The Love Bank

I'm getting married this month. As The Fiance and I contemplate this, we can't help but discuss what kind of marriage we hope to have. We both feel strongly that we have a pretty damn good shot at it. We were both fortunate enough to go through some pretty traumatic relationships and their consequential breakups/divorces. Fortunately for us, we didn't come through them unscathed and we didn't come through them with any illusions about ourselves. 

We came out of these experiences with a strong desire, if not zeal, to never let it happen again. I think what we both learned is that yes, we probably chose the wrong people the last time around. But I think we also learned that neither one of us is perfect, and if we're going to make a relationship work, we're going to have to actually do some work.

The Fiance reminded me of a great site he'd told me about not long after we first met. It's called Marriage Builders and it's based on the work of Dr. Harley. One of the concepts that made a lasting impression on me is the idea of The Love Bank.

Dr. Harley's idea is that we all have a love bank, a reservoir of needs, that must be filled in order for us to feel happy and loved. Having our needs met not only makes us personally happy, it makes us generous with others. If your love bank is full, you're more likely to want to fill your significant other's love bank too. It creates a culture of giving, where the giving is free and easy because it's so abundant. It's how you usually feel in a new relationship.

Now if someone grows unhappy, feels neglected or simply starts to grow apart as is often the case in long-term relationships, that person is not so likely to fill the significant other's love bank. It becomes a, "Screw you. Why should I do something for you, when you're not doing anything for me" culture.

That's bad news, and I suspect we've all been there. I know I have.

So sometimes we've got to take one for the team. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but I think sometimes, especially early on in relationships (or before things have gone way, way south) we've got to do the nice things for our significant other, even if we don't necessarily feel like it. You've got to keep doing it, just like you've got to keep exercising, or picking up your house or paying your bills. It's maintenance, baby.

I know maintenance doesn't sound particularly romantic, but I think it's necessary. It's not unlike making your bed. Sure, your bed doesn't really have to be made every day. You're just going to get back into anyway. I was a serial non-bedmaker for decades. I was a bedmaking rebel and I held its flag high. 

It wasn't until the past couple of years that I realized it's not about making the bed. It's not about the bed at all. It's about Right Effort. The Buddha said that without effort, nothing can be accomplished. If you don't make your bed in the morning, you leave your bedroom in disharmony. You sense that disharmony when you come home at night. Not making the bed can be like leaving dishes in the sink. It's a pattern of behavior and that behavior is neglect. Neglect begets more neglect. Soon your house is a mess, all the time.

Making regular, consistent, reliable deposits in your significant other's love bank is simply a matter of putting right effort into the relationship. For instance, whenever The Fiance is at my house, I get up first, go downstairs and make a pot of coffee. I bring him a cup of hot coffee when it's done. I never make a pot of coffee during the week when I'm home alone, I do it for him because it makes him feel loved. And guess what? When I'm at his house, he does the same for me.

Sure, it's a small gesture, but it's like making the bed. Bringing each other a cup of coffee is making a deposit in our love banks (yes, I realize this sounds dirty, you pervs). Dr. Harley covers all manner of ways you can make deposits in each other's love banks (stop it), and he also recognizes that all of our love banks are not the same (really now, you should be ashamed of yourselves).

Some of us don't like coffee.

Some of us like back rubs, or going mountain biking together, or receiving presents, or hugs, or sex (happy now?), conversation and attending one another's events. All manner of things. That's why it's important to find out what's important to your significant other, and vice versa.

You've got to get used to making the bed every day and making it the way your significant other likes it. It's got to become habit. Habits are hard to break. But they can be broken, of course. I'm under no illusions that this is easy. Even someone with OCD-lite can stop making the bed if their psyche changes. Depression can lead to neglect, and neglect can lead to disarray.

It's all connected.

Right Effort permeates all facets of our lives, from our romantic relationships to our friendships, to our parenting and our careers. You've got to make the bed every day. You've got to make deposits.

Otherwise you've got nothing. You're broke and your house is trashed.

The Power of Neutral

"Put it in Neutral."

I think it's a term I've heard The Boyfriend use.

