Bully King - J.A. Huss Page 0,108

time away from it isn’t helpful. And I had already taken a whole week off because I got injured and needed to recover.

But… there is no point in forcing the writing. Even if I want to.

So I decided to proof the audiobook for Bully King instead. It was a two-day job. And it helped a lot because I literally had to read and listen to every single word of Bully King.

It was nice though. I don’t normally produce my own audiobooks, I have a publisher. So I don’t proof them, they do all that for me. This was the first book I’ve done outside my publisher since 2015, I think. But it gave me a lot of time to focus on the story and the characters, which was very helpful for Ruling Class and I was only about two hours into the proofing before I had all fresh ideas for book two and was eager to get back to writing.

But I was still stuck on this EOBS. I figure if I’m going to write them then they should say something. They should carry some weight, add to the story itself, and be meaningful.

I’ve haven’t been on social media a lot lately. Deadlines, and the injury, and then, of course, I loathe politics. But I went to Facebook like an hour ago and saw two posts. One was something about current events (that nobody even knows is true or not, but people were all angry about it already) and the second one was about a reader who was upset that her favorite author unfriended her (presumably over some opinion she posted.)

And both of these things made me sad.

The first one because posting that current event (that might not even be true) was only about taking someone else down. It was a hateful post masquerading as self-righteous indignation.

And the second one because I felt for that reader. She is allowed to have an opinion (and I don’t know what she posted. Maybe she deserved that unfriending) and in a perfect world we would all be able to respect each other when we disagree.

But our world is far from perfect.

So then, even though I don’t like to make public statements of any kind, I decided to put up a post making a public statement. It was a very simple post that said: I don’t understand why people waste time on hate. Hate is such a waste of time.

And then I started thinking about people I have hated in the past. I had very good reasons for this hate. Like… I’m talking what happened to me was fucking Lifetime Movie of the Week kinda shit. I will put my past suffering up against ANYONE.

ANYONE.

I do care how fucking bad your life has been, MINE can compete. I might not win in the end, but no one would laugh, that’s for sure.

And then I started thinking… well, how did I get past it? How did I let it go and move forward?

And that memory of how I moved on came back to me in an instant.

Someone stole something from me. I’m not going to say what, but I will say it wasn’t a WHAT. It was a WHO. And it wasn’t about some girl stealing a guy. It was, as I said, Lifetime Movie of the Week kinda shit. It involved lawyers in two states, me making a fifteen-hundred mile road trip alone with a hundred-and-sixty-five dollars to my name, standing in front a judge crying and begging for help, and then finally, resolution and a very long drive home.

And when I got home, and things were calmer, I got a phone call from the asshole responsible for all that shit. And before he could even talk, I said, “I forgive you.”

That’s it. That’s all I said.

He was stunned, to stay the least. So I expounded. “I forgive you. It’s over. And I’m not going to waste one more second on what just happened. I’m going to forgive you and move on. Goodbye.”

And that was the end of it.

Because there is nothing else to do when something that horrible happens.

There is nothing else to do but forgive and move on.

The only other options and hate and anger.

And everyone who has ever been angry knows, deep down, that you’re an uglier person when you’re angry. And hate is the fuel for anger.

Yes, this terrible thing happened to me. But I was not going to waste another second of my life on hate and anger.

And I will