I suppose my time as a government bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., prepared me for the world. I was a creature of emotional immediacy who was always ready to risk for the sake of others. Rules, regulations, red tape. These were so many blanks on a form I did not want to fill out. It was a job that paid good money and that was a living death for me. My skills, emotional and expressive, were merely liabilities, shameful things, not to be recognized or discussed.

I keep living into the same answer. It is the same answer because it is the same question. I give people millions of chances. I don’t start from cynicism. I make allowances for mistakes, fatigue, and frailty. And still I am disappointed. I am hurt, ignored, mistreated, or misunderstood. Time after time, I reach the same conclusion of midnight desperation: No More.