Sometimes you have to put your brain in Neutral. Sometimes you're ready to slam it into fourth gear and run over somebody. But instead of doing that — or instead of throwing it into Reverse and backing over the body repeatedly — what we really should do is just slide it on over to Neutral.

Sit a spell.

Rest a bit.

Don't react.

Seems we're always reacting, slamming on the brakes, speeding up, chasing some folks down, and flipping others off out our windows. Everyone is pissing us off, hurting our feelings, irritating us, asking us too much, doing too little, saying too much or not enough, or saying the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong tone. My lord, we're all a bunch of bumper cars. Without bumpers.

Sometimes we need to just shift on over to Neutral. Go ahead and watch the other cars bolt around. Let them crash and careen around while we just sit by and watch the chaos. It's much better to sit and watch from the outside than to participate in the cacophony.

That stuff is exhausting.

Besides, what one person says in the heat in the moment would surely not be repeated a few minutes or hours later. Why react to it? And whatever event seems tragic and insurmountable to you today will merely be a fond memory a few years down the road. Oftentimes it's those moments of which you're the most proud.

It's the overcoming of the obstacles, not never-having them.

It's the triumphing over difficulties, not letting them bury you.

And so I shift my mind into Neutral more and more. Reacting, defending, getting my word or my sense of injustice out there into the cosmos just isn't as important anymore. I see how it is. I can kick and scream and yell and it won't change a damn thing.

I'm in it.

I'm in this screwed up traffic jam of life, and I can't get off. My exit isn't coming for a while, so far as I can tell. So either I sit here and wait patiently to see what comes next, or I lean on my horn and jam my arm out the window with my middle finger flying while I press the gas and tail gait every asshole who doesn't get out of my way. Or I just sit in Neutral and wait for the way to clear.

I used to think Buddhists didn't care.

I used to worry that equanimity was apathy.

But it's not that. It's a patience full of faith.

I have faith that this is all temporary. I have faith in my ability to cope with life and change. I have faith in the greater wisdom that will be clear to me when I look back on the times I struggled.

I can be patient.

I can park it in Neutral.

I am not going spend my life in a permanent state of road rage.

You can call me passive. But I know a secret: My stillness is the most powerful force of all.

Opening My Eyes to Compassion Blind Spots

I have a blind spot in my compassion for others.

I have a difficult time tolerating people who are helpless. I know, it's not terribly helpful of me, is it? Don't get me wrong, I can have all the sympathy in the world for the mentally ill, the homeless, the poor, children, animals ... all manner of "helpless" beings who illicit great compassion and empathy in me.

But when I encounter everyday folks with the regular abilities to hold down a job, to have relationships, to generally function in the world, and yet remain seemingly helpless in the face of one particular aspect of their lives — my compassion goes out the window. 

I'm not proud of this.

My compassion completely ceases when anyone claims helplessness and then proceeds to blame someone else. Drives me batshit crazy, actually. I know, I know. I told you it was a blind spot in my ability to feel compassion for my fellow man. A grave one, if I were to be completely honest.

I have friends who claim helplessness in relationships. They can't change. They love him. Or her. They believe the other person will change and so they chain themselves to someone who is physically or emotionally abusive, in the hopes that the other will change. They stay with cheaters. They do all manner of things that make the rest of their friends grit their teeth and say, "Why?"

It doesn't matter how much you talk them up — pep-talking, tough-talking — no amount of offers to help, suggestions for therapists, books to read, examples of other people who have left only to find greater happiness — nothing can abate these folks from their self-destructive lives. 

"But I love him."

"I don't know what to do."

"I'm stuck."

And no matter how many escape routes you map out for them, they won't set foot on one of them. They are helpless to their own desires, their own fears, to their own blindness to their incredible power.

That's just it.

We are all so incredibly powerful. Each one of us, unto ourselves. No one but no one else has the power to free you the way you can free yourself. Perhaps this is the source of my frustration? So many friends and family blame other people for their predicament, or blame the economy, or the geography, or their psychology or whatever reason you want to drum up —my point is it doesn't matter.

Your mind is the most powerful thing of all.

The rest of it is nothing.

The Buddha said, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." The way you feel, the way you think about your life and your situation, is made up primarily in your head. I'm not saying if you're starving or living in a dangerous environment that this wouldn't be a very real discomfort — of course it would be. But for the majority of my friends and family (and me), we are not living in a war zone. We have a roof over our heads, food in the refrigerator and it is safe to go outside.

