Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman

After our eighty-eighth canceled wedding, I called my business partner. "I'm taking the Haviana market project." There was a beat of stunned silence. "Seriously? That's ten years overseas. You just got married—well, weren't you? Does your husband even know? What about your parents? You always said staying close to them was everything." I glanced around the empty church and let out a sharp laugh. "There was no wedding. No husband. And my parents? They've got Cindy. That's all they need." Another pause. "Alright. Pack your bags. You leave tomorrow." After the call, I ran a hand down my wedding dress. One last tear slipped out, quiet and pointless. Cindy had another "episode" today. Claimed she'd off herself. Andrew canceled—again. I'd looked at him, drained. "It's the eighty-eighth time." He dropped his head, guilt all over him. "Just a little more time, Viv. She's been off since the accident. I'm scared she'll actually do it. I swear, I'll talk to her. For real this time. Then we'll get married. Promise." My parents didn't hesitate. "Vivian, let Andrew go. If Cindy hadn't gotten kidnapped trying to save you, she wouldn't have these breakdowns. Are you really putting a wedding over your sister's life?" "How could you be so selfish?" I'd heard it all before. Used to fight it. Not this time. If neither my fiancé nor my parents wanted me around, then fine. I'd leave.

When my boyfriend came to my family home to ask for my hand in marriage, my sister-in-law, who was usually cold and aloof, became a completely different person. She flung her arm around me warmly and asked, “Cassie, who’s your favorite? This boyfriend or one of the dozen or so men that you’ve brought home before?” As I denied her accusation and interrupted her, she cheekily batted her eyelashes at my boyfriend and cooed, “Oh, yes, yes. Cassie has never brought another man home. You’re the lucky first!” In the midst of dinner, she deliberately took her own soiled underwear out of the bathroom, pinched her nose, and waved it around as she screeched, “Oh my goodness, Cassie! I know you don’t really care about hygiene, but we have guests today! How can you have no shame? It smells so bad!”

I was working as a security guard in one of those fancy residential areas when, one day, a property owner handed me 7,000 dollars and asked me to go down to the underground garage to lend a hand. Now, I reckon I didn’t expect what I found there. Inside one of those expensive cars was a woman—a beauty, mind you, with her eyes a little bleary and her cheeks flushed. She was stretching her long, slender legs wide apart, with one hand reaching down... well, you get the idea. It wasn’t exactly what I thought I’d be dealing with when I signed up for this job. The voice on the other end of the phone gave a command, “Take off her tight skirt, let her raise her hips, and have your way with her!"

Just because my sister, Yvonne Lindell, claims I swapped Grandma's medicine with sugar pellets and caused her death, Mom locks me inside the cremator. I kneel and beg, but Mom spits at me in disgust. "You wretched girl, stay still! You killed your grandma by secretly switching her medicine. Now go repent to her properly!" Dad hesitates, unable to bear it. "Maybe we should let her out. What if—" "What are you afraid of? Don't forget that she killed your mother! If we don't teach her a lesson this time, who knows who she'll kill next!" The voices outside the door gradually fade, and my heart sinks to the bottom. The flames slowly begin to lick at my body. In despair, I clutch Grandma's cold hand beside me. "Grandma, I'm sorry. I should've taken better care of your medicine. But I swear, I didn't replace it with sugar pellets. Maybe only in death, can I truly atone for this sin…"

The entire world froze. Overnight, the city plunged to –40 °F. Yet, in the middle of this frozen apocalypse, my mother, my sister and her son moved into the home I bought for my marriage. Even my own husband took my sister’s side. They threw me out into the freezing cold to scavenge for supplies. I came back frozen half to death, and they had not even saved me a bowl of warm soup. Then, my sister shoved me straight off the fifth-floor landing. In that bitter cold, my body hit the ground and shattered like glass. When I woke again, I found myself back in the week before the apocalypse struck. This time, I resolved to cut them all off. I would make every last one of them pay.

To make me "obedient", my parents send me to a reform center. There, I'm tortured until I lose control of my bladder. My mind breaks, and I'm stripped naked. I'm even forced to kneel on the ground and be treated as a chamber pot. Meanwhile, the news plays in the background, broadcasting my younger sister's lavish 18th birthday party on a luxury yacht. It's all because she's naturally cheerful and outgoing, while I'm quiet and aloof—something my parents despise. When I return from the reform center, I am exactly what they wanted. In fact, I'm even more obedient than my sister. I kneel when they speak. Before dawn, I'm up washing their underwear. But now, it's my parents who've gone mad. They keep begging me to change back. "Angelica, we were wrong. Please, go back to how you used to be!"

My mother-in-law is extremely frugal. She reuses paper others have discarded, carefully saving the unmarked portions. She even takes the black waste oil from the kitchen range hood and uses it to cook our meals. She says, "Frugality is a virtue—it brings blessings!" I try tirelessly to convince her otherwise, throwing out all her filthy items to protect my family's health. But while she praises me to my face, behind my back, she uses my baby's food scissors to clip her grimy toenails. My child eventually dies of a lung infection, leaving me heartbroken. My mother-in-law, however, points her finger at me, saying I'm unlucky and that I've brought misfortune to their family. Even my husband blames me. In the end, they use a knitting needle to pierce my throat and stab me to death. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day I first see her picking up dirty paper. The first thing I do is hide all the high-quality tissue paper I had stocked up on before my pregnancy, pretending I knew nothing. She calls these blessings, right? Fine. The blessings of this miserly frugality—she can reap them all herself!

On the way to the airport, a Valterra tried to cut me off. After overtaking, he kept blocking my way. Since I was running late and did not want trouble, I chose to tolerate it. However, my tolerance only made him even more aggressive. In less than a hundred meters, he cut me off five times. I could not take it anymore and decided to call the police. But as I was reading his license plate to the officer, I snapped and slammed my foot on the gas. Blood rushed to my face when I realized that this Valterra was the birthday present my wife had asked me for just last week.

I had just bought a coin worth 3,000 dollars from a trading website. However, when someone came to deliver it, it was not a courier—it was my stepsister, Eleanor Holt. She dropped to her knees, begging me not to tell her mom about what she was doing. "Shawn, please. If you promise not to say anything, I'll do whatever you want tonight. Anything."

My best friend asked me to conduct a blood test on her before she got married to the richest man in the city. That was how I found out that she had AIDS. Due to patient confidentiality and her claim that her fiance would not mind, I did not tell him about her diagnosis. Later on, he contracted AIDS as well. When this happened, my best friend went online and pointed the finger at me. “Maya Sullivan intentionally kept the results of my blood test a secret. That’s why my husband got AIDS. It’s all her fault!” Even my boyfriend added fuel to the fire. “This isn’t the first time Maya has set Pearl up. She only got AIDS because Maya used an infected needle to take her blood sample!” No matter how much I insisted otherwise, everyone kept hounding me about it. To avoid the fallout, I was forced to move myself and my parents to another city to start fresh. However, in a fit of rage, Pearl’s husband crashed into our car and killed all of us. He was later sentenced to death, so Pearl inherited all of his assets. She then lived in luxury with my boyfriend. When I opened my eyes again, I discovered that I had gone back in time. It was the day that Pearl had undergone her health checkup.