Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 9 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 9

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Just want you to know, Rutherford and I have started a very interesting and fun dialogue.  He really is a terrific guy!!! I think my initial impression of him was way off base. 

Angela

From:

Subject:  Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssse!

To:

The more I talk to Angela, the LESS I want it to turn into something.  Why? Because I’m afraid that I’ll actually LIKE her and that she’ll ultimately find out that I’m the irresponsible, immature, and self-centered BASTARD I told you in the past that I’m well aware that I am.

Rutherford

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

LL/SF,

One crucial question that I forgot to ask you about Rutherford: does he SMOKE? God, I hope not … That would be a complete turn-off.  I don’t even like to have friends who smoke.  I know it sounds judgmental, but I am highly allergic, plus it stinks worse than skunk or farts.

Angela

From:

Subject:  Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????????????????????

To:

Dearest of the Dear, 

I’m really enjoying the Angela thing. In fact, I’m eagerly awaiting her next message.  Weeeeeee! 

Yours in Bodhisattva,

Rutherford

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

LL/SF,

I’ve been having trouble sending e-mail.  My computer has been all messed up.  We NEED to talk.  Rutherford and I had our first fight and we’re not even goingOUT!!! I’ll be near the station Sunday.  Let’s do dinner or drinks or something.

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

LL/SF,

Rutherford and I are on even keel now. We’ve had some great talks … and are getting together Saturday for a movie and dinner.  YUM.

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Things with Rutherford and me are completely over.  We might be able to be friends some day in the future, but right now we are licking our wounds. Lori, I think the guy has serious problems, and I just don’t need that in my life.  I tried to tell him why I could not be involved with him … and he turned the tables on me and accused me of being “pathological” for leading him on, only to crush him.  

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I just wrote a long e-mail to Rutherford, detailing how his abhorrent behavior with regard to women made me sick to my stomach … and how much pain it caused me, etc. etc. Then after I sent it to him … I got an e-mail from him in response to the one I wrote last night … saying that he thought we were making a big mistake by passing up what could be something very special and wonderful.  Lori, I don’t know what to do!!! I am an emotional wreck right now. He is going to completely HATE me after he reads my e-mail blasting him for being an unabashedly arrogant womanizer with absolutely no respect for the female species.  I even said I was grateful to the stars above that I had not succumbed to his charms and wound up in bed with him, just another wayward pussy for his collection … Oh, Lori … I am in so much pain; I have been in the bathroom going both ways eight times already.  I am going to lose ten more pounds from this, which is actually a good thing, but what a way to lose it!!  Help me, my friend.  I am sinking fast…

Angela

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Hi, Babe,

Well, Rutherford and I had a three-hour talk last night, and straightened everything out.  We both realized that neither of us is ready for a romantic relationship, but we are going to be very good friends to each other.  We have a lot of “inner issues” to work on before letting someone else into our lives.  Rutherford has more than I, I think, though I did not tell him that.

He is a sheep in a fox’s clothing.  But that “fox” can be pretty blunt and abrasive.  I told him he scares me! And that falling in love with him would be hard.  Do you know that he has not been “in love” since he was sixteen? With a girl named Mary who dumped him before he even felt he “had” her.  He’s been “playing around” since then, protecting his heart from every potential lover.

But I have been doing the same thing.  And we have both built strong walls around us for protection manifested by the excess “fat” we let build up on our bodies. It’s all part of the defensive shield to keep intimate relationships OUT.  We have literally made ourselves undesirable physically to the opposite sex, to keep them at arm’s length.  It’s messed up, Lori, it really is.

Angela

It was past eight on a Friday night. Lori had been asked to edit some written commercials that would be airing over the weekend, and she could have easily come in a little earlier than usual on Saturday morning to work on them. But she had been listening to the station on and off throughout the day, and she knew they had been broadcasting from a conference miles away in Stoneham. She also knew who was responsible for handling the audio equipment for live remote broadcasts, and who would most likely be revisiting the station late in the evening when she was there. 