So much suffering is created in our own minds.

So much resistance to ending that suffering resides in our own minds.

I recently listened to a friend uncork on how another friend's parents had ruined her life. These controlling parents had taken their adult daughter away from the city she loved, the job she loved, the girlfriend she'd loved ... all of this through the power of their religious guilt.

My friend argued that I didn't understand the power of parents' guilt, the power of religion, the power of having been raised in such an environment and the inability to stop that power and control.

She's right.

While I can see parents controlling their children, and I can even see parents controlling or trying to control their children as they emerge into young adults, I cannot see how once you are an adult, hell, if you are in your thirties, how you can blame your parents for ruining your life.

Do something about it.

Get therapy.

Read self-help books.

Move away.

Make friends.

Create your own life.

It is not your parents' fault if you choose to let them ruin your life. It is not your parents' fault if you choose to let them control you. Now of course I do understand the concept of learned helplessness, and I do realize it is very possible that abused and neglected children may have been raised to behave this way.

Hell, I was.

But at what point do you, as an adult, decide to re-train yourself?

If I have been conditioned to lay down and give up because I know any attempt to change my environment is useless, it is no wonder I may spend my adolescence and early adulthood just laying down.

I may let men abuse and neglect me.

I may abuse drugs and alcohol.

I may develop and eating disorder and stay victim to it.

I may have done all of the above.

But at what point do you realize that you, as a rational creature with the amazing powers of the human mind have the ability to ... change? At what point do you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and say, "I will no longer be a victim. I will save myself. I will blame no one for my current predicament. I take full ownership of the life I am leading right now, and I vow to use my powers as a free adult to change it."

My concern is this: Has my own ability to change ruined my ability to feel compassion for those who haven't?

I no longer believe in "can't" change. 

I just don't.

I believe in "won't" change.

How to find compassion in that outlook? I suppose the Buddha or the Dalai Lama would feel great empathy for those who are stuck in dukkha (suffering). How awful to be a prison of your own mind.

I do remember that feeling.

I remember how helpless I felt.

I remember being weak with tears, sobbing on the cold tile of the bathroom floor because I couldn't get out of the vicious cycle of an eating disorder.

I felt helpless.

I felt I couldn't change.

Yet I still needed compassion.

Deserved it, actually, just as every soft animal does. I believe that.

But oh Buddha, how I struggle to give it. I do see the irony of my own helplessness here. Here I am, claiming that I can't change my reaction to the stubbornly helpless. A victim of my own recovery, unable to extend sympathy to those I've left behind.

That's unacceptable, of course.

I often think of Maya Angelou who once said, "When I knew better, I did better." If I go there, I find myself better able to let go of my anger at my friends and family's self-victimization. When they know better, they'll do better.

When they figure out that they themselves hold the keys to their own freedom, they will open the door. They will take advice. They will make phone calls. They will do something about it. In the meantime, I can continue to point out that there is a way to change if they ask me. I can sympathize with their suffering. I can fervently hope they find a way to change.

To believe they can change.

To find it in their own beautiful minds, brave minds, minds that are so much stronger than they realize. If only they would just risk it. Risk the unknown. Risk the fear. Risk change. Take the leap.

But who am I to push them?

*Sigh*

Who am I to judge?

If I am human, the only thing I can do is sympathize. Lend my compassion. Be kind. I must find my way back to the place where I suffered, and there I will find the ability to connect. The ability to see, and to not turn a blind eye to my friends' suffering.

Namaste.

The Significant Pause

I didn't publish a blog on Friday that made fun of someone's enormous face. I did it in the name of the buddhist precept, "Right Speech." I usually know when I'm not using "Right Speech" because I have a nagging sensation that I'm not being nice and whatever it is I'm about to say or write, I probably shouldn't.

Of course, impulsive youngest child that I am, I usually shrug off that feeling (dismiss it as "No Fun!") and go ahead and go for the laughs. But I tried something different on Friday, and then wound up reading about "The Sacred Pause" on Sunday.

