nesta might have even scraped them off. My nails pricked the skin of my palms. Tamlin providing for them or no, glamouring their memories or no, I'd been... erased from their lives. Forgotten. I'd let him erase me. He'd offered me paints and the space and time to practice; he'd shown me pools of starlight; he'd saved my life like some kind of feral knight in a legend, and I'd gulped it down like faerie wine.

must hide from the world. The next time you get triggered, use the opportunity to bring the light of your consciousness to what is hidden in the shadows. The world is our mirror: we can choose to look at our reflection or look away until another time. There are very few times when someone says something to us that isn’t ours. So instead of getting mad at the person who sparked your upset, instead of shutting them down or blaming them, take a look in the mirror.  What is this person trying to show me about myself?

Poor thing,” my mother said. “She’s having nearly as hard a time as I am.” “She actually saw the girls every day, so I’m sure she is,” I said peevishly in spite of myself. “How did you know them?” “Wind Gap, I need not remind you, is a small town. They were sweet, beautiful little girls. Just beautiful.” “But you didn’t really know them.” “I did know them. I knew them well.” “How?” “Camille, please try not to do this. I’ve just told you that I am upset and unnerved, and instead of being comforting, you attack me.

Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.

As Solomon Asch, one of the great psychologists of the twentieth century, once wrote, “We look at a person and immediately a certain impression of his character forms itself in us. A glance, a few spoken words are sufficient to tell us a story about a highly complex matter. We know that such impressions form with remarkable rapidity and with great ease. Subsequent observations may enrich or upset our view, but we can no more prevent its rapid growth than we can avoid perceiving a given visual object or hearing a melody.

Mangal draws me aside and tells me that Puraji's doctor took a full day looking for the shrubs and herbs for the treatment. Wherefore the relief, i ask myself. Nothing has changed. If anything, the price is twenty four hours closer to death. I am about to leave when the doctor calls out to me. ' You'll wait outside till i have finished my examination.' It's a long, long time since anyone has spoken to me without my honorific. I am upset at his lack of mannerisms and grateful. If i am ordered around, someone else must be in charge.

How do you keep your emotions so under control, Nicolas? Even when you're doing things that have to bother you?" She glanced up at him to make certain her question hadn't upset him. "I don't do anything unless I believe it is necessary. If it's necessary then there's no reason for me to be bothered by it. The universe has a natural order. I do my best to flow with it and not try to control things outside of myself. The truth is, control is a myth. You can't control another person or even an event. You can only control yourself. So that's what I do.

Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people. Remember I told you how upsetting it was to me that our friend Chioma would often tell me that “people” would not “like” something I wanted to say or do? I always felt, from her, the unspoken pressure to change myself to fit some mold that would please an amorphous entity called “people.” It was upsetting because we want those close to us to encourage us to be our most authentic selves.

Strong emotional feelings don't just go away overnight. In fact, they may never go away. The fears of feeling disliked, or that I wasn't going to fit in, all quickly bubbled up to the surface. but it was the choices I made when I was faced with challenges that really mattered. I had to continually tell myself that I was always in control. If someone was pressuring me to do something that I knew was not good for me, I had the power to simply say no. No one can ever take that power away from me. If someone was upset or didn't like me for saying no, that was someone that I really didn't need in my life.

I don’t know if the other defectors had the same problems, but for me the most difficult part of the program was learning to introduce myself in class. Almost nobody knew how to do this, so the teachers taught us that the first thing you say is your name, age, and hometown. Then you can tell people about your hobbies, your favorite recording artist or movie star, and finally you can talk about “what you want to be in the future.” When I was called on, I froze. I had no idea what a “hobby” was. When it was explained that it was something I did that made me happy, I couldn’t conceive of such a thing. My only goal was supposed to be making the regime happy. And why would anyone care about what “I” wanted to be when I grew up? There was no “I” in North Korea—only “we.” This whole exercise made me uncomfortable and upset. When the teacher saw this, she said, “If that’s too hard, then tell us your favorite color.” Again, I went blank. In North Korea, we are usually taught to memorize everything, and most of the time there is only one correct answer to each question. So when the teacher asked for my favorite color, I thought hard to come up with the “right” answer. I had never been taught to use the “critical thinking” part of my brain, the part that makes reasoned judgments about why one thing seems better than another. The teacher told me, “This isn’t so hard. I’ll go first: My favorite color is pink. Now what’s yours?” “Pink!” I said, relieved that I was finally given the right answer. In South Korea, I learned to hate the question “What do you think?” Who cared what I thought? It took me a long time to start thinking for myself and to understand why my own opinions mattered. But after five years of practicing being free, I know now that my favorite color is spring green and my hobby is reading books and watching documentaries. I’m not copying other people’s answers anymore.

I feel something on my chest. Ivy's resting her head on me. In fact, she's pulled herself so close that we're touching everywhere. My heart picks up speed again, but I'm surprisingly calm, seeing her beautiful face close to mine, her eyes closed in an expression of content bliss, and—the best part—feeling her own heart pound in time with mine. She's feeling what I'm feeling. That is when I know for sure. "Ivy?" I know what I have to do. "Mm?" Her songbird voice is a calm purr. "I think...no. I really, really like you." Like moving through molasses, Ivy raises her head. Her eyes are enormous with bewilderment. But there's no fright, no dislike, no anything that discourages me, With that in mind, I don't hesitate as I move my face and my lips to her lips. Ivy's lips are cool like water but delicate and velvety and smooth like round pebbles. She smells like wildflowers, wet earth, and freshly cut grass, which only makes me want her more. I press my lips harder against hers, and a shiver of delight snakes through me when I feel her press back. Daring myself, I open my mouth. So does she, and the kiss deepens. My hand slides upward to caress her satin cheek, and the back of my neck tingles as her fingers play with my hair. This is it. Ivy's and my first kiss. I wouldn't have it any other way. Unhurriedly we pull our faces away, though we leave our foreheads touching. "Ivy?" I peer into her eyes. She doesn't look upset, but more calm and curious. She meets my eyes and asks, "What was that?" "A kiss. You do it with people you like." To my amazement Ivy leans forward and kisses me again. It's incredible as the first time. "That is my feeling towards you," she tells me as she leans back. She meets my eyes, her face flushed but determined. "I...am...really liking you, too." I smile and pull her to me, and we grasp each other like we never want to let go. She likes me. I like her. This can't get any better.

Enraged I throw myself to the ground and I scream, my best friend is gone, this world is so mean. I cry as I pound my fists on his grass, I’m very upset that our time went so fast. My heart beats faster than ever before, my tears unstoppable, I'm hurt to the core. There are no words people can say, that will ease my excruciating pain. I don’t understand why you had to go. You leaving me, we just didn’t know. I’ll make it somehow, I’ll start anew. But, there is no way I can replace you. I struggle to make it through each day, and retain my sanity in this foggy haze. The sadness and pain that I display, is because God decided to take you away.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

For the first time since I realized that Teddy was gone, too, I feel something unclench. I feel myself breathe. I know that Gramps can’t be that late-inning pinch hitter I’d hoped for. He won’t unplug my breathing tube or overdose me with morphine or anything like that. But this is the first time today that anyone has acknowledged what I have lost. I know that the social worker warned Gran and Gramps not to upset me, but Gramps’s recognition, and the permission he just offered me—it feels like a gift. Gramps doesn’t leave me. He slumps back into the chair. It’s quiet now. So quiet that you can almost hear other people’s dreams. So quiet that you can almost hear me tell Gramps, “Thank you.

Still, my flight had been dictated by my hope that I could find myself in a place where I would be treated more humanely than my society had treated me at home, where my risks would be more personal, and my fate less austerely sealed. And Paris had done this for me: by leaving me completely alone. I lived in Paris for a long time without making a single French friend, and even longer before I saw the inside of a French home. This did not really upset me, either, for Henry James had been here before me and had had the generosity to clue me in. Furthermore, for a black boy who had grown up on Welfare and the chicken-shit goodwill of American liberals, this total indifference came as a great relief and, even, as a mark of respect.

Look, I’m kind of tense,” he said. “So could you just break it to me? I know you’ve got some feelings about me being a shadow.” “I’ve been trying not to think about it too much,” Charlie told him. He looked at her incredulously. “How’s that working?” “I figured I could think about it when we got out of here. And maybe,” Charlie said hopefully, “we could even have a big fight about it. With screaming. And throwing things. And I could tell you how stupid you were for thinking I was having an affair with Adam.” “After you described his murder, I figured that out myself. You seemed pretty upset about the couch.” He laughed before he could stop himself, his hand going to cover his mouth. “I’m so sorry. That’s not funny.” “It’s a little bit funny,” she admitted.

We have some great museums. You'd love the lake." "I don't know that I can enjoy any kind of water anymore." "Why not?" I already knew. "After that little girl, little Ann Nash, was left in the creek to drown." She paused to take a sip of her iced tea. "I knew her, you know." Amma whined and began fidgeting in her seat. "She wasn't drowned though," I said, knowing my correction would annoy her. "She was strangled. She just ended up in the creek." "And then the Keene girl. I was fond of both of them. Very fond." She stared away wistfully, and Alan put his hand over hers. Amma stood up, released a little scream the way an excited puppy might suddenly bark, and ran upstairs. "Poor thing," my mother said. "She's having nearly as hard a time as I am." "She actually saw the girls every day, so I'm sure she is," I said peevishly in spite of myself. "How did you know them?" "Wind Gap, I need not remind you, is a small town. They were sweet, beautiful little girls. Just beautiful." "But you didn't really know them." "I did know them. I knew them well." "How?" "Camille, please try not to do this. I've just told you that I am upset and unnerved, and instead of being comforting, you attack me." "So. You've sworn off all bodies of water in the future, then?" My mother emitted a quick, creaky sound. "You need to shut up now, Camille." She folded the napkin around the remains of her pear like a swaddling and left the room. Alan followed her with his manic whistling, like an old-time piano player lending drama to a silent movie.

I think of you, my darling, in the most inconvenient of times. I think of you when I‘m talking to my friends when I‘m working when I‘m reading the news. I think of you when I‘m eating or taking a bath or when I‘m supposed to be writing. I think of you and how your smile makes my days brighter. I smile and think to myself how lucky I am to sometimes be the reason why you smile.I think of you and how you look when you‘re upset. I think of you and how I‘d love to have your voice lull me to sleep. I think of you and how I want to sleep next to you at night and wake up next to you and see your face the first thing in the morning. God, it drives everything that‘s a woman in me crazy. But then I‘ll think of you again, and I won‘t stop thinking of you unless I catch myself doing it.

I remember." I nod. Wanting to say: I remember everything-all of it-the question is: Do you? But instead, I stare down at my feet, smiling stupidly. Everything I do around him is stupid. Some Seeker I've turned out to be. Attempting to redeem myself,say something normal,not let on that I already know he's employed here-thanks to the raven who allowed me to spy on him earlier,I say, "So,I guess you hang out here a lot then?" He pushes a hand through his hair, as his eyes-the color of aquamarines-glide down the length of me.And damn if I can't feel their trajectory. It's like showering in a stream of warm, molten honey-dripping from the top of my forehead all the way down to my feet. "I guess you could say that," he says,voicelow and deep. "More than most, anyway." He waves a damp towel, tugs on the string of his apron, and I blush in reply. The sight of it reminding me of what I saw in the alleyway-watching him lean against the wall,his face so soft anddreamy I longed to touch him-kiss him-like I did in the dream. I study him closely,seeking traces of recognition, remembrance-some small token of evidence to assure me that, as odd as it seems,that kiss in the cave was as real as it felt-but coming up empty. "So,how long have you worked here?" I ask, returning to the topic at hand. My gaze drifting over the black V-necked T-shirt skimming the sinuous line of his body-telling myself it's all part of my reconnaissance,my need to gather as uch information as I can about him and his kin. But knowing that's not really it.The truth is,I like looking at him, being near him. "I guess you could say somewhere between too long and not long enough-depending on the state of my wallet." His laugh is good-natured and easy-the kid that starts at the belly and trips all the way up. "It's pretty much the only decent game in town." He shrugs. "One way or another,you end up working for the Richters,and believe me, this is one of the better gigs." I peer at him closely,remembering what Cade said when I was here via the raven. How he referred to him by another name. "You're not a Richter?" I ask,holding my breath in my cheeks.Despite what Paloma told me, I need to hear it from him,confirm that he doesn't identify with their clan. "I go by Whitefeather," he says,gaze steady and serious. "I was raised by my mom,didn't even know the Richters when I was a kid." Despite getting the answer I wanted, I frown in return. His being a Richter was a good reason to avoid him-without it,I'm out of excuses. "Is that okay?" He dips his head toward mine,his mouth tugging at the side. "You seem a little upset by the news." I shake my head,break free of my reverie, and say, "No-not at all. Believe me,it's more like a relief." I meet his gaze,seeing the way it narrows in question. "Guess I'm not a big fan of your brother," I add,watching as he throws his head back and laughs,the sight of that long,glorious column of neck forcing me to look away,it's too much to take. "If it makes you feel any better, most of the time I'd have to agree." He returns to me,the warmth of his gaze solely reponsible for the wave of comfort that flows through me.