She heard the familiar sound of swooshing polyester pants growing louder from around the corridor. She looked up as Nick drew nearer to where she posed, pen in hand, heart violently pounding in her throat.  She hadn’t seen him in some time, and she wasn’t sure how she would react upon seeing him again.  She had a hunch that her feelings would be just as irrational and irritatingly intense as they had always been, and yet she knew she had to face them- and him- down at one point or another.  She strained the muscles in her shoulders, stared intently down at her notebook, and swallowed hard.

“What are you doing here so late?” he asked her. He whisked his backpack over his shoulder onto his desk and set several pieces of remote broadcasting gear down on the floor.

“Working on some copy,” she said languidly, feigning disinterest.

“I haven’t heard from you.”  He migrated over to a nearby computer and sat down in front of it.  “Have you been avoiding me?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Ah …” He pretended to busy himself at the keyboard.

“I haven’t heard from you either.” 

He continued to stare at the computer, pressing miscellaneous keys every so often.  “It didn’t seem like you wanted to hear from me.” He turned around briefly to face her, before turning his mock attention back to the computer screen.

“So are you with anyone now?” she asked.

“Eh, there’s no one in particular.  It’s just me. And all of them.  All of them … and me,” he said, laughing.

“So have you been thinking about me?” she asked.

He nodded, smiled, and pointed to his groin.  “I can’t believe how quickly I get aroused around you.”

A grin swept across Nick’s face as he launched into a grandiose reminiscence of the unadorned intimacy they had shared over the months. He stopped talking only when someone rounded the corner from the control room and dashed in frantic haste past them toward the production studio. Nick leaned in toward the computer screen and sat as static as a plastic mannequin until the person was completely out of sight and hearing range.

“So how about we both go into the ladies’ room together?” Nick said, quietly. “There doesn’t even have to be any touching. You can watch me as I –”

“No,” she said, softly. “I don’t think so.”

Nick shrugged, with a smirk on his face. He turned around to head toward the receptionist’s desk in the station’s waiting room. Lori followed closely behind. 

A spotlight shone down from a corner of the room, casting a beam that illuminated the center of the floor. Nick fished around the darkness surrounding the cone of light for the button of the elevator that was to come and take him to street level.

“Can I have a hug?” he asked, turning to face Lori.

“Of course,” she said. She draped one arm around his shoulder and the other loosely around his waist.

He sneered, “Your hand is traveling kind of low there.”

“It is not,” she protested. She drew away from him slightly.  He lowered his head, leaned his face in toward hers, and tried to kiss her on the lips.  She turned her cheek away from him and gave him a light peck, before slinking away into the darkness of the front hallway.  She continued to walk silently amidst the bitter irony of the corridor’s calming cream-colored walls and serene pastoral paintings.

From:

Subject:  my armpits

To:

Lori,

First I must warn you that my friend Phil is on his way here to party for the night, so I might have to cut this short before I’m finished and get back to you later.

You need to understand something about guys.  Just because they can be completely divorced from emotion in relation to sexual encounters does NOT mean that they are categorically divorced from that emotion in all cases, okay? A guy may have sex with one girl and feel nothing for her, but with a different girl he could become totally emotionally attached.  But yes, there are certain guys who are generally non-committal, have sex only for the sake of sex, and will manipulate girls to achieve their ends.  From what you told me about that Nick guy, it’s obvious that he’s the type of person who doesn’t have very deep emotions for anybody at all exceptHIMSELF, which is probably another reason why he was so attractive to you on a subconscious level.  Girls are generally, and don’t even think about denying it, attracted to guys who aren’t exactly “nice.”  That’s why “nice guys” almost never get any unless they have good jobs, money, or are very good-looking.  My perception of girls is that you’re ultimately attracted to guys who have confidence in themselves, and nobody has more confidence in himself than someone who thinks of nobody BUThimself. 

As for myself, I don’t know what to tell you.  I think I’m kinda weird. There have been times when I’ve thought that I’m not really capable of “loving” anybody in the typical sense of how people describe it. As for Babette, I tell her I love her, but I definitely don’t mean it.  I DO feel a lot of attachment to her because of all the time we’ve spent together, especially traveling around the country, but as you know I could drop the whole thing without feeling all that horrible.

