Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence

My sister leaves some last words before committing suicide, and everyone who sees those words die. My grandmother is the first to go, and then my father. In the end, even my mother jumps off a 30-story building. The reporters fall over themselves trying to score an interview with me, and the police interrogate me. Countless people want to know what my sister's last words are. However, I keep my silence until my sister's tenth death anniversary. I see a figure before her grave, and I'm agitated beyond imagination. I know it's time for death to take me.

My younger brother had stage four kidney cancer. Our parents demanded that I donate a kidney to save him. I told them I only had one kidney left. The transplant would kill me. Instead of listening to me, they forcibly strapped me to the operating table. “It’s just one kidney! Stop being so selfish!” they yelled. They did not care that I was telling the truth. Years ago, I had given my other kidney to save my father after his car crash.

My husband, Frank Myer, ruined himself by taking random medication and coming to me for treatment. I simply sneered at him and deliberately stalled for time, letting him end up disabled for life! In my previous life, my husband had purposely ruined himself to help his childhood sweetheart, Karen White, get promoted. I anxiously asked if he had taken anything harmful, but he swore he had not. When I asked him to do a full checkup, he accused me of having no ethics and claimed that I would even scam my own husband for a promotion. His childhood sweetheart insisted on a conservative treatment instead. I kicked out his unqualified sweetheart and performed the surgery myself. It was a total success, but she made a huge scene about it after feeling humiliated by being thrown out. She even threatened suicide. My husband was furious and lied that the surgery had failed, even reporting me for forcing him into surgery against medical advice, getting me blacklisted from the medical field. His sweetheart, however, simply dabbed some disinfectant on him, and he announced that she had cured him, instantly making her famous and earning her a promotion. When I confronted him, my husband said that if it weren't for me, he wouldn't have had to go to such lengths for her, and that I am the reason he was suffering. Then, he suffocated me with a pillow. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back to the very day he ruined himself.

After my granddaughter is bullied by her classmates, the bully's family not only refuses to apologize but behaves arrogantly as well. Since they have connections in the city, the school doesn't dare intervene. I turn to the police, but they only urge me to let it go. The bully's family even boasted that they have people in the court, daring me to sue them. With every path to justice cut off, I have no choice but to take out the two Medals of Honor left behind after my son and daughter-in-law died in service, and kneel at the gates of the military compound. Six years ago, when the general personally delivered those medals to our home, he'd said, "Your son and daughter-in-law gave their lives for the country. They are heroes, martyrs, and the pride of our nation." But now, I want to ask him again. Why is it that when a martyr's daughter is bullied, no one protects her?

The day of my wedding photoshoot, my family's adoptive daughter tugs my veil off and asks loudly, "Aren't you our family's adoptive daughter? What are you doing here? Today's the day Ian and I are supposed to have our wedding photoshoot. Aren't you going to disgrace Ford Group by being here?" In the past, I would've run away in tears. Unfortunately for her, I'd been reborn. I slapped Aspen Miller and retorted, "What right do you have to speak to me? Who do you think you are, having a wedding photoshoot with Adrian? Are you worthy of being associated with Ford Group?"

When I was ten, I accidentally overheard my mother on the phone. It seemed like she was talking about me being a switched-at-birth rich girl, and that my real last name was Gardner. The coldness and cruelty my mother had shown me all these years suddenly made sense. When I turned 11, I paid an adult to get a maternity test done for both my mother and me. The results confirmed that I was indeed her biological daughter. I kept the report to myself and pretended I was still in the dark.

On the day of my birthday, my cousin, who does ballet, falls and injures her leg. My father smacks my leg with a club in a fit of rage. I cry out in pain, but he doesn't care. He sneers and says, "Now, you know how it feels! Why didn't you stop to think how much pain your cousin would be in when you pushed her and made her fall down the stairs?" He hits me with all his might until I can't make any more sounds. To drive the lesson home, he shoves me into the basement, uncaring that I'm on the brink of death. "I'll let you out of there once you stop thinking these dirty thoughts, Yvonne!" But when he opens the door to the basement once more, all he sees is my decomposing corpse.

My mother is hospitalized due to a terminal illness. She's in urgent need of a kidney transplant to save her life. I'm the only one who can perform the surgery, but I give the kidney to a stranger. My father and husband get on their knees before me on the day of the surgery. They beg me to save my mother. However, I shrug and say, "I can't do anything about this. A life is a life, regardless of who the person is. This is what she gets for coming late—death is waiting for her."

My daughter unplugs my oxygen tube before throwing herself into her nanny's arms. "The old hag is finally dying, Mom. I don't need to call a thief my mother anymore!" It turns out the nanny switched my child for hers when they were born. I've spent the last two decades doting on the nanny's daughter. I die of an aneurysm after recalling my birth daughter's horrible death. When I open my eyes again, I'm taken back to the day my daughter was born.

My best friend Sophie and I went into labor the very same night. I watched her switch out the two infants with my own eyes, but I did not tell a single soul. For the next decade, I fed, clothed, and raised a daughter that was not mine. On the day the two girls turned eighteen, they received their college offer letters at the same time. One got into an ivy league school, and the other, a community college whose name I had not even heard of. I had never seen Sophie so happy in my entire life. Grinning from ear to ear, she whipped out the DNA report she had been saving for this very moment. "Thank you for raising my daughter to be the valedictorian that she is today. It's time she returns to her mama. As for this good-for-nothing scum… You can take her back!" I sneered. "Very well then." She had no idea what was coming.