PERSONAL: LOOKING FOR THAT NICE GIRL

 To the nice girls who are overlooked, who become friends and nothing more, who spend hours fixating upon their looks and their personalities and their actions because it must be they that are doing something wrong. This is for the girls who don’t give it up on the first date, who don’t want to play mind games, who provide a comforting hug and a supportive audience for a story they’ve heard a thousand times. This is for the girls who understand that they aren’t perfect and that the guys they’re interested in aren’t either, for the girls who flirt and laugh and worry and obsess over the slightest glance, whisper, touch, because somehow they are able to keep alive that hope that maybe… maybe this time he’ll have understood. This is an homage to the girls who laugh loud and often, who are comfortable in skirts and sweats and combat boots, who care more than they should for guys who don’t deserve their attention. This is to honor those girls who know that guys are just as scared as they are, who know that they deserve better, who are seeking to find it.This is for the girls who have never been in love, but know that it’s an experience that they don’t want to miss out on.This is for the girls who have been told that they’re too good or too smart or too pretty,

This one’s for the girls who you can take home to mom, but won’t because it’s easier to sleep with a whore than foster a relationship; this is for the girls who have been led on by words and kisses and touches, all of which were either only true for the moment, or never real to begin with. This is for the girls who have allowed a guy into their head and heart and bed, only to discover that he’s just not ready, he’s just not over her, he’s just not looking to be tied down; this is for the girls who believe the excuses because it’s easier to believe that it’s not that they don’t want you, it’s that they don’t want anyone. This is for the girls who have had their hearts broken and their hopes dashed by someone too cavalier to have cared in the first place; this is for the nights spent dissecting every word and syllable and inflection in his speech, for the nights when you’ve returned home alone, for the nights when you’ve seen from across the room him leaning a little too close, or standing a little too near, or talking a little too softly for the girl he’s with to be a random hookup. This is for the girls who have endured party after party in his presence, finally having realized that it wasn’t that he didn’t want a relationship: it was that he didn’t want you.

This is for the “I really like you, so let’s still be friends” comment after you read more into a situation than he ever intended; this is for never realizing that when you choose friends, you seldom choose those which make you cry yourself to sleep. This is for the hugs you’ve received from your female friends, for the nights they’ve reassured you that you are beautiful and intelligent and amazing and loyal and truly worthy of a great guy; this is for the despair you all felt as you sat in the aftermath of your tears, knowing that that night the only companionship you’d have was with a pillow and your teddy bear. This is for the girls who have been used and abused, who have endured what he was giving because at least he was giving something; this is for the stupidity of the nights we’ve believed that something was better than nothing, though his something was nothing we’d have ever wanted. This is for the girls who have been satisified with too little and who have learned never to expect anything more: for the girls who don’t think that they deserve more, because they’ve been conditioned for so long to accept the scraps thrown to them by guys.

If i were to meet one of these genuinely interested, thrillingly compelling, interesting and intelligent and sweet and beautiful and smart girls, I would give my number and can't wait to talk to you.… and if you were to receive a call from me the next day and were to tell you one of your friends that you found a intriguing and attractive and interesting man and worth your time and perhaps material from which you could fashion a boyfriend and husband.

JOURNAL: SOME OF MY IRRATIONAL THOUGHTS

irrational thoughts that rational people often fall victim to at one point or another:

-Mistakes are never acceptable.  If I make one, it means that I am incompetent.
-When somebody disagrees with me, it is a personal attack against me.
-To be content in life, I must be liked by all people.
-My true value as an individual depends on what others think of me.
-If I am not involved in an intimate relationship, I am completely alone.
-There is no grey area.  Success is black and failure is white.
-Nothing ever turns out the way you want it to.
-If the outcome was not perfect, it was a complete failure.
-I am in absolute control of my life.  If something bad happens, it is my fault.
-The past always repeats itself.  If it was true then, it must be true now.

THOUGHTS/DATING: BEING NEEDY VS BEING CONFIDENT

Neediness means you don’t trust in yourself and your own worth. You value the opinions of others over your own. You seek external approval of who you are and what you do.

Simply put, being needy is caring more about how people perceive you rather than how you perceive yourself. Because of it, your behaviors and actions will revolve around pleasing others rather than satisfying yourself.