Think about this, too, just to give you a sense of how sinister the male mind can be.  I think I’m a “decent guy.”  I may not “love” anyone, at least not yet, but I certainly don’t want to HURT anyone.  I DO have a conscience, which at times tortures me for things I have done.  For example, I had an affair almost two years ago with that older married girl Pam.  I haven’t even SEEN her since April of two years ago, but I still keep in periodic touch with her because she’s a “sure thing,” you understand? Just last week I sent her an e-mail saying “I miss you” and crap like that! Do I really miss her? Hell no.  I don’t even LIKE her! She’s got three kids with two different fathers (and guess what… the fathers are BROTHERS!).  When I think of her lifestyle, I honestly get ANGRY thinking that there are people like her out there.  However, she is absolutely WILD in bed; there is NOTHING she won’t do or say.  You see? Even though I feel nothing for her but contempt, I think about her all the time. I’ve looked her right in the eyes and told her I loved her before just to keep it going. And remember, you’re hearing of such vile manipulation from a “decent guy” with a conscience! Just think of how mean and self-serving OTHER guys are! 

Hey, Phil’s here. I gotta go.  I’ll continue this later. Believe me I’ve got a lot more to say.

Rutherford (a.k.a. Una de Gato)

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Jesus 

Lori

From:

Subject:  his armpits

To:

What was the most striking to you about what I’ve said so far? The fact that men are ruthless in pursuit of sex? Or the fact that I admitted to having behaved that way myself? Remember, I said I have a “conscience,” dammit! I DO feel bad when I act that way, but that won’t prevent it from happening in the future. 

I’m sorry I didn’t write yesterday, and that I don’t feel like writing much now.  I’ve been ill for the last 2 days.  Dizzy and nauseous, in fact.  I can’t figure it out.  I haven’t been drinking too much or taking major drugs or anything (dammit). 

I’ll tell you more tomorrow.  Right now my head is aching and I feel like vomiting into my shoes.

Rutherford (a.k.a. Joe Baloney)

Seven severely obsessive days passed by, with the image of Nick’s face appearing in front of thunder clouds in the rainy morning sky as Lori drove to her classes, and his penetrating blue eyes closing with the setting sun at dusk as she made her way home from school.  It was all too open-ended, all too unfinished, all too tempting, and all too wrong for her to continue going on as she had been.  She needed to know that it was over.  For only when Nick Warren was sculpted into a mere seedy memory that time could not revisit, would Lori be free.  Free of the futile hold he had on her heart, free of the damaging grasp her recurring thoughts had on her mind, and free to finally send her love to where it was supposed to go.

Wherever that was.

She dialed Nick’s home number one night. She wasn’t entirely sure of what she wanted to say, yet hoped that perhaps she would be able to make some kind of permanent dent that would significantly change the dynamic and set them both back on the road to Spartan simplicity.

“Hello?” Nick answered.

“Hey, it’s me.  It’s–”

“I know who it is,” Nick said, a detectable edge in his voice.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Good. Good.” He was rustling papers as he talked to her.  “Got a lot of … What’s this? Hmmmm.… I thought I paid this.”

“What?” she asked.

“No, nothing.”

Silence.  Stone, cold, heart-breaking silence.

“Hello?” she said.

“I’m here.” He crumpled a piece of paper and must have thrown it in such a way for it to land on the floor.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just going through a bunch of bills. Cleaning out house over here.” He breathed into the phone as though he were heavily concentrating on something.  

“So … can … we talk?” she asked.

“I’m all set,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Where did this one come from?  I thought I took care of this, too.” He started breathing into the phone again.  “Here are some coupons.”

Lori’s cheeks began to flush. Her tongue felt like the aftermath of a question mark-shaped saliva suction device at the dentist’s office. She didn’t know what was wrong, or why he was acting the way he was.

“You’re speaking in code to me,” she said. She moved her tongue against the roof of her mouth to get some moisture flowing again.  “Is there someone there with you?”

“Yes,” he said. He continued to hum and moan over the phone about the little annoying documents he was ferreting out and analyzing.

“So you can’t talk now,” Lori said.

“Not really.  Why don’t you call me back tomorrow night … here? That should be a good time.”

“O.K.” she mumbled. I guess I’ll try again.” She hung up the receiver.