I understand you are upset, but the things you are talking about are not your style. I know you are far too reasonable and have too good a future to even consider such things.” This reaction is not intended to convince the threatener that he isn’t angry but rather to convince him that you are not afraid. It is also important to let the threatener know that he has not embarked on a course from which he cannot retreat. A good theme is “We all say things when we react emotionally; I’ve done it myself. Let’s just forget it. I know you’ll feel different tomorrow.” Even in the cases in which the threats are determined to be serious (and thus call for interventions or extensive preparations), we advise clients never to show the threatener a high appraisal of his words and never to show fear.

Please, I don’t want to go yet! I want to see what you really look like. “IT WILL STRIKE FEAR IN YOUR HEART.” I promised I wouldn’t be frightened and said that it would be a privilege to see them. However, I did request that they make a peaceful gesture in the midst of this frightening exposure, just to reassure me. A wave, perhaps? A spinning white light with a hint of green began to radiate over their faces and upper bodies. The intensity of this light slowly got brighter. It radiated from no detectable source. Then I saw what they truly looked like. They were big, all right. Their upper bodies looked like football linebackers. As the light became brighter and the details clearer, fear and shock did course through me like lightning. They had scales, and their faces were sort of snakelike, or lizardlike. Nothing at all like the smaller aliens. I felt an odd, deep-down instinctual shock, but I told myself to calm down. Fig. 31: I See What These Aliens Really Look Like Their eyes were small like ours, but diamond shaped. The pupils were reddish. Their heads were big, and their brow stuck far out from their eyes to various degrees, giving them all some kind of individuality. I was surprised that I was deeply upset by them. “Hey,” I said feebly. “You promised to…uh...wave.” Wave they did. Each and every one of them slowly lifted their arms and waved them in front of their faces — a sight to behold. This relaxed me, but I was surprised by a feature I didn’t expect — their hands. Their hands were huge, with thick club-like features, which appeared too thick by my estimate to work fine instruments.

if my father had turned up after all we would have gone away without letting him find out we were here. If he’s safe I don’t want to see him. There’s no point, they never forgave me, they didn’t understand the divorce; I don’t think they even understood the marriage, which wasn’t surprising since I didn’t understand it myself. What upset them was the way I did it, so suddenly, and then running off and leaving my husband and child, my attractive full-color magazine illustrations, suitable for framing. Leaving my child, that was the unpardonable sin; it was no use trying to explain to them why it wasn’t really mine. But I admit I was stupid, stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results, and I didn’t have any excuses, I was never good at them. My brother was, he used to make them up in advance of the transgressions; that’s the logical way.

Since we’ve ruled out another man as the explanation for all this, I can only assume something has gone wrong at Havenhurst. Is that it?” Elizabeth seized on that excuse as if it were manna from heaven. “Yes,” she whispered, nodding vigorously. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss on her forehead and said teasingly, “Let me guess-you discovered the mill overcharged you?” Elizabeth thought she would die of the sweet torment when he continued tenderly teasing her about being thrifty. “Not the mill? Then it was the baker, and he refused to give you a better price for buying two loaves instead of one.” Tears swelled behind her eyes, treacherously close to the surface, and Ian saw them. “That bad?” he joked, looking at the suspicious sheen in her eyes. “Then it must be that you’ve overspent your allowance.” When she didn’t respond to his light probing, Ian smiled reassuringly and said, “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out together tomorrow.” It sounded as though he planned to stay, and that shook Elizabeth out of her mute misery enough to say chokingly, “No-it’s the-the masons. They’re costing much more than I-I expected. I’ve spent part of my personal allowance on them besides the loan you made me for Havenhurst.” “Oh, so it’s the masons,” he grinned, chuckling. “You have to keep your eye on them, to be sure. They’ll put you in the poorhouse if you don’t keep an eye on the mortar they charge you for. I’ll have to talk with them in the morning.” “No!” she burst out, fabricating wildly. “That’s just what has me so upset. I didn’t want you to have to intercede. I wanted to do it all myself. I have it all settled now, but it’s been exhausting. And so I went to the doctor to see why I felt so tired. He-he said there’s nothing in the world wrong with me. I’ll come home to Montmayne the day after tomorrow. Don’t wait here for me. I know how busy you are right now. Please,” she implored desperately, “let me do this, I beg you!” Ian straightened and shook his head in baffled disbelief, “I’d give you my life for the price of your smile, Elizabeth. You don’t have to beg me for anything. I do not want you spending your personal allowance on this place, however. If you do,” he lied teasingly, “I may be forced to cut it off.” Then, more seriously, he said, “If you need more money for Havenhurst, just tell me, but your allowance is to be spent exclusively on yourself. Finish your brandy,” he ordered gently, and when she had, he pressed another kiss on her forehead. “Stay here as long as you must. I have business in Devon that I’ve been putting off because I didn’t want to leave you. I’ll go there and return to London on Tuesday. Would you like to join me there instead of at Montmayne?” Elizabeth nodded. “There’s just one thing more,” he finished, studying her pale face and strained features. “Will you give me your word the doctor didn’t find anything at all to be alarmed about?” “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I give you my word.” She watched him walk back into his own bed chamber. The moment his door clicked into its latch Elizabeth turned over and buried her face in the pillows. She wept until she thought there couldn’t possibly be any more tears left in her, and then she wept harder. Across the room the door leading out into the hall was opened a crack, and Berta peeked in, then quickly closed it. Turning to Bentner-who’d sought her counsel when Ian slammed the door in his face and ripped into Elizabeth-Berta said miserably, “She’s crying like her heart will break, but he’s not in there anymore.” “He ought to be shot!” Bentner said with blazing contempt. Berta nodded timidly and clutched her dressing robe closer about her. “He’s a frightening man, to be sure, Mr. Bentner.

Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“ “Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?” “Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.” “No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.” From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck. Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.” “Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered. “You may bring it up to us.” Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man. “What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.” “You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?” “Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?” Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!” Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.” Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.

Then when I finally manage to fall asleep with my untouched mate lying next to me," he said, giving me a heated gaze, "She rolls right through her wall and onto me." "This has to be the bond--- I don't roll around in my sleep." I covered my face with a pillow. "And I certainly don't throw myself on men I've known only for a matter of weeks." I'd never thrown myself at men at all, to be honest, but Devin is not high school puppy love material, and he's no college fling that was never meant to be. If anything, he was straight out of the calendar Candace kept on her fridge. "Not that I was bothered by it. In fact, I wouldn't mind a repeat." I threw my pillow at him and covered my face as he laughed. "Please forget that happened." "Absolutely not." He pulled my hands from my face. "It was charming, don't be upset." He leaned forward and the rest of the blankets fell away. A burst of lust ran through me as my eyes wandered south, and I couldn't tell if it was from me or Devin or if it even mattered because we were both acutely aware of it. I groaned and covered my face with my hands. "I'm all yours to look at, you know." Devin gently pried my hands from my face, taking one of them to press against his chest.

He insisted on clearing the table, and again devoted himself to his game of patience: piecing together the map of Paris, the bits of which he’d stuffed into the pocket of his raincoat, folded up any old how. I helped him. Then he asked me, straight out, ‘What would you say was the true centre of Paris?’ I was taken aback, wrong-footed. I thought this knowledge was part of a whole body of very rarefied and secret lore. Playing for time, I said, ‘The starting point of France’s roads . . . the brass plate on the parvis of Notre-Dame.’ He gave me a withering look. ‘Do you take for me a sap?’ The centre of Paris, a spiral with four centres, each completely self-contained, independent of the other three. But you don’t reveal this to just anybody. I suppose - I hope - it was in complete good faith that Alexandre Arnoux mentioned the lamp behind the apse of St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. I wouldn’t have created that precedent. My turn now to let the children play with the lock. ‘The centre, as you must be thinking of it, is the well of St-Julien-le-Pauvre. The “Well of Truth” as it’s been known since the eleventh century.’ He was delighted. I’d delivered. He said, ‘You know, you and I could do great things together. It’s a pity I’m already “beyond redemption”, even at this very moment.’ His unhibited display of brotherly affection was of childlike spontaneity. But he was still pursuing his line of thought: he dashed out to the nearby stationery shop and came back with a little basic pair of compasses made of tin. ‘Look. The Vieux-Chene, the Well. The Well, the Arbre-a-Liege On either side of the Seine, adhering closely to the line he’d drawn, the age-old tavern signs were at pretty much the same distance from the magic well. ‘Well, now, you see, it’s always been the case that whenever something bad happens at the Vieux-Chene, a month later — a lunar month, that is, just twenty-eight days — the same thing happens at old La Frite’s place, but less serious. A kind of repeat performance. An echo Then he listed, and pointed out on the map, the most notable of those key sites whose power he or his friends had experienced. In conclusion he said, ‘I’m the biggest swindler there is, I’m prepared to be swindled myself, that’s fair enough. But not just anywhere. There are places where, if you lie, or think ill, it’s Paris you disrespect. And that upsets me. That’s when I lose my cool: I hit back. It’s as if that’s what I was there for.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They’re on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options—neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr. Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there’s cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I’m easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I’ll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome dogs.

He tries to put a huge spoon of ice cream in my mouth but I refuse to let him and keep it shut until finally he lets me handle the spoon myself. I gulp a mouthful down making tiny noises because I have swallowed too much and it is freezing my teeth. He is still laughing at me while he waits until my face returns to normal—I have tears in my eyes from the cold—and then says, “So, what do you think? Come on, say you like it.” “It’s… well, it’s intense,” I say. I’m surprising myself. There are unexpected words coming out of my mouth. The ice cream has given me a sudden burst of confidence. “It’s muddy. It’s complicated.” Liam looks at me with a great big grin. “Muddy? Intense? Complicated?” he says. He laughs again. “I’m very surprised you don’t like it. Because if it’s intense, muddy and complicated, it’s exactly like you.” I don’t know what to say. Is he serious, or is this a joke? I just can’t tell so I look at him for a few seconds. Eventually I sign what do you mean? and I see he’s worried. “Oh, no, it’s not bad,” he says. He’s definitely backpedalling. He thinks he has upset me and now he is trying to reassure me. “You know, muddy, intense and complicated in a good way, right?” he says smiling. Now he’s making a joke.

Apply the following statements to a significant EIP in your life and in your journal write “agree” or “disagree” for each one. I agree that your needs should come before anyone else’s. I agree not to speak my own mind when I’m around you. Please say anything you want, and I won’t object. Yes, I must be ignorant if I think differently from you. Of course you should be upset if anyone says no to you about anything. Please educate me about what I should like or dislike. Yes, it makes sense for you to decide how much time I should want to spend with you. You’re right, I should show you “respect” by disowning my own thoughts in your presence. Of course you shouldn’t have to exercise self-control if you don’t feel like it. It’s fine if you don’t think before you speak. It’s true: you should never have to wait or deal with any unpleasantness. I agree: you shouldn’t have to adjust when circumstances change around you. It’s okay if you ignore me, snap at me, or don’t act glad to see me: I’ll still want to spend time with you. Of course you are entitled to be rude. I agree that you shouldn’t have to take direction from anyone. Please talk as long as you like about your favorite topics; I’m ready to just listen and never be asked any questions about myself.