The Sacred Pause is that moment when you choose to not react, to not be impulsive. That moment when you overcome your own pressing need to be heard, to vent, to matter. If we could only just pause and listen to what someone else has to say rather than trying to get a word in edgewise, or if we only paused long enough to consider our own misgivings for what we are about to do, we might actually save ourselves a lot of grief.  We get more perspective on the situation if we just shut our mouths.

It's hard to think and consider, to weigh the situation objectively, if you're constantly reacting. In the reaction mode we defend ourselves, we fight, we try to win regardless of the bloody aftermath. When you pause you actually gain the advantage, if you think about it.

You can watch while your opponent (whether it be friend, lover, co-worker, Self) flails, yells, prattles, cries — and in  your pause you might actually learn something. Maybe you'll notice their body language, perhaps you'll hear their words, perhaps in  your own moment of stillness during the cyclone that's hit, you'll realize what is actually going on behind the surface. You can at least figure out what your own motivations are. You'll be less likely to regret something you said, in self-defense or anger. And when you're battling with Self, if you pause, you may actually discover that there is no demon. There is no fight.

It was only a moment. A moment of fear, of rage, of insecurity — whatever — and it passed like the thousands of ceaseless waves that crash upon the shore and slide gently back to sea. Why fight the waves? Why scream at them for threatening the sand? So many useless, wearisome battles. If we keep fighting them all, we'll be used up, dried up things by the time it's time to die. I don't want to live my life fighting and regretting.

I like the idea of hitting the Pause button. Seems we're always pressing Play. Or we get hurt and insist we're pressing Stop and we're not going to listen ever again. Pause offers a Middle Way. Pause says we're just going to rest a bit while we consider. Pause implies we'll play again — but not just yet.

There's much to learn in silence.

By pausing on Friday I learned that it was my own insecurity that caused me to write that blog. I couched it in humor and it certainly would have made you laugh, but my insecurity was misplaced. To direct any unkindness towards a girl who once dated my boyfriend, or towards any of the women he may have dated, is just perpetuating the hurt in my jealous, fearful heart.

Let it go, baby.

You won. There are no more demons to battle, no girls to mock. Let them go nurse their heartaches undisturbed by you. Let them go and love others, free from your judgement and superiority. Turn your eyes to what you have, right now.

The past is nothing. The future unknown. Happiness lies here, in this moment now. Let us pause here for a spell.

(Source: I'm currently reading Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach, PhD. The "Sacred Pause" comes from her book.)

An Unexpected Guest

Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi


Sometimes you come across just the right words at just the right time. This weekend I listened to vitriolic voicemail after vitriolic voicemail, each one nastier than the previous. Each one mocking me, making fun of me, questioning my morals, questioning my decency, lambasting my character.

I mean, it could be laughable since this diatribe was mainly based on the fact that I wear high-heeled shoes (hence, I am a whore). But even the laughable isn't so funny if you hear enough of it.

I really wish Mom wouldn't call so often.

(Kidding.)

It wasn't my mom, and it wasn't a friend or family member — or anyone that has anything to do with me. It was a very troubled person, a person who is suffering, a person who would like to see me suffer, others suffer — anything to not be alone with such intolerable pain. In such a state, we can fire off shots haphazardly, not caring who they hit, only hoping they hit someone other than ourselves. Well, in this case the person knew her desired target.

If only they knew there's no need. Everyone suffers, you don't need to supply suffering to anyone. None of us is alone in pain.

And though I was rattled by this tirade, and though I was shaken to hear such things about myself — however untrue — I dug down deep into myself and found a shelter there. I know who I am. After all these years, after all this struggle, I really do know me. It has taken so long, and there have been many curves along the path, times I got lost and more times that I fell, but they've gotten me to where I am.

And those things for which some would have me be the most ashamed, are actually the things of which I am the most proud. I am a single mother. I had a child out of wedlock. And truth be told, that has made me who I am today. I am so much stronger, so much more resilient than I ever knew I could be. Having the strength to say "No" to those who would bully me into an abortion changed something in me forever.

I never had to take a stand before that day, or I never had the will. I never thought I was strong enough, important enough — hell, never thought I was "enough."