Later that evening, one of the tires on her four year-old Subaru flattened just as she neared the exit off the thruway that would take her home.  She waited impatiently as a bored, disgruntled-looking AAA representative groaned about bolts being rusted in place because the tires had never been rotated.  The car was used when she had gotten it as a gift from her parents, and she figured they had taken care of that at some point. She watched the young man break out into a sweat as he struggled to remove the flat with a crank and brute force. 

A feeling of loneliness swept over her.  She looked up at the night sky and tried to envision how she would feel with Paul standing quietly by her side, softly patting her shoulder and giving her a gentle nod and a warm, nurturing smile.  She felt uplifted for the moment, caught up in her docile fantasy. Yet when her eyes settled back on the frustrated mechanic, an echoing emptiness once again overcame her.

Lori called Nick the following day. “So who was there with you last night? A girl?”

“No!” Nick said.  “No, no! Nothing like that!”

“Then who was it?”

“My mother,” he said. “She was visiting me and my dad.”

Lori swallowed and nodded her head, even though she knew he could not see what she was doing. “So, why did you think I called?” she asked him.  “What did you think I was going to say?”

He was quiet.

  “What did you think I called for?”

“I dunno.”

“What? Phone sex?” she asked.
He paused.  “You mean you didn’t?”

She pulled the phone away from her face.  “No?” she said, gently placing the phone back under her chin.

“So why did you call me?” he asked.

“I think we need to talk. I just really need to talk some things out with you.”

There was a passage of silence. Her suggestion to have an actual conversation with words seemed to be interpreted in the same way as if she had invited him to be the target of a horse manure-throwing contest.  

“So when would be a good time to get together?” she asked.

“Ummmm … I don’t know.”

“How about this Thursday?”

“This Thursday?” He cleared his throat, shuffled the phone between his shoulder and jaw, and sighed into the receiver.  “Well … maybe. But I usually go out with friends on Thursday nights.”

The temperature of her face soared. Your friends. Of which obviously I’m not one. She realized that he wasn’t going to talk to her. He wasn’t going to let her talk to him. He wasn’t going to allow her to be anything other than what she had already been to him.  Anything other than what he had already been to her. 

A shell of a person.

He was safe so long as he didn’t fully accept what was handed to him.  And she supposed she was safe so long as she didn’t allow herself to be taken.  But she didn’t understand why things had to be this way. Why were the steel armor and shields and tamper-proof safeguards there to begin with? And what would it take to get them to go away?

“Why don’t you give me a call in a couple of days,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

She let those “couple of days” go by, and then a couple of days more.  A full month soon blew past her, a solid four consecutive weeks of copious amounts of distance restoring an inner peace that she had not known for a good, long while.  Her memory was already dimmer in just that short span of time, for he was a shell and she was a shell, and there was hardly anything tangible for her mind to hold onto.  Her plan was working; her anxiety was waning, and her life was becoming her own once again.

From:

Subject:  My cat refuses to eat swordfish

To:

It’s really nice out today.  I want to go swimming badly, but my neighbors are all outside in their yards and I don’t want them to see me with my gut hanging out.  There’s a guy a couple of lots over who is big and fat and he has a hairy back, but he doesn’t seem to be insecure at all about walking around with no shirt on.  He needs to have his back shaved.  I’ve even thought about jumping on top of him and holding him down and shaving his back MYSELF.  Is there a law against that? The way I see it, if there’s no law against fat guys with hairy backs walking around shirtless, there shouldn’t be a law against shaving them against their will.

Rutherford (a.k.a. Rich Dickman)

Lori had been operating the mixing board every Sunday, killing all late night boredom and loneliness with frequent phone conversations with Helga and the creation of obscene doodles in the margins of the station’s logs.  Talking to Helga was at times as much pain as it was pleasure, especially when she would describe certain newfound talents under the covers, or the unique, carnal things she discovered she could do with frozen vegetables.  She was swept up in her own high energy level affair that Lori had no choice but to sit back and observe, careful not to disapprove of nor condone as it was her life and her business.  Yet her candidness continually served as a sort of trigger that highlighted Lori’s own recent, squalid past, and her gut reaction sadly tended to be more wistful than regretful.