While he’d previously had the look of a pirate about him that she’d found rather appealing, she now found him to be devastatingly handsome—not simply because he’d been born far too attractive, but because she believed she saw genuine niceness residing in his very soul. When he suddenly lifted a finger to push a damp strand of hair off her cheek, his touch caused any reasonable thoughts she still retained to flee from her mind, and everything surrounding her disappeared except Bram. “You’re very beautiful.” Just like that, the world returned in a flash. “Thank you,” she said before she stepped back from him and felt a sliver of temper—not at him, but at herself—begin flowing through her veins. She’d known he was infatuated with her, as most of her admirers were. And yet, instead of nipping that immediately in the bud, she’d allowed herself to believe he was different, different because his touch sent her pulse racing and his smile turned her knees a little weak, which, in actuality, did make him a touch different, although . . . “Forgive me, Lucetta, but have I done something to upset you?” Lucetta caught Bram’s eye. “To be perfectly honest, I’m more upset with myself.” Bram’s brow furrowed. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” “I should have addressed the misconceptions I’m certain you’re holding about me straightaway, and yet . . . I’ve let matters fester too long.” “You do recall that we only met a few hours ago, don’t you?” “Indeed, but I’m quite certain you’ve been harboring misconceptions about me from the moment you saw me step foot on stage, which I’m going to assume was a year or two ago.” The furrow deepened. “I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say.” “I’m not a lady who enjoys being told I’m beautiful, nor am I a lady who enjoys being pampered, catered to, or treated as if I’m fragile. I’m also nothing like any of the characters I’ve ever played on stage.” “You’re exactly like the character in The Lady in the Tower,” he argued. “Charming, demure, and delightful.” Resisting a sigh, she moved to a fallen tree lying off the path and took a seat. “I would never be content to remain a prisoner in a tower, waiting for my very own prince charming to rescue me, which is exactly what Serena Seamore, my character, does. I’ve been on my own, Bram, for a very long time, and I’m quite capable, thank you very much, of taking care of myself.” She held up her hand when it looked as if he wanted to argue. “What you need to remember is that I’m an actress. Playing a part is what I do, and I’m successful because I can play parts very, very well. I’ve also been given an unusual face, expressive if you will, and that expressiveness allows me to convince people I’m someone I’m not.” “Your face is lovely, not unusual.” Lucetta waved away his compliment. “I’m not getting through to you, am I.” “Of course you are.” Lucetta drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. “I’m afraid I’m not the lady you think you hold in high esteem.” “I don’t think I hold you in high esteem, I know I do.” “Oh . . . dear,” she muttered before she squared her shoulders. “I’m peculiar.” “I highly doubt that.” “Oh,

What’s going on, chick?” she asks, taking a drink. She knows that when Johnnie comes out, something bad has happened. I suck on my teeth and shake my head. She cringes at the burn of whiskey, waiting for me to say more. I glance down at my bracelet. “My past caught up with me.” She slides the bottle back my way. “Need me to hurt someone?” she asks, dead serious. She and I are as close as friends come, and we have been since senior year of high school. And at the core of our friendship is a pact of sorts: nothing’s going to drag her towards the future she doesn’t want, and nothing’s going drag me back into the past I’ve worked to forget. Nothing. I huff out a laugh. “Eli’s already beaten you to it.” “Eli?” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Girl, I’m hurt. Hoes before bros, remember?” “I didn’t ask him to get involved. I broke up with him, and then he got involve—” “What!” She grabs the table. “You broke up with him? When were you going to tell me?” “Today. I was going to tell you today.” She’s shaking her head. “Bitch, you should’ve called me.” “I was busy ending a relationship.” She falls back into her seat. “Shit girl, Eli’s going to stop giving us a discount.” “That’s what your most upset by?” I say, taking another swig of whiskey. “No,” she says. “I’m happy you grew a vagina and broke up with him. He deserves better.” “I’m going to throw this bottle of whiskey at you.” She holds her hands up to placate me. “I’m kidding. But seriously, are you okay?” I barely stop myself from looking at my computer screen again. I exhale. “Honestly? I have no fucking clue.

ANNA •   •   • SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013 MORNING I drove to the gym in Northcote for my spin class this morning, then dropped into the Matches store on the way back and treated myself to a very cute Max Mara minidress (Tom will forgive me once he sees me in it). I was having a perfectly lovely morning, but as I parked the car there was some sort of commotion outside the Hipwells’ place—there are photographers there all the time now—and there she was. Again! I could hardly believe it. Rachel, barrelling past a photographer, looking rough. I’m pretty sure she’d just left Scott’s house. I didn’t even get upset. I was just astounded. And when I brought it up with Tom—calmly, matter-of-factly—he was just as baffled as I was. “I’ll get in touch with her,” he said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.” “You’ve tried that,” I said as gently as I could. “It doesn’t make any difference.” I suggested that maybe it was time to take legal advice, to look into getting a restraining order or something. “She isn’t actually harassing us, though, is she?” he said. “The phone calls have stopped, she hasn’t approached us or come to the house. Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll sort it.” He’s right, of course, about the harassment thing. But I don’t care. There’s something up, and I’m not prepared to just ignore it. I’m tired of being told not to worry. I’m tired of being told that he’ll sort things out, that he’ll talk to her, that eventually she’ll go away. I think the time has come to take matters into my own hands. The next time I see her, I’m calling that police officer—the woman, Detective Riley. She seemed nice, sympathetic. I know Tom feels sorry for Rachel, but honestly I think it’s time I dealt with that bitch once and for all.

My fingers stung and ached, but I still held on to the rose as I said, 'I don't know why I feel so tremendously ashamed of myself for leaving them. Why it feels so selfish and horrible to paint. I shouldn't- shouldn't feel that way, should I? I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it.' The rose hung limply from my fingers. 'All those years, what I did for them... And they didn't try to stop you from taking me.' There it was, the giant pain that cracked me in two if I thought about it too long. 'I don't know why I expected them to- why I believed that the puca's illusion was real that night. I don't know why I bother still thinking about it. Or still caring.' He was silent long enough that I added. 'Compared to you- to your borders and magic being weakened- I suppose my self-pity is absurd.' 'If it grieves you,' he said, the words caressing my bones, 'then I don't think it's absurd at all.' 'Why?' A flat question and I chucked the rose into the bushes. He took my hands. His callused fingers, strong and sturdy, were gentle as he lifted my bleeding hand to his mouth and kissed my palm. As if that were answer enough. His lips were smooth against my skin, his breath warm, and my knees buckled as he lifted my other hand to his mouth and kissed it, too. Kissed it carefully- in a way that made heat begin pounding in my core, between my legs. When he withdrew, my blood shone on his mouth. I glanced at my hands, which he still held, and found the wounds gone. I looked at his face again, at his gilded mask, the tanness of his skin, the red of his blood-covered lips as he murmured. 'Don't feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.' He stepped closer, releasing one of my hands to tuck the rose I'd plucked behind my ear. I didn't know how it had gotten into his hand, or where the thorns had gone.

As I listened to him describing the scene of the procurer seducing the young girl, I found myself torn between two conflicting emotions, between a powerful desire to laugh and an overwhelming surge of indignation. I was in agony. Again and again a roar of laughter prevented my rage bursting forth; again and again the rage rising in my heart became a roar of laughter. I was dumbfounded by such shrewdness and such depravity; by such soundness of ideas alternating with such falseness; by so general a perversity of feeling, so total a corruption, and so exceptional a candour. He saw how agitated I was. 'What's the matter?' he asked. ME: Nothing. HIM: I think you're upset. ME: Indeed I am. HIM: So what do you think I should do? ME: Talk about something else. What a wretched fate, to have been born and to have fallen so low! HIM: I agree. But don't let my state affect you too much. In opening my heart to you, it was not my intention to upset you. I've managed to save a little, while I was with those people. Remember I wanted for nothing, nothing whatsoever, and they also made me a small allowance for incidentals. [Here he began to strike himself on the forehead with his fist, bite his lips, and roll his eyes like a lunatic, then he said:] What's done is done. I've put a bit aside. Time's passed, so I'm that much to the good. ME: You mean to the bad. HIM: No, to the good. Live one day less, or have an ecu more, it's all the same. The important thing is to open your bowels easily, freely, enjoyably, copiously, every evening; 'o stercus pretiosum!' That's the grand outcome of life in every condition. At the final moment, we're all equally rich - Samuel Bernard who by dint of theft, pillage, and bankruptcy leaves twenty-seven millions in gold, and Rameau who'll leave nothing, Rameau for whom charity will provide the winding-sheet to wrap him in.

If you aren't in love, Willow Vaughn, then my name isn't Miriam Brigham." Willow started out of her daydreaming and glanced up from the laundry tub. Miriam stood before her with her fists planted on her hips. "Now, Miriam, I-" "No sense denying it, young lady. You've got that dreamy dazed glow about you. Rider Sinclair isn't much better, the way he hangs around you,like a bee drawn to honey. He's always holding your hand or throwing his arm around you when he thinks I'm not looking." "Well,even if I were in love, it wouldn't change anything. I still don't want another man to look after, and I don't need one looking out for me either. I can take care of myself!" "Course, you can!" Miriam agreed, picking the last sheet out of the rinse water and wringing it out. "Most women can. Look at me, I run a boarding house and support myself just fine. But let me tell you something. That lonely bed of mine is mighty cold on winter nights, even here in the territory." Willow blushed and concentrated on her hands where they rested on the edge of the tub. "Willow," Miriam continued, "you've been managing your pa just fine since he got home. A husband isn't any more difficult to manage than a father, unless, of course, you're married to a no-good lout." Willow dried her hands on the wide white apron around her middle. "But, Miriam, if I don't marry, then I don't have to bother finagling a man to my way of doing things. Staying single makes a hell of a lot more sense!" "Watch the cursing, young lady." Miriam slung the sheet over the line and returned to help Willow with the wash tub. They each grapped a handle and carried it a few feet before setting it down to rest their arms a moment. "Willow, use your noggin, will you? Part of the fun of being a woman is wrapping some big, handsome hunk of a man around your little finger. You do have to use your good sense, though, and realize when you're wrong and he's right. Of course"-Miriam chuckled-"that won't be too often. "And you have to be careful not to hurt a man's feelings overly much. Men are funny creatures. They seldom let their emotions show because they think it isn't manly. But you can tell when they're upset.They start pouting like a little boy.I've always thought that was rather curious.

I tell Jack by accident. We’re talking on the phone about unprotected sex, how it isn’t good for people with our particular temperament, our anxiety like an incorrigible weed. He asks if I’ve had any sex that was “really stressful,” and out the story comes, before I can even consider how to share it. Jack is upset. Angry, though not at me. I’m crying, even though I don’t want to. It’s not cathartic, or helping me prove my point. I still make joke after joke, but my tears are betraying me, making me appear clear about my pain when I’m not. Jack is in Belgium. It’s late there, he’s so tired, and I’d rather not be having this conversation this way. “It isn’t your fault,” he tells me, thinking it’s what I need to hear. “There’s no version of this where it’s your fault.” I feel like there are fifty ways it’s my fault. I fantasized. I took the big pill and the small pill, stuffed myself with substances to make being out in the world with people my own age a little bit easier. To lessen the space between me and everyone else. I was hungry to be seen. But I also know that at no moment did I consent to being handled that way. I never gave him permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us. I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking. I curl up against the wall, wishing I hadn’t told him. “I love you so much,” he says. “I’m so sorry that happened.” Then his voice changes, from pity to something sharper. “I have to tell you something, and I hope you’ll understand.” “Yes?” I squeak. “I can’t wait to fuck you. I hope you know why I’m saying that. Because nothing’s changed. I’m planning how I’m going to do it.” “You’re going to do it?” “All different ways.” I cry harder. “You better.” I have to go put on a denim vest for a promotional appearance at Levi’s Haus of Strauss. I tell Jack I have to hang up now, and he moans “No” like I’m a babysitter wrenching him from the arms of his mother who is all dressed up for a party. He’s sleepy now. I can hear it. Emotions are exhausting to have. “I love you so much,” I tell him, tearing up all over again. I hang up and go to the mirror, prepared to see eyeliner dripping down my face, tracks through my blush and foundation. I’m in LA, so bring it on, universe: I can only expect to go down Lohan style. But I’m surprised to find that my face is intact, dewy even. Makeup is all where it ought to be. I look all right. I look like myself.