Well I am enough. I like me as I am. I am better for the very things you would criticize. And so bring it. Bring your criticisms and your judgments, call me a whore. Hell, sew that red letter and affix it to my chest, it won't change me. I know who I am and I like who I am.

I am remarkably human. Fragile. Imperfect.

Any other names you want to toss at me may stick or they may fall. It doesn't matter. So far as I'm concerned they're just synonyms for my humanity, and yours. You lob your pain at me in hopes to rid yourself. I see it. So toss away, toss away your pain, your rage and that profound fear that threatens to tear you apart.

If it lessens your suffering, I can take it. I know your words will fall away as I continue on my path, and I'll thank you for reminding me of who I am, and of how much love I have discovered in myself.

Namaste, suffering woman. You are a guest in my house, and I will make something lovely from your pain. Let it humble me, and let it teach me to love even more. I only wish the same for you.

Stealing a Centipede's Life and Other Buddhist Parenting Hypocrisies

I was trying to get the key in the back door when I heard my son furiously stamping on the porch. I turned around and saw him stomping on a bunch of tiny ants.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I gasped.

"I'm killing these ants," my son said and stared at me round-eyed.

"Why?"

"'Cause they were moving around."

We stared at each other.

"Were they hurting you?" I asked.

"No," he said, his eyes getting bigger and more troubled.

"Well then why did you kill them?"

"I don't know. I just did."

We stared at each other.

"You know, once you take an ant's life, you can't give it back," I said.

"I didn't mean to!" he said, eyes getting bigger and sadder, the full impact of his actions now dawning on him.

"You need to be careful about killing things. It's stealing life, and you can't give it back. Those ants weren't bothering you, they weren't hurting you, and you killed them forever."

"I'm sorry!"

Now he looked like he was about to cry. My work was done. Time to reel him back in from the edge.

"It's okay. But just promise me you'll never kill anything that's not harming you, okay?"

"Okay, Mama! I will never steal an ant's life again!"

Buddhist lesson for the day: Check. Awesome parenting: Check.


Fast forward to yesterday morning. As I'm putting the finishing touches on my shimmery face, I hear my son begin to whimper in the hallway.

"Mama, there's something SCARY in here!"

I freeze, mid-dusting of bronzing powder and feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I walked into the hallway with my make-up brush held out before me like a switchblade.

"What is it?" I asked, nervously looking down the hall.

"THAT," my son pointed to the floor at the end of the hallway.


A.

GIGANTIC.

FURRY.

CENTI-BEAST!!!


"AHHH!" I yelled and jumped straight into the air.

"Oh no!" my son yelled and ran into his room where he started to cry.

I have an enormous and well-documented phobia of centipedes. I have even discussed it in therapy. It's that bad. I usually cry and scream and run away. I have had several shriek-y battles with them involving Edge shaving gel and other people's shoes. I once saw the granddaddy of all centipedes take a free fall from the ceiling and land on my husband's chest. I had to divorce him after that.

THAT bad.

So in this moment, my fear putting me on full-tilt irrational panic attack mode, and my weeping son beckoning me to be strong, I was caught. Fortunately my love for my son enabled me to get out of my freak-out-induced paralysis, and I went to his room and hugged him.

"It's okay, baby. It's just a centipede. It's a scary-looking bug and mama is afraid of them too, but I will get it for you."

"IT'S SCARY AND I DON'T LIKE IT!" he wailed.

"Mama is going to be a super hero and get that centipede for you," I said and marched out of his bedroom in search of a shoe I didn't care about.

I held the ratty flat sandal I use for gardening out before me. I felt like I was going to throw up, but I lunged forward and squished the huge, hairy, wriggling beast.

"GAH!" I yelled, shuddering as I heard it crunch.

"Did you get it, Mama?" my son called, still sounding weepy.

"I got it!"

He came out and stood next to me, and we examined the remains of the beast.

"What are all those things?" my son splayed his fingers out to represent the multitude of legs and grimaced. I grimaced in return.

"Those are its legs," I said.

"Yech!"

"Seriously," I agreed.

"What do you call that thing? Anemone?"

"Centipede."

"It's not going to get me any more?"

"Nope. I killed it."

We stood in silence, watching our fallen enemy. He had been a worthy opponent.

"I only kill centipedes. Nothing else," I added.