Lori drove into the station’s lot late one evening, having been asked to assist with commercial reads for an Indian woman named Sheetal, the host of an early morning Christian talk show. It had been a while since she had visited the station in the middle of the workweek, and it felt peculiar to her. Still, she looked forward to seeing Helga, who had also been asked to voice spots for Sheetal’s radio show.

She slid her Subaru in between a Silver Ford Taurus and a red Ford Thunderbird. A russet-skinned, pudgy-faced person with short, wavy black hair was sitting inside the Thunderbird on the passenger side, and Lori was having difficulty deciphering whether the individual was male or female. Even with the help of a bright fluorescent light shining down on the car from the wet leaf-filled gutter lining the roof of the building, the stranger could have just as easily been Lori’s suicidal Iranian-Jewish ex-boyfriend Hank as a mustached Spanish girl named Carmelita that Lori played soccer with in eighth grade gym class.  It was pouring out and almost impossible to see past the beads of water sliding down the windshield.

Lori approached the front door of the station. Her stomach lurched as Nick emerged from inside the building. 

“Hey,” he said. He walked sideways past her. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m supposed to meet Helga,” she panted, grabbing hold of the inner door that he had just opened. “And Sheetal.”

“Oh, Is Helga here? I didn’t see her,” he said. “Didn’t see Sheetal either. Must be downstairs, those guys.”

“So what are you doing here?” Lori asked.

“I was just dropping something off,” he said, wavering in the outer doorway. He was polite, yet unnervingly edgy. “Well, I’ll be seein’ ya.”

Lori stepped inside the front doorway and watched as Nick slid into the Thunderbird next to the mysterious entity of uncertain sexual orientation that Lori had been trying to figure out. Before his engine had a chance to fully get started, he pulled his car out of the station lot so that he and his androgenous partner could disappear fast into the dark, rain-drenched night. A chill ran through Lori as she felt all of the same emotions come flooding forth in one fell swoop.  She walked through the dusty, old hallways and began descending a stairway that led to the basement where the production work was to take place. She knew she had to keep up some semblance of composure even though she was carrying enough intertwining anxiety and desire to spontaneously combust into a puff of smoke.

Helga was in the middle of rehearsing a commercial read when Lori approached her and Sheetal. After making her appearance known, Lori quietly slipped away and crawled back up the stairs and toward the front entrance of the building. She raced out to her car to fetch her cellular phone, trying to dodge the heavy, piercing rain drops that were shooting down from the sky like soft point bullets. The rain began to tickle the top of her head as it settled into her hair.  She dug her nails hard into her scalp and crouched in the damp, muddy hallway between the locked inner door and the open, outer entrance to the building.  Her little tattered address book opened right to the page that had Nick’s cell phone number smudged all over. She stared thoughtfully at it before dialing.

So what exactly was she planning to say to him once she succeeded in trapping him on the other end of the line?  That she couldn’t stand the awkwardness between them whenever they found themselves face to face, and that this was why she needed to know that it was over?  Or the fact that she couldn’t stand how much she stupidly ached for him whenever they found themselves face to face, and could he please tie her wrists to a couple of bed posts with some scarves and slap her repeatedly and mercilessly across the face with a whip cream-coated bull whip?  

“Hello?” Nick answered.

“Hi,” she said.  “This is–”

“I know who this is,” he interrupted.  “What’s up?”

“Can you talk now, or is there someone with you … again?”

“Well, I just got back home, and I’m lying here … with my girlfriend.” He allowed several seconds of silence to pass before saying, “Mona and I … we both have colds.”

Lori’s face felt as though she had just opened a sterilizing autoclave machine with an outflow of hot, wet steam enveloping her face. She knew he had been elusive for some time, but she was not prepared to hear that he was with someone else. Exclusively with someone else. Imagining Nick with only one mate seemed to be an unprecedented anomaly of nature, the antithesis of the free bird aura that had been proudly spiraling around him for all the months that she had known him.

“So that’s … the situation,” he said. He paused and allowed Lori to die a slow, painful death in the midst of deafening silence.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “I still need to talk to you about something.” She seemed unable to get the phone away from her lips quickly enough.