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta Verse 1 Damn it feels good to be a gangsta A real gangsta-ass nigga plays his cards right A real gangsta-ass nigga never runs his f**kin mouth Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas don't start fights And niggas always gotta high cap Showin' all his boys how he shot em But real gangsta-ass niggas don't flex nuts Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em And everythings cool in the mind of a gangsta Cuz gangsta-ass niggas think deep Up three-sixty-five a year 24/7 Cuz real gangsta ass niggas don't sleep And all I gotta say to you Wannabe, gonnabe, cocksuckin', pussy-eatin' prankstas 'Cause when the fire dies down what the f**k you gonna do Damn it feels good to be a gangsta Verse 2 Damn it feels good to be a gangsta Feedin' the poor and helpin out with their bills Although I was born in Jamaica Now I'm in the US makin' deals Damn it feels good to be a gangsta I mean one that you don't really know Ridin' around town in a drop-top Benz Hittin' switches in my black six-fo' Now gangsta-ass niggas come in all shapes and colors Some got killed in the past But this gangtsa here is a smart one Started living for the lord and I last Now all I gotta say to you Wannabe, gonnabe, pussy-eatin' cocksuckin' prankstas When the sh*t jumps off what the f**k you gonna do Damn it feels good to be a gangsta Verse 3 Damn it feels good to be a gangsta A real gangta-ass nigga knows the play Real gangsta-ass niggas get the flyest of the b**ches Ask that gangsta-ass nigga Little Jake Now b**ches look at gangsta-ass niggas like a stop sign And play the role of Little Miss Sweet But catch the b**ch all alone get the digit take her out and then dump-hittin' the ass with the meat Cuz gangsta-ass niggas be the gang playas And everythings quiet in the clique A gangsta-ass nigga pulls the trigger And his partners in the posse ain't tellin' off sh*t Real gangsta-ass niggas don't talk much All ya hear is the black from the gun blast And real gangsta-ass niggas don't run for sh*t Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas can't run fast Now when you in the free world talkin' sh*t do the sh*t Hit the pen and let the mothaf**kas shank ya But niggas like myself kick back and peep game Cuz damn it feels good to be a gangsta Verse 4 And now, a word from the President! Damn it feels good to be a gangsta Gettin voted into the White House Everything lookin good to the people of the world But the Mafia family is my boss So every now and then I owe a favor gettin' down like lettin' a big drug shipment through And send 'em to the poor community So we can bust you know who So voters of the world keep supportin' me And I promise to take you very far Other leaders better not upset me Or I'll send a million troops to die at war To all you Republicans, that helped me win I sincerely like to thank you Cuz now I got the world swingin' from my nuts And damn it feels good to be a gangsta

Syn paid the bill and they headed to the door with lust so thick around them, Syn couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else could see it. Furi reached back for Syn’s hand and he gladly offered it. He looked over his shoulder and threw him a seductive wink when Syn crowded in close behind him. As soon as Syn made it out the door, he saw four members of his team walking up the sidewalk. Well fuck me. “Hey, Sarge.” Pendleton, his demolitions expert was the first to speak up. Syn threw down Furi’s hand and quickly put some distance between them. “Yeah, hey fellas.” They’d all stopped and were staring back and forth between him and Furi. Syn couldn’t even look Furious in his eye after what he’d just done. Detective Green cleared his throat and pointed at Furi. “Don’t I know you?” “Hardly,” Furi mumbled. “Um, this is ... uh, uh. He’s my ... uh.” Syn cursed under his breath. Obviously his team already knew who Furious was. They all had detailed lists of Illustra’s entertainers and Furious’ image was not easy to forget. “Sarge, who’s your friend?” Detective Ruxsburg asked, a sly smile playing on his handsome face. “He’s um.” “He’s leaving,” Furi’s deep voice cut in as he eased his way through and walked in the opposite direction of Syn’s truck. “Fuck,” Syn whispered as he watched Furi turn the corner. “You better go after him and be ready to do some serious groveling,” his IT Detective said in his calm, cool voice. Syn didn’t say anything. His guys walked around him and went into the bar, leaving him feeling ashamed. He thought about running after Furi but choose to get in his truck and cut him off at the corner. He sped around the block and pulled into an alley hoping to intercept his angry date. When Syn got out of the truck Furi was turning the corner coming toward him. Oh hell. Furi had his hands crammed into his pockets and if the scowl on his face didn’t indicate how angry Furious was, then his choice of words when he finally reached Syn sure as hell did. “Get the fuck away from me.” “Furious, I know you're upset.” Furi spun around and glared at him with midnight eyes. “Upset! Upset! Look at my face goddamnit! Does this just look upset to you?” Syn put his hands up in a calming gesture. “Alright, you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I reacted badly back there. I was just caught off guard.” Furi was in Syn’s face and people on the street had begun to stop and stare. “Can we please move this off the sidewalk?” Syn tried to usher Furi farther into the alley and away from the nosy fuckers on the street. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me!” “I’m not gonna touch you! Damn, calm down. I just want to explain,” Syn argued. It seemed every time he was around Furi he was apologizing for something. “I’m sorry, okay. I should have introduced you properly to my team.” “How would the–” “Please, Furious. Let me finish. I should’ve told them your name and introduced you as my friend at a minimum. I’m sorry. I told you I fuckin’ suck at this dating shit, and if you don’t tell me to go fuck myself and give me another–” “Go fuck yourself,” Furi interrupted. He tried to move around Syn but Syn grabbed him around the wrist and backed him against the side of his truck. “No! I will not go fuck myself. I would rather fuck you.” “Well you pretty much shot that chance all to hell,” Furi yelled right back at him. “Have I?” “What do you think?

I wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.” “Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.” “You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.” “You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?” “I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.” “I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.” “Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.” “So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeking.” “We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again. “Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.” “You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said. “My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for anything. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.” “Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said. “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly. “But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher separate,” Sophia said. “Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.” “I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.” “I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.” “Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.” “I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.” “If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.” “This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?” “If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.” “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek. “Okay, now you definitely need to get a room.

He sat down on the bed and explained to me that there had been some investigations into my private life. It had been learned that my mother had died recently at the home. Inquiries had then been made in Marengo. The investigators had learned that I had “shown insensitivity” the day of Maman’s funeral. “You understand,” my lawyer said, “it’s a little embarrassing for me to have to ask you this. But it’s very important. And it will be a strong argument for the prosecution if I can’t come up with some answers.” He wanted me to help him. He asked if I had felt any sadness that day. The question caught me by surprise and it seemed to me that I would have been very embarrassed if I’d had to ask it. Nevertheless I answered that I had pretty much lost the habit of analyzing myself and that it was hard for me to tell him what he wanted to know. I probably did love Maman, but that didn’t mean anything. At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead. Here the lawyer interrupted me and he seemed very upset. He made me promise I wouldn’t say that at my hearing or in front of the examining magistrate. I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings. The day I buried Maman, I was very tired and sleepy, so much so that I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. What I can say for certain is that I would rather Maman hadn’t died. But my lawyer didn’t seem satisfied. He said, “That’s not enough.

I stared back. I didn’t have any words. I mean, yeah, I might have been a little like that. But what was I supposed to do? Come back home and never mention it? “If you were a real friend, you’d have wanted to hear about it,” I said before I could stop myself. “Don’t talk to me about real friends,” Mandy said. “I’m not the one who drops everyone and everything the minute there’s something more interesting to do. The minute there’s somewhere more exciting to be than Brightport. I’m not the one who’s been acting like the world’s ended just because I’ve had to come home to boring old Brightport.” “I didn’t drop you, and I never said Brightport was boring,” I countered. “You don’t need to say it,” Mandy replied. “It’s written all over you. Ever since you got home you’re just not interested in anyone around here.” “I’ve been upset,” I protested. “Aaron’s gone.” Mandy feigned a yawn. “That again,” she said. “Yeah, Aaron’s gone — but I’m not. I’m still here. Hello! Oh, sorry, I forgot. I’m not good enough for you.” “That’s not fair,” I said weakly. But the trouble was, I could see her point of view. I’d been so wrapped up in the things I’d been doing over the last few months that ever since I’d gotten home, Brightport did feel dull in comparison. It was hard to adjust to it again. And, yeah, I probably had gone on about Aaron quite a lot the few times that Mandy and I had gotten together.

Sometimes," she said, taking her time. "when I'm upset about something, all you want to do is tell me why I shouldn't be. " "And that's bad?" "It makes me feel crazy! Like I can't trust my own reactions to things. " "We all need people to help us see things from different perspectives. " She rolled her eyes. "You think I don't make myself consider things from other angles?" She had spent a lifetime reacting and then questioning the reactions-- a lifetime of second guessing, self interrogation, badgering her brain into thinking about things the right way. "You think I can't?" Her volume was rising. "Did you ever consider that when I'm upset about something, it might be because it's worth getting upset about?

You told me to get over myself, remember? So why the fuck would you care if I'm upset?' I fold my arms across my chest, choosing anger over lust. 'I told you that you'd have to develop a stomach for killing. I never said you'd get over it.

I’m mad that over the years, I’ve let myself turn into a people-pleasing robot who’s afraid of upsetting anyone.

I bite down on my lip harshly in an effort to keep my retorts in. There’s no point in arguing with her. The one most affected by that would be me, and I don’t have the energy to upset myself unnecessarily.

Some of my earliest recollections of telling stories come from this time period. I remember quite clearly waking up in the middle of the night, sneaking into my older sister’s room, holding a flashlight under my chin and whispering, “Who’s killing the children?” She would start screaming, I would get scared by her screaming and start screaming myself, and then I would start crying, and then my parents would come in and punish my sister for making me so upset. Anyone who has a sibling will understand this dynamic. It’s never the baby’s fault.

When a great deal of later inauthentic imitation has been sifted out, the most compelling of these accounts are more than just edifying guides to do-it-yourself sainthood: they preserve portraits of people in the most extreme of situations, the circumstances of which have released them to behave well beyond convention. Most surprising is the journal of sufferings written in the first decade of the third century by an unusually well-educated, spirited (and Montanist) North African martyr called Perpetua. One of the most remarkable pieces of writing by a woman surviving from the ancient world, its content caused problems to both its editors and to subsequent conventionally minded devotees because it was shot through with her determined individuality and self-assertion. She did not simply defy the authorities but went against the expectations of everyday society (including, of course, Christian everyday society) by disobeying her father, who desperately wanted her to abandon her faith: ‘Father’, I said, ‘for the sake of argument, do you see this vase, or whatever you want to call it, lying here?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I see it’. And I said to him, ‘Can you call it by any other name than what it is?’ And he said ‘No, you can’t’. ‘So’, I said, ‘I cannot call myself anything other than what I am – a Christian’. Merely hearing this word upset my father greatly. He threw himself at me with such violence that it seemed he wanted to tear my eyes out …18 In that charged encounter is a characteristic moment of tension for Christianity: how does one form of authority relate to another, and which is going to prevail? Perpetua was disobedient not just to her father but to the institutional Catholic Church which later enrolled her among its martyrs, because she was a Montanist. Some of the most remarkable passages in her account occur in her description of the second and third dreams or visions that she had in her prison cell.

for me the most difficult part of the program was learning to introduce myself in class. Almost nobody knew how to do this, so the teachers taught us that the first thing you say is your name, age, and hometown. Then you can tell people about your hobbies, your favorite recording artist or movie star, and finally you can talk about “what you want to be in the future.” When I was called on, I froze. I had no idea what a “hobby” was. When it was explained that it was something I did that made me happy, I couldn’t conceive of such a thing. My only goal was supposed to be making the regime happy. And why would anyone care about what “I” wanted to be when I grew up? There was no “I” in North Korea—only “we.” This whole exercise made me uncomfortable and upset. When the teacher saw this, she said, “If that’s too hard, then tell us your favorite color.” Again, I went blank. In North Korea, we are usually taught to memorize everything, and most of the time there is only one correct answer to each question. So when the teacher asked for my favorite color, I thought hard to come up with the “right” answer.