"Only centipedes. Not ants."

"Right," I said.

I'm totally certain if there had been centipedes in India, the Buddha would have put a disclaimer on that whole "Do Not Kill" thing. I'm sure of it.

Make Cream, Not War

The coffee creamer war is over.

For a long time, during the dark ages here at the agency, we had to buy our own coffee. Many a gray employee tromped down flights of stairs to the belly of the building, to a windowless "cafe" of sorts, next to shipping and receiving, and a lone ATM. There you could buy a cup of coffee for a dollar, and if you filled up five punches on your coffee card, you could get a free one.

Oh man, that got me. Kremlin-Gulag Agency was so stingy, whereas my former employer (YES-IT'S FREE, Inc.) brewed vast vats of Starbucks brand coffee and plied us with free Twix and Kit Kat bars. But the sun shone down on we weary advertising hacks, and a golden coffee maker was bestowed upon us from our now-benevolent ruler.

*Cue angels choir*

No sooner had the serfs sated themselves on free coffee, they began to fight amongst themselves. Some of us brought our own creamers, of varying flavors and fat contents. We brutally scrawled our names on the containers, in large angry-Sharpie-medium-point print.

"MANDY"

"SALACIOUS BEE"

"EPIC"

"THAT ANNOYING GUY IN THE WINDOWLESS CUBE"

Etc.

Despite the clear demarkations of our cream, there were thieves amongst us. Soon notes were taped to the cabinets in the employee kitchen, and ominous floor-wide emails were sent, admonishing the greedy peasants for stealing from their neighbors.

"IF IT DOESN'T HAVE YOUR NAME ON IT, IT'S NOT YOUR CREAM!!!!" the messages hollered at us.

It sort of made me want to steal other people's cream, despite having my own clearly-marked cream. Maybe other people had better cream if theirs was being stolen? I mean, sure I bought the fat-free, but everyone knows the full-fat tastes better. Maybe if I stole it the fat grams wouldn't count? Plus the idea of stealing cream, right there in the middle of our corporate town square -- anyone could catch me! What if they saw me adding a huge dollop of "SALACIOUS BEE" cream to my non-salacious cup?

Oh, the very thought of it gave me the tingles.

But I didn't do it. Because of the Buddha. He's always telling me not to do bad things. But my co-workers, non-believers that they are, went on stealing from one another, and the hatred grew. We now passed one another in the cube-corridors, slit-eyed and suspicious.

"Good morning!" Salacious Bee would chirp.

"FUCK YOU!" I would scream back at her, my guilt from coveting her cream as clear as the florescent lights above.

Kremlin-Gulag Agency was in a bad state of affairs. Rather than bringing joy and peace to the agency, the free coffee had brought hatred and in-fighting amongst the formerly peaceable copy writing and art directing plebes. I trembled in my cube, afraid to venture out into the now-lawless second floor. Though I hadn't noticed anyone stealing my cream, I lifted it carefully each morning -- shaking it, listening to it, trying to determine if any of those bitches had sipped at it.

I'd become someone I no longer knew. It was with a heavy heart that I walked to the coffee maker yesterday morning. Resigned, I opened the refrigerator and braced myself for the hate-speech scrawled across cartons of half-and-half.

But wait.

What's this?

"FREE CREAM FOR EVERYONE! THE INTERNATIONAL COFFEE CREAMERS OF PEACE ARE HERE! HELP YOURSELF! THERE'S MORE CREAM WHERE THAT CAME FROM!"

A message like a sweet call from an angel on high! I looked past the note, to rows and rows of assorted International Coffee Creamer bottles. There was Southern Butter Pecan, Irish Cream, Vanilla, Hazelnut, so many flavors, both fat-free and full -- I stood in the open door of the refrigerator and wept.

Oh, I wept like a new-born babe.

For it was as the Buddha always said: "Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law."

Salacious Bee came around the corner and our eyes met, mine moist with tears.

She opened her arms to me, wide-open in her forgiveness. I walked to her and stopped a few feet short.

"Don't fuckin' touch me," she said with a grin.

"As if! You freak!" I said, and nodded my head.

Peace had returned to the agency. Through love, not hate.






Namaste, my bitches.