Tears welled up in her eyes, slid down the front of her cheeks, and fused with some droplets of rainwater resting on her chin.  She lowered her head in her hands and raised her body just high enough to reach the station telephone.

“Yeah, Helga … I locked myself out. Could you come out here and let me back in?”

“Hold on!” Helga said, hanging up the phone.

Lori was crying when the door was opened for her.

“I just did like twenty reads,” Helga said, huffing and oblivious to Lori’s hysteria. “I can’t seem to do this the way Sheetal wants it, and I have to go soon.”

Lori nodded and kept her head bent down in an attempt to compose herself.

“What’s wrong?” Helga asked. She stopped in the middle of the hallway.

“Same old problem,” Lori mumbled. “Same old situation.”

“I don’t understand you.”  Helga shook her head and sighed heavily. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I don’t know.” Lori started to sob again.

When they reached Sheetal in the downstairs production studio, Sheetal asked Lori if she could try the same commercial read that Helga had been struggling with. Lori sniffled and nodded, and watched as Helga collected her belongings and hastily walked away, obviously frustrated yet in too much of a rush to openly dwell on it.  

Perhaps Lori had attempted voice-overs in the past when she was cranky or a little tired, but she had never tried voicing a script immediately after weeping hysterically.  She somehow managed to gather just enough fake cheer to have her read accepted after the very first attempt, and she left the station just in time to completely fall apart in the car ride home. 

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Angela needs therapy. I find it rather amazing how she acts like I’M the one with all the problems, while she breaks down at the drop of a hat. It’s becoming rather tiresome. 

I haven’t showered in nearly eight days. Does that frighten you? I occasionally will dump water over my head or swab my arm pits, and once in a while I’ll give my under-carriage a bit of a “how’s your father?” But for the most part I have no relationship with soap in the long term. This is cool. This is real. This is IT.

Rutherford

Lori dialed Nick the following day.  She had no pride, and no evident traces of self-esteem or self-respect. She had only a stomach that had tied itself many times over into taut knots impervious to the passage of food or drink. Robust swigs of maximum-strength Pepto Bismol were not enough to assuage her agony. The pain had started in her heart, and her gut was merely a stopover for its metastasis.

“This is the very last phone call you’ll be getting from me,” Lori began. She wondered if he would allow the exchange between them to go to completion, or terminate it prematurely and leave her with nothing but her unappeased anxiety. “It’s just so awkward seeing you with everything that’s happened.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to … push it all behind me, too,” Nick said.

“Except for that one night several weeks ago,” she reminded him. “When everything was resurrected.” 

“Yes, with the exception of that one night,” he agreed. 

“I can’t have that kind of temptation thrown at me,” she said.

“You don’t have to worry about that happening again,” Nick said. “There’s no problem. We’re cool.”

Lori paused, and asked, “So are you finally settling down with someone?”

“Nah,” he said.

“No?”

  “Not really. I’ve got this kind of … understanding with my ‘girlfriend.’ We can see other people if we want to,” he said. “Our friends don’t really understand it, but that’s just the way it is.”

She breathed softly into the receiver and leaned her body forward. She let a few moments of silence pass between them, and soundlessly reveled in what she sensed was a perverse kind of relief. She hung up the phone and pulled out her lab notebook and a calculator. It was definitely relief. But it was still definitely perverse. She was relieved that he was not ready to stray from his vagabond ways. Perhaps he would, some day. But for now he belonged not to one, but to many. Lori had taken to looking at relationships as being the timely union of two souls who, for a captured moment, connect with one another. This was the opposite of the Darwinian way of looking at it, in which the “bad” get weeded out and discarded and the “good” get siphoned out and cherished. She felt that so long as she seemed to be fated to a life of intense, ephemeral yet transient passion, exclusivity had no place and no purpose other than to make her feel miserable. 

(stay tuned for chapter 10…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)

Dr. Todd Grande – YouTube (Dr. Todd Grande)

Crappy Childhood Fairy – YouTube (Anna Runkle- Crappy Childhood Fairy)

Donielle Jolie Yanez – YouTube (Donielle Jolie Yanez)