If my mind is busy thinking about things like how someone hurt or upset me and how I can protect myself or get back at them, I’m too busy in my head to enjoy the present moment.

It’d been a while since my mother last warned me about a dream. She often transcribed them in her journals and consulted her notes at a later date. Though she was a devout Christian most of the time, she also covered her bases. She noted dates murmured by ancestors, and after an earthquake, burglary, mugging, the LA Riots, or one of Chris’s more upsetting episodes, she’d consult this almanac of predetermined disaster and cluck her tongue. I asked her why she didn’t take extra care on those days if she knew something was going to happen. She explained, “We can’t live in fear, waiting for tragedy. I write these dates not to warn myself, but to console myself after the fact, that there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

All right. You want to know about Nigel. I’ll tell you about Nigel. He’s come a long way since that so-called accident, Jon. Heck, he’s become everything a mother could ever hope for. Do you know what the first thing he showed me was? He showed me how he could listen to six radios tuned into different talk shows and not miss a single word any of them said. And then he turned the radios off and said he could still hear them talking.” More tears welled in her eyes, but she kept smiling. “Then he spoke in different languages. German. Chinese. Japanese. Any language. I kept telling myself that it was okay. He was always a smart kid. I thought maybe he got smarter from being electrocuted. But it got worse. Soon, he had an answer for everything. And if I or anyone else didn’t agree with him, he got very upset.” Her voice cracked, and several tears rolled down her cheeks, but she continued, keeping her composure. “I tried to help him, Jon. But I didn’t know what to do anymore. Then, one day– He said he loved me and was doing everything for me. And then, he kissed me– like he wanted me.” No! Jon closed his eyes tight and rubbed his eyebrows. He didn’t want to hear anymore. The destructive force that had seared his subconscious was coming back. He could feel it getting closer and closer, like an unseen freight train roaring toward him on a moonless night. Then it hit him. He was sitting on the floor of a dark room with nothing but black walls and a door– A black rectangle with bright blue light outlining its frame. He had been there for the longest time, staring at the door. The blue light was coming from something so powerful and destructive that he swore he would remain where he was for all eternity rather than open the door and let it in. Beverly touched his face. “Jon. Please– Tell me Lex didn’t do the same thing to you. Please.” He hugged her tightly with his eyes still closed. “Lex tried to get into my head!” The door was still there. The force behind it was pounding to get into where he was– Pounding, again and again. “She tried to get in and take control, but I wouldn’t let her. I wouldn’t let her!” The pounding grew louder and louder. “And I won’t! I won’t! I love you too much!” The pounding stopped, and he opened his eyes. He was back in the hospital room– embracing his love, and the only thing pounding was his heart. He stroked Beverly's hair and kissed her head. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.” Beverly pulled away from him. “No, Jon. It’s not your fault.” “But I–” “No! I don’t want to hear it!” It was his fault. He created Lex, wrote her BASIC program, and took Nigel to the control room. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for him. Beverly sniffed. “You’re back now, Jon. You have to understand; that’s all that matters.

As a Gen-Xer I had gotten used to abuse. That had to change. As I walked around, I rearranged my life and formulated a secret battle plan. Setting boundaries would upset those who benefited from me not having those. I had to develop what I wanted my future to be. To dream. Then only allow those who shared that vision into my life. This plan was one of the best things I ever did for myself.

Jason put a hand on each shoulder and shook me gently. "Damn it, Anita, get a grip. It isn't like you to wallow in the horror. You're a good soldier. You kill and keep going like you're supposed to." I pushed him away from me. "I tortured a man, Jason. I reduced him to something that writhed on the floor, mewling with terror and pain. And I wanted to do it. I wanted him to hurt because of what they'd done to Charlotte and Daniel. I wanted to do it." I shook my head. "I'll do my bit tonight, but forgive me if it's a little harder to keep going than normal. Forgive me if I'm not superwoman, after all." "Not superwoman?" he exclaimed, putting a hand on his chest in mock surprise. "You've lied to me all these years!" It made me smile, and I didn't want to smile. "Stop it." "Stop what? Cheering you up? Or is life supposed to stop because you did something horrible? I'll tell you the real horrible truth, Anita. No matter what you do or how bad you feel about it, life just goes on. Life doesn't give a fuck that you're sorry or upset or deranged or tormented. Life just goes on, and you gotta go on with it, or sit in the middle of the road and feel sorry for yourself. And I don't see you doing that." "I am not feeling sorry for myself." "You aren't all broken up about Thompson. You're broken up because of what you did to Thompson and how it makes you feel. You don't give a rat's ass about him. You're just weeping and gnashing your teeth about how much of a monster you are. Well, I get enough of that from Richard. I don't need it from you. So get your act together. We've got people we care about to save.

I’ve got a few things to say, and I don’t want you running for the hills. Can you listen before you freak out?” Not ominous at all. “Okaaayyyy.” “I talked to Sebastian.” His mouth twists as he sort of spits out the name. “You shouldn’t have.” His hand flies up to halt my protest. “Yes. I should have. I’m your friend and I kind of wanted to punch that guy in the face, but he’s pretty big, so…” A snicker sneaks out. “Sorry, Abs. Wasn’t willing to risk my pretty face for you. Although maybe a broken nose would give me that extra bad boy edge. I don’t like it any more than you do. I’d love nothing more than for you to punch this guy yourself and move on with your life, but I don’t think you can. Abby, trust me. I know what it’s like to care about someone so deeply you can’t shake them from your system. You need to talk to him and figure out what’s going on. Then you can make the choice. Either ditch him for good or maybe you’ll understand him a little better.” “He doesn’t deserve my time.” I repeat myself. “Maybe not, but you deserve it. The closure, or whatever. I still want to punch the guy for being an idiot, but I think he has some genuine reasons for his actions, and I think it’ll help you out to hear them. I can’t stand seeing you so upset.” “He’s been avoiding me. How do I even know he’ll talk to me?” He takes a long pause without turning to face me, and the words slip out on a whisper. “Because I can see it in his eyes, his mouth. Every single feature says he’s fighting his feelings for you.” “But…” His eyes meet mine as he cuts off my protest. “He’s the one you never got over, Abby. Don’t waste your chance.

Thus the surface of all my virtues had a less imposing reverse side. It is true that, in another sense, my shortcomings turned to my advantage. For example, the obligation I felt to conceal the vicious part of my life gave me a cold look that was confused with the look of virtue; my indifference made me loved; my selfishness wound up in my generosities. I stop there, for too great a symmetry would upset my argument. But after all, I presented a harsh exterior and yet could never resist the offer of a glass or of a woman! I was considered active, energetic, and my kingdom was the bed. I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray. Of course, my betrayals didn’t stand in the way of my fidelity; I used to knock off a considerable pile of work through successive periods of idleness; and I had never ceased aiding my neighbor, thanks to my enjoyment in doing so. But however much I repeated such facts to myself, they gave me but superficial consolations. Certain mornings, I would get up the case against myself most thoroughly, coming to the conclusion that I excelled above all in scorn. The very people I helped most often were the most scorned. Courteously, with a solidarity charged with emotion, I used to spit daily in the face of all the blind.

Matt is one of the people I most try to emulate. He is exceptionally calm and logical under pressure. I’ve seen him face multiple data-center collapses with near-indifference, calmly sipping beer before another billiards shot. What should I tell a hugely influential journalist asking about it? “Tell him we’re on it.” Then he sunk another ball. He’s the epitome of “getting upset won’t help things.” I frequently ask myself “What would Matt do?” or “What would Matt say to me?

In the beginning years of my consciousness-awareness, during my long daily walks, I would start off just naturally thinking about all the things that were currently preoccupying the surface of my mind. It’s easy. You go with the stream of thought. However, rather than becoming blindly immersed in the thoughts, I would watch them. I didn’t stop them. I let them continue, but I would watch and ask myself certain questions:  'What are my fears at this moment? Am I sad or grieving anything? Am I angry with anyone? Do I want something? What are my thoughts telling me?'  Then, I would have something live to work with. If I noticed that I was angry with someone, I would let the angry thoughts have their way, for a while, and then I would reason with them and say,  'Come on now, you’ve had your way for a while. You know that everyone is doing the best that they can. There is no need to get so upset about this. You are safe. The Divine loves you.' We work with our thoughts, and we try to align them with a higher perspective. After a few years of practising this, the process becomes very effective, efficient, and effortless.

Zettle notes, we misuse many nouns in psychology instead of verbs and thereby create semifictional entities that Kevin Everett FitzMaurice (1997) calls “thought things.” Thus we say, “My feelings upset me when panic overwhelms me when I am in closed spaces” instead of, “I upset myself by panicking when I am in closed spaces.

Minute Three: Help Your Body Release the Feelings Tap the acupuncture point on the edge of your hand (the karate chop point) while you breathe deeply. Say to yourself while tapping: “Although I’m upset, I’m safe. I can calm myself and heal this situation.” If you find yourself yawning, that’s great—your body is releasing. The more you practice this, the more quickly your body will calm.

My face immediately grows warm, and I refuse to allow myself to mope. I force myself off the bed. I have work to do. I can’t be upset that I’m not enough to make a guy want to remap all of his life goals. Besides, I have my own life goals to worry about now. And I’m really excited about them. So much so, that I really don’t have time for a guy in my life, anyway.

I also know when I need to allow myself to cry. I don’t fight it as much. I know if I’m tired, I’m going to be more sensitive; if I’m exhausted, I will have less patience. When I’m impatient, it’s because of me and my mental state and not somebody else’s fault, and I catch myself. Identify that you are going through something and go through it. Know it. Don’t push fast-forward. Know that if you are sad or upset, it’s for a reason, and then reason with yourself. Don’t try to please everyone. Be honest. Know the situation. Identification. Awareness. Modification.

The world offers peace when our circumstances are pleasant, but God gives us a peace that passes understanding—peace when our circumstances are upsetting. When we have Jesus’ peace, we can face troubling circumstances and still be at peace. In order to enter into the peace Jesus gave to me, I had to stop allowing myself to be agitated and disturbed or anxious and worried. God had done His part by giving me peace, but I saw that I wasn’t doing my part. I was anxious and I worried a lot. I prayed only as a last resort, after I had done everything else I knew to do, and I complained instead of being thankful. When I did pray, I prayed for my troublesome circumstance to go away instead of praying for the Holy Spirit to strengthen me on the inside so I could endure with good temper whatever came my way.

I found myself shutting down and not talking to anyone about my feelings. I was stuck in a mindset of not upsetting anyone further. A mindset-based assumption that I hurt other people by sharing my difficult feelings. Today I understand people need feelings brought up to be connected.

First of all, it would be the last thing I’d want to do and the last thing you’d want too; let’s be honest. I’d leave beyond angry with myself and you’d pretend you were done with me, that it was for the best. Then you’d get inside, put on your pajamas, have five minutes to cool down, and realize you’re angry with yourself too. You’d cry over our fight, like you’re doing now, because you’d feel bad that you hurt me with your words. And me?” He gestures at himself as he looks me over, watching my tears continue to fall. “I’d get home, be pissed at myself for letting you walk away, leaving you when you’re upset and vulnerable, that you’re once again dealing with the consequences of my reckless past choices. And I’d get in my car and drive all the way back to you.” He captures my chin, dipping his face to mine. “I’d throw you over my shoulder if I had to, but I wouldn’t need to, because the second you saw me, you’d fling your arms around me and cry. And you know what I’d do, Olivia?” His nose touches mine,

such as some private hotels in Paris have on the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar door as well. I have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about that! September 10. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; it is done—but is He dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen. Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold. Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me. I got up softly,

Fuck, Hadley.” The words weren’t yelled. They were low and pained like I’d offended him. Elijah tossed the paintbrush down. “If I wanted to sleep with you, I’d go about it a lot differently than this.” His words made my cheeks burn. “Truthfully, I don’t mind any of this. I don’t mind Lucy’s constant chatter or your tit leaking shit or the fact that you can’t do much but get upset or quiet around me.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “It’s not that I want to get in your pants. I simply can’t help myself. I gravitate toward your little family.” I simply can’t help myself. I gravitate. I didn’t know why, but his words resonated deep inside me and lingered.