By this definition, it’s not about the actions you take but why you take them. The intention behind your actions is what makes you needy. Therefore, any action can be needy or self-confident depending on the mindset of where it comes from.

Why is being needy so unattractive?

Now that you know what neediness is, why is it such a turn off?

Think about it like this…

You and a woman just met. You barely know each other. She hasn’t had a chance to invest in you with her time and emotions.

You should want to get to know her, see if she’s willing to invest, and find out if she’s compatible with you. You shouldn’t need to win her over or need her approval.

Why would you? And what does that say about you?

It says that you’re desperate for attention from someone, anyone. It shows you’re obsessed with the idea of her rather than the actual person inside. Therefore, you must not have standards for yourself or many options in your life. You’re then seen as less desirable.

You’re also being dishonest. You’re always micromanaging or hiding your true opinions, wants, and desires for everyone else. You’re demonstrating that you don’t trust, value, or respect yourself. Would you trust a person like that?

Women are attracted to men who have the courage to lead and remain authentic.

Is external validation always wrong?

Gaining some validation from external sources isn’t all bad. Everyone wants to be liked or found attractive – that’s a normal human quality. If you never care about anyone else’s opinions, you may be a sociopath.

How often you seek external validation will change depending on who you’re dealing with.

It’s natural to seek some approval from people you have long-established connections with such as parents, close friends, or your significant other.

It’s not natural to seek constant approval from women you just met, have gone on a couple dates with, or haven’t even been intimate with. This includes your female friends you secretly desire.

And you especially shouldn’t seek approval from women who don’t invest in you.

If a woman  barely responds to my texts, cancelle on dates, and never commits to hanging out.I just move on.

What does that say about you when you chase someone who ignores you or doesn’t value your time?

99% of the time you’re not going to convince a girl who’s uninterested to suddenly be interested. Nor should you want to.

She’s not going to say, “I haven’t given this guy the time of day and it’s so attractive that he still keeps crawling back.”

The only way to be non-needy in those situations is to walk away. Find women who interest you and who are interested in you.

How to be self-confident instead of needy

To become self-confident you must start adopting the mindset of “What do I want?” rather than “What does everyone else want?” And then repeatedly take actions that are congruent with that.

You can’t go around analyzing what every woman wants and trying to fit that mold. You will never attract the right people for you or have your needs fulfilled.

Instead, you have to think…

“What do I want to talk about despite how I may be perceived? What do I want to do in this situation? What do I want from this connection?”

This isn’t about being a dick or disrespecting others. You simply lead with your intentions and the other person decides whether or not to invest back.

Here are some examples of neediness vs self-confidence:

-Overanalyzing if you should or shouldn’t approach a girl you find attractive. Not introducing yourself because she might think you’re creepy or will reject you immediately. Needy

-Approaching a girl you find attractive regardless of how you think the situation may unfold or what the outcome may be. Self-Confident



-Trying to memorize openers, lines, or routines just so you can talk to women.  Needy

-Trying to talk to women as yourself, in the moment. Self-Confident
Pretending to be a friend or study buddy just to spend time with a girl you want to be romantic with. Needy


-Willing to risk losing a girl by treating her like someone you’re interested in and expressing your sexual intentions. Self-Confident


-Hiding or lying about what you believe in or who you are in fear of being judged. Needy


-Being unashamed about your opinions and all parts of your personality. Self-Confident 




Delaying texting a girl back because you think it’ll make you look cool or like more of a “catch”. Needy
-Working on your health, lifestyle, or  social skills to impress other people. Needy

-Working on improving yourself and building a happy life for yourself. Self-Confident


-Seeing an attractive woman and telling yourself she’s better than you or “out of your league” before you even know her. Needy

-Seeing an attractive women and telling yourself she’s an equal who you want to get to know. Self-Confident


-Chasing or staying with a girl who doesn’t invest in you, doesn’t respect you, or you know isn’t the right person because you’re afraid of being alone. Needy

-Walking away from a girl who doesn’t invest in you, doesn’t respect you, or you know isn’t the right person regardless of being alone after. Self-Confident

SPIRITUAL: THE SIGNS OF LIFE

What if life was one big metaphor? How would you know? Would you have a hard time believing that? But if your subconscious understood symbolism and metaphors more easier than your conscious, wouldn’t your life make more sense? Maybe you don’t believe in metaphors, or maybe you do believe them, but in small doses.

