Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence

I knew that my father did not like me since I was young. When I wanted to commit suicide to end the pain caused by my illness, he was celebrating another child’s birthday. He hated my mother and me alongside her. So, when I told him that I was sick, he did not believe me. “Is this your new tactic to get money from me?” No one believed that the daughter of the Powell family could die because she was too poor to pay the hospital fees. My father did not believe it either. However, when he saw my dead body, the famous actor who hated his daughter actually went insane.

My sister, Laura Ward, died the year we were ten, the year we snuck out of school to play. From that day forward, my mother’s grief turned into a burning hatred for me, convinced that I was the reason my sister was gone. She treated me like a servant, like an unwanted burden, and filled the void by adopting a perfect, obedient daughter to replace my sister. She took everything from me without a second thought — my rights, my freedom, my very existence — and even demanded that I give up a kidney for her precious adopted girl. Alright, Mother, if you want a life, I’ll give you mine! But it was only when my body lay cold, my breath long gone, that she finally turned and looked at me.

On my first day of work, a new colleague keeps hinting that she's the chairman's daughter. Everyone sucks up to her and flatters her when they hear. That's not the worst part—they make me out to be some old man's sugar baby! I angrily call the chairman. "They called you an old man with a sugar baby, Dad!"

I lost my eyesight thanks to a sudden car crash. In order to fund my treatment, I took up the position of a blind spectator, as per my friend's recommendation. The job scope was… challenging to put into words, to say the least. To make things worse, one of the clients was my boyfriend.

In order to protect my father, I was tortured for ten hours, but my father was busy celebrating his adopted daughter’s eighteenth birthday. With my dying breath, I called my father and said, “Dad, it’s my birthday today. Could you wish me a happy birthday?” “You crazy monster! You got your mother killed in order to celebrate your birthday! How could you still ask me to celebrate your birthday? You should just die!” With that said, he hung up. The next day, my corpse was placed in different flower pots and put in front of a police station. My father was in charge of inspecting my corpse, and he could immediately tell that the murderer did this for revenge. What they did to me was cruel and made a mockery of the police’s authority. But he did not manage to tell that the deceased was the daughter he hated.

A little over a month pregnant, I was happily looking forward to my wedding—until my fiance teamed up with my parents and brothers to put me on trial at the Court of Justice. They fabricated charge after charge, hoping to have me executed in the name of the law. If the judge found me guilty, I would be sentenced to death on the spot. Once I was dead, my corneas would be transplanted into my adopted sister, and everything I owned—my assets and insurance—would be claimed by them. Faced with my fiance’s betrayal and my family’s treachery, I fought back. I demanded the judge use the latest medical technology to extract my memories and project them on the big screen, letting the judge and hundreds of public jurors decide my fate. Just as everyone was smugly certain of their victory, the truth revealed by my memories moved the entire courtroom to tears.

25 years ago, a maternity nurse secretly switched me out for her daughter. Unfortunately for her, my six-year-old brother saw this and secretly switched me back. 25 years later, the maternity nurse comes knocking with her actual daughter by her side. She accuses me, the heiress of Crawford Group, of being an impostor. The company's janitor starts insulting me and insinuates that my lipstick is a cheap imitation. Even my boyfriend humiliates me with her. "And here I thought you were the heiress of the Crawford family. You can't even compare to a hair on Pammy's head!" When the DNA test results are out, everyone is stunned. "That wretch bewitched me, Lori! Please forgive me—give me another chance!" my boyfriend cries. I look at him icily. "Another chance to do what? To clean the toilets?"

When my mother-in-law was poisoned and clinging to life, my toxicology knowledge was her only hope. I ended the call and grabbed my coat, ready to rush to the hospital. My husband blocked my path. "Hold on! It's the opening of Ella's haunted castle today. You're bailing to play ghost?" I stared at him, telling him about the dire situation. The poison needed to be neutralized within thirty minutes, or it would be fatal. He rolled his eyes. "Your janitor mom can drop dead for all I care. I'll toss some Monopoly money on her grave if it shuts you up. Don't try to cross me here." His best female friend draped herself over him. "In a hurry to chase some side guy? Girl, your face is longer than Herbert's when he is all revved up. Right, buddy?" Their shamelessness was almost laughable. The kicker? Herbert thought it was my mom dying.

My daughter has leukemia and desperately needs a bone marrow donor. After a blood test, it turns out my blood type doesn't match hers. However, my husband's blood type does. This confuses me. I gave birth to her, so how could my blood type not be a match for hers? I'm puzzled by this when my long-lost best friend suddenly appears with her son, who's about my daughter's age. She wants him to do a blood test to see whether it matches my daughter's.

My husband spiked our child's formula with sleeping pills to sneak away for a Christmas date with his assistant. As I frantically rushed my feverish child to the hospital, I unexpectedly spotted my husband carrying his assistant upstairs. "Peyton twisted her ankle, so I'm here to help her get it checked!" Even though our child was in the operating room fighting for her life, he did not so much as glance in her direction. I tightened my grip on the ten-million-dollar winning lottery ticket in my pocket. It was time to end this seven-year marriage.