Wetness clings to my eyes but I blink it away. I don't have a right to be upset with anyone but myself.

Really don’t want Ramirez to beat the shit out of me, so I get it. That’s fine. But I’m starving, and I figure you are too. Cam and I want to take you and Rox out.” He holds out his hands. “Just as friends. I swear.” “Trust me, Jake won’t care.” It’s like we were never friends. My eyes sting, but I can’t be upset with him. I did this to myself. I was too chicken to tell him how I felt in high school, and I only compounded everything when I left NTU without talking to him first. “I don’t know about that.” Billy’s voice lowers. “Aww, hell, Chuck. Don’t cry.” I sniffle and blink several times. “I’m not crying. It’s allergies.” Jake stops playing with Asher to glance over at us, and my heart sinks at the cold expression on his face. There are icebergs in the Arctic warmer than the look he gives me. Billy makes that humming noise again before he slips his beefy arm over my shoulders. “Doesn’t care, huh? I might regret this later, but how ’bout we give him something to care about?” “What?” That’s when the doofus pulls me into his chest and kisses me out of the blue. There’s no tongue, thank God. Just the hard press of his bristly mouth against mine. It’s fine, I guess. When he pulls away, he smacks his lips. “You taste minty.” I sigh, and it’s not because he swept me off my feet. “That was my first kiss.” I don’t mention I was saving it for someone special. His eyes widen. “Like, ever?” “Yes, and now I need to go home and write about it in my diary,” I say sarcastically before I turn to pack my gear, a little upset my first kiss wasn’t more magical.

While my closest friends were encouraging of the process, soon it became apparent that self-examination made me boring to the wrong people. I started to drink less and less – always questioning whether I was doing it to have fun or doing it to distract myself from a problem. I tried to put a stop to people-pleasing, aware that giving my time and energy away so freely was what was chipping away at the void that I didn’t want to turn into a quarry. I was more honest; I told people when I was upset or offended or angry and valued the sense of calm that came with integrity, paid with the small price of an uncomfortable conversation. I became more self-aware, so inevitably I made a tit of myself for the amusement of other people far less.” Excerpt From Everything I Know About Love Dolly Alderton This material may be protected by copyright.

When I was around him, it was easy to lose myself, no matter how upset or heartbroken I was.

Any time I am bothered about anything, whether it’s a line that’s too long at the bank or a man who doesn’t return my love, I have to remind myself that these emotional experiences (petty annoyance in the former instance, heartbreak in the latter) are reasonable and discrete unto themselves. They don’t have to precipitate a depressive episode. It takes me a long time to realize that when I get upset about something it doesn’t mean that the tears will never stop. It is so hard to learn to put sadness in perspective, so hard to understand that it is a feeling that comes in degrees, it can be a candle burning gently and harmlessly in your home, or it can be a full-fledged forest fire that destroys almost everything and is controlled by almost nothing. It can also be so much in between.

When I was upset and beside myself, you calmed me down and cheered me up. Psalm 94:19 MSG

Your mom sucks.” “My mum is the best!” I exclaimed hotly. “Besides, I saw you poking sticks at jellyfish. You don’t know anything. You’re nothing but a bad boy.” “Jellyfish don’t have hearts,” he drawled, as if that made it okay. “Just like you.” I’d been unable to stop myself from licking my fingers, eyeing the untouched brownie half in his hand. He’d scowled, but for some reason, he didn’t seem upset by my insult. “They also don’t have brains. Just like you.

I’m just furious mortified upset seething afraid. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me. I’m afraid to lose someone I love again. I’m afraid to let go. To acknowledge what I feel for him. And yet he has proven himself to me. Over and over. He found me on my darkest day. He followed me to war, to the front lines. He came between me and Death, taking wounds that were supposed to be mine. There is something electric within me. Something that is begging me to remove the last of my armor and let him see me as I am. To choose him. And yet here I sit, alone, typing word after word as I seek to make sense of myself. I watch the candlelight flicker and all I can think is … I am so afraid. And yet how I long to be vulnerable and brave when it comes to my own heart.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.” Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore. The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers. Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well, then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned. For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer. Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

Should you hear a war is started somewhere, it is the war itself make you upset. Shoud I hear, it is a reminder of how I was born, how I grew up as orphan, how I was not all allowed to be in school nor in my home, and how I was all miraculously hiding myself from every morning's and night's soldiers' fight, that make me not only upset, but feel a flashback of being killed over time. I am a middeleastern.

Should you hear a war is started somewhere, it is the war itself make you upset. Shoud I hear, it is a reminder of how I was born, grew up as orphan, not all allowed to be in school nor in my home, and all miraculously hiding myself from every morning's and night's soldiers' fight. I am a middeleastern.

That's where you're wrong, Princess.' His eyes glowed a fiery amber as he glared down at me. 'You don't have options when it comes to your own well-being and your own foolish stubbornness.' 'Excuse me?' 'I won't let you weaken or starve yourself because you're mad. And i do get it. I get why you're upset. Whey you want to fight me on everything, every step of the way.' He took that step toward me, and my spine locked up as I refused to back away. His eyes burned brighter. 'I want you to, Princess. I enjoy it.' 'You're twisted. 'Never said I wasn't,' he retorted. 'So, fight me. Argue with me. See if you can actually injure me next time. I dare you.' My eyes widened as I lowered my arms. 'You're... there's something wrong with you.' 'That may be true, but what is also true, is the fact that I will not let you put yourself in unnecessary danger.' 'Maybe you've forgotten, but I can handle myself.' 'I haven't forgotten. I won't ever prevent you from lifting a sword to protect your life or those you care about,' he said. 'But I won't let you shove that sword through your own heart to prove a point.

They seemed perfectly content not knowing everything. They loved how upbeat, how positive I was, how I let them get out their anger while never airing any of mine. I was the cool girl, the easygoing girl, and I loved her. If I was upset about something, I journaledor rage-texted Alex. If they forgot an anniversary, I bought myself flowers. I was - am - bright sides and silver linings, and it's always worked for me before.

How others see me is how I see myself. When others see me as good, smart, attractive, important and other positive things, I can see myself that way and I like that a lot. I also need these reflections because I have no ability to create a stable self-image, so if I can't find anyone to reflect a positive image of myself back to me, my self-worth crashes and I have no way to do anything about it. I literally live on the opinions of others. If others do not verify my existence through giving me some kind of reflection and feedback via reactions to me, I cannot see myself. I do not exist. And remember, "positive" in this context doesn't necessarily mean "good." That is ideal and would probably always be the preferred situation, but many, many narcissistic people can survive on mostly negative attention, too. As long as their existence can be verified through reactions (attention) and they can experience themselves as important in some way - even if it's by making other people angry or upset at them, or through hurting others - that is enough. Some masochistic or sadistic narcissists may have even learned to thrive on negative attention and may gear their efforts toward doing things that constantly result in them being punished or in punishing others.

couldn’t bear to hear the truth about my horrible legs. What nonsense! I’m perfectly happy with my legs. What upset me was finding out that Mummy looks at me and sees only, or mainly, a bundle of physical flaws. And her dishonesty—that also enrages me.’ ‘Your mother is not honest?’ said Poirot. ‘Oh, she can’t bear the truth. She is almost allergic to it. She would do or say anything to keep me and Timmy happy—I think she feels it’s her duty as a mother—but every so often a scrap of truthfulness slips out, and when it does, she bends over backwards afterwards to deny what is plain to see. I shall never believe her when she says she thinks I’m beautiful. I know it’s a lie. She’d be far better off admitting that she would love it if I starved myself skinny. Instead, she lies and lies about how much she loves me the way I am, and tells herself she’s keeping me happy by doing so.’ Ivy spoke thoughtfully and analytically, with no trace of resentment in her voice. She was, Poirot reflected, a happier and more stable woman than either her mother or her aunt.

Then Mack is beside me, gently turning me over. I stare up, still dazed and bewildered and shocked beyond all measure. “Oh fuck, angel. What did you do? What did you do?” “I…” My voice sounds weird. Kind of stretched and wobbly. “I saved you. Didn’t I?” Mack makes a strange sobbing sound and lowers his face briefly to my chest. “You did.” Then he’s pulling away my jacket and my shirt, searching for the wound. I can feel it burning on my side, and being exposed to the open air from Mack’s fumbling doesn’t make it any better. “Shit, it really hurts. I guess it’s bleeding. Are my guts hanging out?” He chokes on what might have been a huff of anxious amusement. “No. They’re definitely not. You’re bleeding but not as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe it didn’t get you too bad.” “Oh.” I’m focusing on taking deep breaths, trying to will the pain away so I can think more clearly. I’m hot and cold at the exact same time, and both my head and my chest are pounding violently. “Okay. So I’m not going to die?” “No!” He makes some weird, jerky motions, and it takes longer than it should for me to figure out he’s pulled off his T-shirt. He wads it up to hold it against the place that’s hurting on my side. “You’re not gonna die. I won’t let you.” “Do you think you can stop it?” I’m genuinely curious since he sounded so certain. “Yes. I don’t think you got shot too bad, but even if it’s bad, I’m gonna fix it. You’re not gonna die now. Not when I just got you for real. I’m not gonna let it happen. Not while I’m alive.” While he’s muttering out the hoarse words, he’s working on me, checking my side again and then moving my hand so I’m holding his bundled shirt to the wound myself. “Hold this right here. I’ll be right back.” “You’re leaving me?” I ask the words in a groggy blur since I have no clear idea what’s happening. “Course not. Just need somethin’ to wrap you up.” I don’t know what this means. I consider telling him I don’t need to be wrapped up because I’m as hot as I am cold even though I’ve started to shiver. But I don’t get the words out, and it doesn’t end up mattering because he returns with another one of his shirts. This one he wraps like a sash tightly around my middle, so snugly it holds his wadded T-shirt in place. “There’s first aid stuff at the cabin. I need to get you there so I can fix you up better. You think you can get up?” He sounds so upset and stressed I wouldn’t dream of telling him no. “I can do it.” My words are more confident than is warranted by my condition. I do make an attempt, but it’s mostly Mack lifting my full weight on his own and then carrying me over to the quad. He considers various options for positions, but there’s no safe way for us both to ride this thing except in the normal arrangement with me behind him. So he helps me get on and then climbs on in front of me, pulling my arms around him.

I’m so torn about how I’m feeling—I’m nervous, but also upset with myself about that because why does he make me feel this way after all these years?

A sudden streak of light made me blink, as if someone had flashed a mirror in my face. I looked around and I saw a brown delivery truck parked in the middle of the Great Lawn where no cars were allowed. Lettered on the side were the words: HERNIAS ARE US Wait…sorry. I’m dyslexic. I squinted and decided it probably read: HERMES EXPRESS “Oh, good,” I muttered. “We’ve got mail.” “What?” Annabeth asked. I pointed at the truck. The driver was climbing out. He wore a brown uniform shirt and knee-length shorts along with stylish black socks and cleats. His curly salt-and-pepper hair stuck out around the edges of his brown cap. He looked like a guy in his mid-thirties, but I knew from experience he was actually in his mid-five-thousands. Hermes. Messenger of the gods. Personal friend, dispenser of heroic quests, and frequent cause of migraine headaches. He looked upset. He kept patting his pockets and wringing his hands. Either he’d lost something important or he’d had too many espressos at the Mount Olympus Starbucks. Finally he spotted me and beckoned, Get over here! That could’ve meant several things. If he was delivering a message in person from the gods, it was bad news. If he wanted something from me, it was also bad news. But seeing as he’d just saved me from explaining myself to Annabeth, I was too relieved to care. “Bummer.” I tried to sound regretful, as if my rump hadn’t just been pulled from the barbecue. “We’d better see what he wants.