I must confess when I heard that life was a metaphor, I was just as skeptical as you are. Of course, we can only rely on our eyes. Our eyes are rather simple tools. They are a basic converter, and that’s it. They convert light photons into a nerve impulse that our brain translates into an image. And guess what part of our conscious helps that? That’s right, our subconscious.

Of course, if you solely believed what your eyes are saying to you, you could miss some of natures tricks of the trade. For example, you can’t see in a dream, yet some people claim to have divine insight or premonitions. You can’t see your intuition, yet how many of you haven’t had Déjà vu, or some other psychic experience. And talking of psychics, what if there was a way to develop your own psychic ability, and as a result peer into the future moment of now.

Also, it is scientifically proven that our eyes only see a tiny minute fraction of the total light spectrum. It has been compared to seeing just a grain of sand, whereas the total light spectrum is a tall skyscraper.

So, as you can see (or not;-) your eyes don’t give you a full view of the world in front of you. They can’t. They are just basic converters, and that’s it. Sure, we need them, but we also need our 6th sense, our intuitive-self just as well as our emotions as other tools to direct and experience our life.

And we also know that our subconscious understands symbols more better than our conscious does. Don’t believe me, think about dream interpretations There is a whole niche on interpreting what dream means, and this can often help someone explain their life and highlight areas for improvement. Dreams are most commonly understood to be nothing more than the subconscious filling away memories and experiences of the day, like a filing cabinet. And while some of this is true, there are ways you can understand your life more by merely writing down what happens in your dreams.

Keeping a dream journal is a great way to know yourself more intimately. How often have you had a striking dream, tried to trivialize it saying it was just a dream, only to look at a dream dictionary and realize it may contain a truth. Some dreams have even been responsible for people to make discoveries and help the evolution of humanity.

I used to have a frequent dream where I would be chased by people in authority figures. It would start of ok, but then I would sense a threat, and would need to run quick. And of course, I would be tired (like in waking life) so I would mentally have to struggle running up hills in going though corridors in buildings. It was so mentally exhausting.

In my waking life, I wouldn’t confront people with an emotional issue (still have a hard time doing it to this day). Instead, I would choose the passive, ‘let it go over my head’ approach, and all because I didn’t like verbal fighting. The only problem about not speaking your truth, is that you ultimately repress those feelings which can turn into rage (I went though a period where I would be angry for a melodrama created in my mind, which never took place. The punch bag would come in handy then). Thankfully, I didn’t live with anybody, and kept it all bottled inside, while trying to smile and act of sweet and light on the outside…not a great combination!

So dreams are a surefire metaphorical way to understand problems and solutions in your waking life. But your subconscious works during the daytime as well as the nighttime, so wouldn’t it make sense that everything around you is also a metaphor of some description?

Now anybody who has had an out-of-body experience will be the first to tell you several things: Firstly, the objects, people, and situations are an aspect of mind. That is to say, all subconsciously generated. Secondly, you are in the inner dimension of the multi-verse and therefore not in the space-time continuum. As a result, your thoughts manifest almost instantly. This means you have to be really controlled in what you think, say and do (not a big issue for people who practice mindfulness meditation, they can simply be in the, ‘now’ which helps mental control).

So, you are floating around being directed by your soul, and bumping into places and people and events, which are nothing more than just figments of your subconscious imagination. Oh, the non-physical people are real, don’t you worry, but they are still aspects of your subconscious. This though begs the question, ‘If the only difference is time, wouldn’t the same be true in your normal waking life as well?’

This is where we come full circle and back to the age old question, of whether life is one big metaphor. Of course, if you believe in the illusion of separatism, dreams probably would hold little significance for you and as a result, you probably wouldn’t care about the wonders of life.

If on the other hand, you are on the spiritual path and believe that we are all one, that we are one consciousness, and that what you see in one person is what you ultimately recognize in yourself, your dreams and your life would make perfect sense.

I was pondering this very question while re-listening to Conversations with God Book 2 (By Neale Donald Walsch). They were talking about how time wasn’t really linear, but more like a spindle. It began to get me thinking on how we really should be viewing life and came to a few metaphors.

Metaphor 1- Trees are like time.

They are everywhere, aren’t they (unless you live in a desert!). Yet metaphorically, trees could be likened to time…or lack there of. There is no such thing as time. The hands on your clock is nothing but that, a hand, measuring a perceived field. All there is are, ‘now moments’. Even most scientists say that what we have is a space-time continuum.

So when you look at a tree, you could say that it is a reminder that time is more like a spindle, allowing you to make your next choice into a reality (a reminder, if you will, of choosing your thoughts and the images in your imagination more carefully). If you see a tree as a spindle of a, ‘now’ moment, and all of the leaves/branches as possible, ‘choices’ in this, ‘now’ moment, you could arguably say that a tree is a great metaphor on the moment of now, and the quantum field of infinite possibilities. Arguably…

Metaphor 2 – Clouds are like your thoughts.

The next metaphor I got was when I read Ken Elliott’s, ‘Manifesting 123′. In the book, the author describes how he is told that your thoughts begin to form as bits of smoke, before added concentration allows that smoke to form into a reality.

I thought that the sky beautifully demonstrates this. How does a cloud form, through water vapor. What happens when there is a lot of vapor, it gets heavier, condenses and physical droplets begins to develop. Then what…it rains! Just like what happens when you think about thoughts. They start of as bits of smoke, while added focus and thought increases the smoke in the non-physical subconscious, before finally forming into a 3D hologram, forming into physical reality.

Having had both lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences, I can personally testify that your thoughts do form on the other side really quickly. I once had an obe when I was slightly above my body. I then tried to command the power of the multi-verse to enable me to try to self heal. I saw a wisp of whitish color start forming into a small dot, quite white in the center, above my body. But due probably to the excitement of having an obe, I quickly stopped this, and went on to have other adventures.

Needless to say, when I look into the sky, I am often reminded on how thoughts form, and how they manifest into physicality. Food for thought (no pun intended…well I tiny bit maybe;-)

Metaphor 3 – The sun is like your soul…non-judgmental and powerful.

I’ve had this metaphor in my mind for some time. Essentially, you could argue that the sun is like your soul…always shining in its unconditional love and infinite power and creativity. The clouds that cover it, arguably could be seen as your negative thoughts that stop the light from shining (or even a better one, thoughts itself, stopping you be in the, ‘now’. Two metaphors for the price of one). While it may somehow contradict the above metaphor on thoughts, it’s still a great reminder that when you look near the sun (obviously don’t look into it due to health and safety!) you are reminded to be unconditional, forgiving,nimaginative and creative.

When you think about it, the sun gives power to everything on the planet. It is always shining, come rain or wind, and it is extremely warm. Could you not think of a great way to think about your soul?

Metaphor 4- People are your inner personalities.

This is one that I’m still sketchy about, yet it does (to some degree) make perfect sense. Ok, coming from the point of view that we are all one, and if you’ve read that by seeing people as extensions of yourself, you can open up your heart chakra and raise your inner consciousness; see people as parts of your own inner personality shouldn’t be too far a stretch.

They do say, that what you see in somebody, you have in yourself. Let me explain…next time you see yourself being angry at somebody else, due to a perceived character flaw, ask yourself the ultimate question: Am I reacting because I see this in myself? This of course takes into account that you are honest, and that you can go deeply within…traits that not everybody can do. If you learn to practice this exercise, you’ll discover (to your amazement) that you can discover more about yourself by how you criticize others.

When I’ve noticed this, I’ve realized that I can be quite the narcissist, and also arrogant. Of course over time, I’ve tried to heal those aspects of myself, and allowed myself to try to accept other peoples opinions and points of view. This hasn’t been easy, I grew up in a cynical atmosphere, it began to dawn on me that nobody was going to listen, so I would just shut up, listen, and do as I was told. These days, I only try and speak when I am spoken to. I try not to force my opinions down other peoples throats (I let other people do that;-). Only when somebody actually speaks to me directly do I then speak. I’m not perfect at this, but I’m getting slowly better.

Of course, you could look at this list and say that I have it all wrong. And you would be absolutely correct in that reaction. Why? Because whatever happens, you will always be led to your truth, and; you’ve been led back to your own truth. And that is the key, to finding out your own inner personal truth, and then trying to live it.