There can also be a particular problem with couples in a group. Sometimes a couple will form a faction splinter group. Then if they are upset about something going on in the group, they will collapse into collusion and gossip with each other, instead of airing their concerns with the whole group. Other times the factions are created along political lines or gender lines. With gender lines frequently the men think the women are “too sensitive” and controlling. The women think the men are “too insensitive” and domineering. When these judgments are shared by people without Nonviolent Communication skills, they most often create painful unresolved conflict. When they are thought and not shared it creates a tense depressed feeling in the group. 7. Remember that after you have shared something of yourself in front of a group you almost always need some kind of honest feedback in response. If you don’t ask for this feedback your mind will often project, onto the blank screen, nightmarish self-judgments which will serve to shut you down in the future. Example: You have just shared with the Committee to Create an Alternative School that you are afraid that the school will not be created in time for your five year old to attend and you will have to enroll her in public schools. You find yourself crying as you explain how important it is for you to protect her from the many kinds of violence found in public schools. Having cried, you feel vulnerable. You might ask: “I feel a bit vulnerable, having cried in public. I would like to know how people are feeling about what I have shared.” Then be prepared to empathize with the worst. Take a moment now to write down the three things that would be the most scary to hear after you have made yourself vulnerable and then asked for feedback. Here is what I came up with when I asked myself what would be scary feedback to receive and some possible empathic responses. So I have cried in front of the Committee to Create an Alternative School and asked for feedback and heard back:

hasn’t been missing long. If she’s upset, she’ll go someplace where she feels safe.” “But she might not be thinking clearly,” Adelia protested, her panic returning. “She’s only thirteen, Gabe. I’m afraid I’ve been forgetting that myself. I should have been paying more attention. Instead, I was so worried about my younger kids, I missed all the signs that Selena was in real trouble. I was just grateful that she was no longer rebelling against the world.” In front of the gym, she bolted from the car practically before it could come to a stop. Inside, she scanned the room until her gaze landed on her brother. He regarded her with alarm, which grew visibly when Gabe came in right on her heels. Misreading the situation, Elliott stepped between them. “Is this guy bothering you, Adelia?” She held up a hand. “No, it’s nothing like that. Selena’s missing. Gabe is helping me look for her. I thought maybe she’d come here to see you.” Elliott shook his head. “I haven’t seen her. Let me check with Karen. She’s not working today. She’s at the house with the baby.” Adelia felt herself starting to shake as her brother made the call to his wife. Then she felt Gabe’s steadying hand on her shoulder. He didn’t say a word, just kept his hand there until the moment passed. Elliott listened intently to whatever Karen was saying, his expression brightening. “Thanks, querida. Adelia will be there in a few minutes.” Smiling, he turned to her. “Selena’s at my house playing with the baby. Karen didn’t think to call anyone because Selena told her she only had a half day at school and swore you knew where she was.” Adelia finally let out the breath she felt like she’d been holding for hours. “Of course Karen believed her,” she said wryly. “Selena’s very convincing when she wants to be.” “Want me to drive you over there?” Elliott offered. “I can get one of the other trainers to take my next client.” “I can take her,” Gabe said. He looked at her. “Unless you’d prefer to have your brother go with you.” Adelia hesitated, then shook her head. “If you don’t mind making the drive, that would be great,” she told him. “Elliott, there’s no reason for you to miss an appointment. I can handle this.” Elliott looked worried but eventually nodded. “You’ll be there when I get home? I want to have a talk with my niece about skipping school and worrying you.” She smiled. “Believe me, she’ll get more than enough talking from me tonight. You can save your lecture for another day.” Elliott nodded with unmistakable reluctance. “Whatever you think, but I will have a word with her. You can be sure of that.” “Not a doubt in my mind,” she said, then turned to Gabe. “Let’s go. That

I want to tell you something,” he said. “I asked your sister all about your husband. Mark.” “You did?” “Yep. I understand he was a great man. A brilliant man—and kind. He did a lot of good in the world, and he was good to you. I have a lot of respect for him.” “She didn’t tell me this.” “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this to you. I might muck it up, but you have to listen. A couple of weeks ago I let you cry alone, because I was pissed. I caught you talking to his picture and I got threatened. Threatened by a dead man, which makes me a true candy-ass.” He touched her hair. “I won’t ever do that again, Mel. I understand why you love him, why you’ll always—” “Jack—” “No, I’m going to do this, and you’re going to listen. I know you didn’t want your life to change the way it did, and you couldn’t control it. Just like you can’t control what you feel. You don’t have to pretend you don’t think about him, or miss him. And if you have those moments when you’re sad, when you wish you could have him back in your life, you can be honest with me. You don’t have to pretend it’s PMS.” He smiled. “We both know you don’t have PMS anymore.” “Jack, what are you talking about?” “I just want one thing. If I can be a sport about the fact that he’ll always be an important part of your life, can you try to not be sorry that we’re together, having this baby? Because I have to tell you, I’ve never been more ready for anything. I’ll do my best not to be jealous. I realize I’m not your first choice, but your next choice. That’s good enough for me, and I’m sorry someone died. I’m sorry for your loss, Mel.” “Why are you saying this? It’s such nonsense.” “It’s what I heard,” he said. “I heard you saying you were sorry you were pregnant, that it just happened, and you promised not to forget him.” Mel gave him a look of disbelief. “I thought you were hurt by what you heard me say—but you were hurt because of what you didn’t hear!” “Huh?” “Jack, I’m not sorry I’m pregnant. I’m thrilled! I got myself all worked up because I realized that I was more in love with you than I thought possible. Maybe more in love than I’ve ever been in my life. I had a short insane moment of feeling that I’d betrayed his memory somehow. As though I’d been unfaithful or something. It’s true—I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. I know I resisted, but you just got to me. I promised Mark I wouldn’t forget him. And I won’t because you’re right, he was a good man. And I respect him, too.” “Huh?” he said again. “Look,” she said, playing with his thick, damp hair. “I was upset and a little confused. I loved Mark very much. I didn’t think I’d get to feel that again, much less for someone new. Imagine how it threw me when I realized I felt something even stronger. Something even more powerful. Jack, I was telling Mark I had moved on. I was saying goodbye—it was difficult. I’m not going to be a widow anymore, darling. I’m going to be a wife. This thing I have with you—it’s amazing.” “Seriously?” “I was in this high, emotional state,” she said with a shrug. “I was tired and pregnant. Jack, I love you so much. Can’t you tell?” “Well…yeah,” he said, sitting up in the bed a little.

When we’re outside, I hear Brittany take a deep breath. I swear it sounds as if she’s holding herself together by a thin thread. Not the way it’s supposed to go down: bring girl home, kiss girl, mom insults girl, girl leaves crying. “Don’t sweat it. She’s just not used to me bringin’ girls in the house.” Brittany’s expressive blue eyes appear remote and cold. “That shouldn’t have happened,” she says, throwing back her shoulders in a stance as stiff as a statue’s. “What? The kiss or you likin’ it so much?” “I have a boyfriend,” she says as she fidgets with the strap on her designer book bag. “You tryin’ to convince me, or yourself?” I ask her. “Don’t turn this around. I don’t want to upset my friends. I don’t want to upset my mom. And Colin…I’m just really confused right now.” I hold out my hands and raise my voice, something I usually avoid because like Paco says, it means I actually care. I don’t care. Why should I? My mind says to shut the fuck up at the same time words spout from my mouth. “I don’t get it. He treats you like you’re his damn prize.” “You don’t even know what it’s like with me and Colin…” “Tell me, dammit,” I say, unable to hide the edge to my voice. Initially I hold myself back from what I really want to say, but I can’t resist and tell it to her straight up. “’Cause that kiss back there…it meant somethin’. You know it as well as I do. I dare you to tell me bein’ with Colin is better than that.” She looks away hastily. “You wouldn’t understand.” “Try me.” “When people see Colin and me together, they comment on how perfect we are. You know, the Golden Couple. Get it?” I stare at her in disbelief. That is beyond fucked up. “I get it. I just can’t believe I’m hearin’ it. Does bein’ perfect mean that much to you?” There’s a long, brittle silence. I catch a flicker of sadness in those sapphire eyes, but then it’s gone. In an instant her expression stills and grows serious. “I haven’t been doing a bang-up job at it lately, but yes. It does,” she finally admits. “My sister isn’t perfect, so I have to be.” That is the most pathetic shit I’ve ever heard. I shake my head in disgust and point to Julio. “Get on and I’ll take you back to school to get your car.” Silently, Brittany straddles my motorcycle. She holds herself so far away from me I can barely feel her behind me. I almost take a detour to make the ride last longer. She treats her sister with patience and adoration. God knows I wouldn’t be able to spoon-feed one of my brothers and wipe his mouth. The girl I once accused of being self-absorbed is not one-dimensional. Dios mío, I admire her. Somehow, being with Brittany brings something to my life that’s missing, something…right. But how am I going to convince her of that?

So she’s the lucky winner tonight?” he asked after a few minutes of silent driving. “Excuse me?” “Kinda surprised you’re not more upset about it.” “Well, I kinda want to know what I’m supposed to be upset about.” I crossed my arms under my chest and turned so my back was resting against the door so I could look at him more easily. What is his problem? I made the douche bag pancakes two days ago! And I told him all about Blake this morning. That was hard for me; now he’s going to treat me like this? “I got the job, by the way, in case you were wondering.” He shook his head and rested his forearms on the steering wheel while he waited for the light to turn green. “Knew you would, and Rod called me this afternoon so I already knew that you did. You start tomorrow night?” “Mmm-hmm. Are you going to tell me why I’m supposed to be upset?” “Because that guy is taking Candice home tonight instead of you.” My head jerked back and I could only imagine the disgust dripping from my expression. “Ew! What?!” Kash looked quickly between the road and me a couple of times. “That guy. I saw you launch yourself at him earlier. He kept kissing your cheek, and now he’s taking Candice back to his place.” I slammed my fist over my mouth and swallowed. “Oh God, I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.” “Shit, do you need me to pull over?” “No, no. Oh, just ew, Kash! You and Mase kiss my head all the time. Mason picks me up almost every time I see him.” “So?” “So? So! So, Eli is Candice’s older brother that I grew up with and I actually view like my own brother. Besides Candice he was the best friend I had. He helped me through—” I cut myself off quickly and blew out a deep breath. “He helped me through a lot when I was younger. But I have never once viewed him as anything other than family and a friend. He even calls me sis, for crying out loud. Candice isn’t going home with him, they’re going to meet up with their cousin for drinks and I didn’t want to go.” Kash’s face relaxed, and though I expected him to look embarrassed, he just turned and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like him?” “Seriously, this conversation is grossing me out.” He

Who do you think he was, Kash? Who the fuck do you think he is to me?” “Other than Candice’s cousin, I don’t know! I want you to explain what I saw.” He reached around me and tried to turn off the shower but I smacked his arm back. “No! I need to get clean, please!” “You can take a shower after we’ve talked this out.” “Think about it!” I shrieked, and whirled on him. “Did I look like I was enjoying seeing him? I couldn’t even look at him. Think about when Candice said I was ‘dating’ him. Think. About. It.” Steam was filling the tiny bathroom and again, I tried to go into the shower. I just needed to wash him away. “Please, let me get clean,” I cried. “Clean,” he whispered like that word had finally sunk in, and sucked in a quick gasp. “Oh my God, Rach—” “I hate him, Kash. I hate him with everything in me. If I never see or hear from him again, it will be too soon! He tried to ruin me. And today—he saw us kiss. He started texting me. He said I forgot who I belonged to.” Kash’s hand dropped from my arm and I cried in relief when my body hit the stinging water. I grabbed a loofah and poured shower gel on it before hastily scrubbing at my body. I was grabbing for more shower gel when Kash caught my wrist. I looked up at him and saw his horrified expression. “Baby, please—don’t . . . don’t tell me he was right there and I did nothing.” My jaw trembled and I blinked back the tears that began to cloud my vision. Kash’s face drained of color and his shoulders slumped. “Son of a bitch. You said he worked at UT, I thought—I thought he was a professor. I was expecting some old, sick bastard, not . . . that.” I shook my head quickly and began scrubbing myself again. “He’s a personal trainer there. He’s only twenty-six.” His body swayed before going rigid, his eyes wide. “And he’s Candice’s cousin? Her goddamn cousin raped you?!” Sobs filled the bathroom and I continued to scrub vigorously. “That’s why she didn’t believe me,” I explained when I could take a deep enough breath in. “She was so mad, said I was just accusing him because I didn’t want to date him.” “What the fuck? She—how could she—” “He’s her family. She loves him, I get it.” “There’s nothing to get. That shouldn’t make a difference. Rachel, I’m so sorry. I’m . . . I’m sorry.” He grabbed the loofah out of my hand and tossed it in the tub. Cupping his hands to catch the water, he tried to help wash the suds off me and turned the water off when I was soap free. “You don’t need to get clean, baby. You aren’t dirty. You’re okay.” He wrapped a large towel around my body and pulled me close as I trembled. “You’re okay. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize, I’m sorry I was upset with you.” I face-planted into his chest and let him lead me into my bedroom. Letting me go for a moment, he flipped off the lights, quickly undressed until he was only in his boxer-briefs, and walked back up to me. Grabbing the comforter off the bed, he had me let go of the wet towel and let it fall to the floor before wrapping me up in the comforter. I climbed onto the bed after him, and he got under the sheet and pulled me close to him, his arms tightening around my shaking body. “I’ve got you,” he whispered against the top of my head. “You’re safe.” My

spend a lot of the time depressed. Always have, always will. Give me medicine, I get less upset about being depressed, but the fact of it never leaves. Sometimes I am clinically, trouble-getting-out-of-bed depressed. Other times, I am just low-level, drag-myself-through-my-day depressed. Some people might call me pessimistic because I always expect disaster to occur. But looking at my life, I think that’s bull. When I expect doom? That’s what I call reality. Mostly, I ignore the depression. I developed a caustic sense of humor. I discovered mosh pits to vent. I listen to seriously angry music. When that doesn’t work, I soothe the emptiness with terrible food and old jazz. If that doesn’t work and I can afford it, I go in and see someone about getting some medicine for a few weeks. That means making appointments any place I think I might be able to get in, assuming that I’ll be turned down for service, and showing up to them all until I find someone who’s willing to do me a solid and give me a week or two of anti-anxiety medicine. If I can’t find anyone to do that, I just sort of check out for a while. Those

I can’t make myself accept my circumstances, but I can be completely honest with God about how upset I am and put it back on him to change my heart. He’s God. Let him do the work in you. All you have to do is show up and talk to him. You don’t have to change your mind. You can just plug in and listen to what he has to say. I

So we got to the show that night, and despite the injuries and setbacks in rehearsal, we kept the showstopper lift in our routine. I just focused on the steps and that lift. I still wasn’t feeling the emotions she wanted me to feel. At least I wasn’t until they played the video before we danced. It’s a very emotional video and I heard myself say in it, “The worst thing I ever did was not open up to anyone during my depression.” The way the dance started was with me standing next to a mirror where you could see I looked whole. I loved that Sharna came up with that concept, because one day I just told her about how looking in the mirror made me upset. And so she loved the idea of the mirror. When the dance begins, the mirror is there and I look complete, and then the mirror turns and I’m facing it. Then we go into the dance and I turn and then I pick her up to do a move where she goes back and then we do another move where I pick her up, spin her around into a cradle hold, and then down and then we hit the floor, we push back, we go into the star form, we come down, we rotate, we grab each other’s arms, we lift each other up, we hug, and then she goes to the left, and I turn and face her. I looked at her and nodded to say, “We got this.” She ran up at me and I lifted her and locked out and when I did it, I saw the crowd jump to their feet and cheer. I was reminded in that brief moment of the wall I climbed in my first Warrior Dash. Everyone cheered and I didn’t want to put Sharna down. When we finished, the crowd roared again, and in the judges’ comments segment, judge Bruno Tonioli told me that I was a titan among men. I felt amazing. We didn’t go home that week.

Terrible things could have happened to any one of us. We never will know what might have happened to us when we were drunk. We usually thought: “That couldn’t happen to me.” But any one of us could have killed somebody or have been killed ourselves, if we were drunk enough. But fear of these things never kept us from drinking. Do I believe that in A.A. we have something more effective than fear? Meditation for the Day I must keep calm and unmoved in the vicissitudes of life. I must go back into the silence of communion with God to recover this calm when it is lost even for one moment. I will accomplish more by this calmness than by all the activities of a long day. At all cost I will keep calm. I can solve nothing when I am agitated. I should keep away from things that are upsetting emotionally. I should run on an even keel and not get tipped over by emotional upsets. I should seek for things that are calm and good and true and stick to those things. Prayer for the Day I pray that I may not argue nor contend, but merely state calmly what I believe to be true. I pray that I may keep myself in that state of calmness that comes from faith in God’s purpose for the world. APRIL

Every single person I met and that knew I wrote books, made fun of me. And, most of my teachers said I don't have talent to write. I had to create a way when no way was at sight. And believing was what put more than two hundred of my books in bestsellers lists. So should I really care about what others think? No. But, it's true that the less I care, the more people seem to get angry, upset and confused. And again, I let it go, and I let them go too, as they represent another stage in this process of learning how to become myself. I should have actually let it go long time ago, but I was still too afraid to do it. This, until I realized that 99% of the population is unadmittingly the same, equal to one another, and sharing, with more or less theories and reason, with more or less sophisticated knowledge, nothing more than mass opinion. I had to study the 1% that represented what I wanted to become. Once I did, my fears vanished.

Darren’s been quiet since we stripped down to our bathing suits and waded into the water, like his mind is somewhere else. I make small talk, but he gives a lot of halfhearted, one-word answers. “Is something wrong?” I finally ask. Darren cups a hand and repeatedly scoops at the water, letting it leak out between his fingers. “What do you see happening a few weeks from now?” I try to meet his eyes, but he’s focused on the water. “What do you mean?” “I mean at the end of summer, when you have to leave. What happens after that?” I open my mouth to speak, but not a sound comes out. I want to say a million things. I want to say that watching him walk off that train, then realizing I had no way to get in touch with him, nearly killed me. That I can’t believe I’m expected to say goodbye to him again. That I think about him. A lot. What comes out instead is, “I finish high school and you start college.” “Right…right.” He nods and exhales, sinking into the water up to his neck and running a dripping hand through his still-dry hair. Follow your heart, not your head. Regret nothing. “Darren,” I begin, swallowing the lump in my throat and forcing myself to keep eye contact. I need answers. I can’t go back home without knowing exactly what there was or is between us. “Why did you come back here?” No response. “Why did you ask me to go to Pompeii with you guys? Why did you get so upset you couldn’t even talk to me when you saw Bruno kiss me good-bye? Why did you completely freak when Nina took our picture together? Why did you come back here? I need--” I groan and ball my hands into fists at my sides. “I need you to tell me what you want me to think, Darren. What am I supposed to take away from all this?” “I don’t know, Pippa, okay?” He yanks at his hair. “I…needed to see you again. When I’m not with you, all I think about is you and your shy little smile and the two freckles on your right cheek. Your terrifying green eyes.

My emotions, as they were happening, were just signals that I needed to react to the current situation. What I’ve learned is that I needed to read the emotion and react accordingly, which I wasn’t. If I was feeling scared, for example, I should have looked at the root cause of that emotion, not the situation I was in at that moment. All main emotions have secondary emotions that are usually causing them. I should have tried to understand what secondary emotions might be coming into play at any time that was causing me to feel upset or anxious. You are never feeling an emotion “for no reason.” There is usually a trigger that you experienced that set off a secondary emotion, which then builds up with all of the other feelings you have been supressing, and this causes an emotional reaction that seems out of sync with what you are experiencing. The key here is to be aware of those deep-seeded underlying secondary emotions that are causing whatever negative feelings you are having, and deal with those feelings first.

Darren,” I begin, swallowing the lump in my throat and forcing myself to keep eye contact. I need answers. I can’t go back home without knowing exactly what there was or is between us. “Why did you come back here?” No response. “Why did you ask me to go to Pompeii with you guys? Why did you get so upset you couldn’t even talk to me when you saw Bruno kiss me good-bye? Why did you completely freak when Nina took our picture together? Why did you come back here? I need--” I groan and ball my hands into fists at my sides. “I need you to tell me what you want me to think, Darren. What am I supposed to take away from all this?” “I don’t know, Pippa, okay?” He yanks at his hair. “I…needed to see you again. When I’m not with you, all I think about is you and your shy little smile and the two freckles on your right cheek. Your terrifying green eyes.” He stands again and my eyes dart to the ribbons of water streaming down his chest. He takes a step toward me and raises a hand to my cheek, stroking it with his thumb. My eyelids drop involuntarily and I melt into his touch. “I just--” He stops himself. His lips gently press against mine and I pull in a sharp breath before I lean my face into his palm even more. Just as I fear my legs might not hold me up any longer, his other hand snakes around to the small of my back, supporting and pulling me against him. After a moment he drifts a few inches away, keeping his hands in place, nervously meeting my eyes to gauge a reaction. Everything around me except for his face is a blue blur as I stare back at him. Darren just kissed me. As many times as I’ve imagined him kissing me, the shock of it as a reality sends a quake through my entire body.

The problem was I knew innately I didn’t want to be controlling and I was never happy, regardless. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome that my behavior changed. Now, before an event, I no longer subconsciously create drama in an attempt to release emotion. I didn’t consciously decide to change this; the change happened naturally. Now, I am hyperaware of why I am upset. I recognize my emotions in detail and the triggers that lead to anxiety. It might seem that knowing myself more would make the anxiety level decrease, but actually the anxiety is more intensified because I am no longer subconsciously utilizing displacement. I am not displacing my own dread about an event onto another event. I am not using or finding a scapegoat. I am not creating drama in order to diffuse my own tension. Instead, tension keeps building and I have no way to release it. Now that I am more aware of my own behavior and emotions, and the triggers, I do much more stimming, e.g., flick my nails, flap my hands, clear my throat, click my teeth, repeatedly saying “okay,” and so forth. I also have anxiety dreams related to upcoming events. In addition, on the day of a happening I have extreme fluctuations of emotions and physical symptoms, such as hives and/or stomachaches. I am now taking in the full experience and my body is responding. I don’t know if this is better or worse than the displacement. What is also happening is instead of “freaking out” before an event, I am often “freaking out” after the event. (Sir Brain and LV running around in circles in full panic after climbing out of the swimming hole, exhausted, to discover they are naked!) I feel very much like a child who holds herself together at school for the better part of the day, only to return home and have a meltdown. I have found, to date, the best way to handle my anxiety is to not turn it into the enemy, or something to be eradicated and ejected, but instead something to be accepted. The more I fight the anxiety, the worse I feel, for there isn’t any feasible avenue of solution that leads to rescue. I have to go through the discomfort in order to feel relief. The process is similar to a minor panic attack or adrenaline rush, but it passes. And the more accepting I am of the process, the quicker it passes.

Empaths are born with these traits, and since most of their parents are unaware of why their child is so hypersensitive, they don’t receive any training on how to handle this type of psi ability. They also have very little understanding of or compassion for how overwhelming it must be to feel emotions at such an intense level. Those who don’t experience this kind of feeling have a difficult time understanding or sympathizing with what an empath experiences on a daily basis. When I was a young empath, I could enter a room of people and read the temperature of the room by the energy that everyone was giving off. I could tell if my father was soon to be erupting in anger and when my mother was in a state of high anxiety. The energy would wash over me and enter my auric field, where I would experience the emotions that both were emitting. Because I didn’t know how to release this energy or what to do with it, it would stay in my auric field. I would gather too much and end up with a stomachache. Holidays with large gatherings of family were the most challenging. Invariably, I would be so overwhelmed as I psychically picked up all this energy without releasing it from my physical and aura body that I would become physically ill every Christmas. I would exhibit flu-like symptoms and have an upset stomach to the point of vomiting. My mother would put me in bed, lamenting that she couldn’t understand how I could get so ill every Christmas. Over time, I developed the only coping skill that I subconsciously knew: creating a wall of energy around myself where I did not allow all of my energy to be accessed. I retreated behind the wall, keeping some of my emotional energy safely tucked away and allowing the wall to block some of the intense energy bouncing around me. There were times when the emotional intensity of everyone was so high that I wanted to leave the room. Since I was not always able to escape the situation, I learned how to put up a block around myself so that I wouldn’t have to feel overwhelmed by the energy pinging around me.