Because at the end of the day, what is the point in life otherwise?

VIDEO:Portrait of Lotte - 0 to 14 years in 4 min

LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate

When our eyes first met ..how did I know ...how did I know all my love, to you, I would show .How did I know you would be the one to make my life complete ...to fill my eyes with love no longer with deceit.How did I know you would show me love in so many ways leaving me speechless in ecstasy, a continuous daze.I have you to love.How can it be I have a part of you inside of me How did I know I belonged in only your arms How did I know that sexy sparkle in your eyes would be the cause of my daze, my desirable sighs How did I know I would need you to live to you, all my love, is what I give. How did I know we were destined to be .It's the passion in your eyes the premonition I feel inside of me .How did I know all my thoughts would be of you .How did I know....my love, I knew I love you truly.Do you not see it in my face...hear it in my voice or feel it in my touch. Wherever you are...whatever you do..remember my arms are always seeking you. My heart yearns for you. My body awaits your touch.My ears need to hear your voice.Does this prove that my words are true. My feelings are genuine and my heart belongs to you?

Tell me what it is about you that makes me feel this way. Is it the way you walk and talk, or say the things you say?Tell me what it is about you that keeps me wanting more.Is it the way you touch and kiss me,Tell me what it is about you that keeps me hanging on.Is it the way I care and trust, or play our special song?I know what it is about you that made me fall in love.In my eyes you are perfect,there's nothing not to love.My love, you will remain inside my heart.No one can replace you no matter what;Distance may separate the two of usOur love remaining, will lead us back!You will always be treasured, be remembered always.And though time keeps on going, my love will remain.For in my heart you are there, now and forever! And if ever a misfortune happened or somethingThat would make it impossible for us to be together;till my death, I promise, my love is there And even burried six feet under, you'll still feel my love... through wind...

ARTICLE: What Timothy Geithner Really Thinks By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

“This is kind of like a hearing,” Timothy Geithner said, swaying uncomfortably, face scrunched and hair perfectly tousled. “Do you guys always do it this way?”

The former Treasury secretary was looking up from behind a long desk at his audience — a few dozen Harvard undergraduates, members of Larry Summers’s economics course, sitting in elevated rows of chairs and staring back at him like senators at a Capitol Hill hearing. Geithner, 52, is 5-foot-9 with a naturally boyish look that he maintains in part by running six miles several mornings each week. He looked hardly older than the teaching assistants in the front row.

Early in his talk, Summers — himself a former Treasury secretary (as well as a former Harvard president and a director of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council) — reminded his protégé that many of the students in the room probably had little idea of the role he played during the 2008 financial crisis. “There are many people in this room who were in eighth grade when this was happening,” Summers said, and soon enough a number of students were summoning up Geithner’s Wikipedia page on their laptops and iPads.

Geithner may have given hundreds of news conferences during his four years as Treasury secretary, but he remains an awkward public speaker, even if his audience consists of college students in hooded sweatshirts. On this morning, as was the case many times before, his responses generally coalesced around the plan that defined his tenure: the wildly unpopular authorization of $700 billion in taxpayer money, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to bail out Wall Street’s biggest banks. “To oversimplify it, and I think this was Jon Stewart’s framing,” Geithner told the students, “why would you give a dollar to a bank when you can give it to an American? Why not give them a dollar to help them pay their mortgage?”

‘Much of the dominant view about the strategy is the inverse of the truth.’

Six years later, this question still lingers — in angry debates between economists and in the political rhetoric of candidates (on both the right and the left) and in the minds of many Americans who feel that the inequality they hear so much about (and experience firsthand) is a direct result of Geithner’s actions. There are those on Wall Street and in the plutocracy who feel that Geithner is a hero who deftly steered the country from economic ruin. To many ordinary Americans, however, he is considered a Wall Street puppet and a servant of the so-called banksters. And as much as Geithner hates to explain, he very much wants to be understood.

When the housing bubble burst in 2008, Geithner was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Along with Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary at the time, Geithner was charged with essentially saving the economy from sliding into the abyss. The so-called troika devised the plan to inject billions of the government’s dollars directly into the banking system, effectively turning taxpayers into shareholders of massive, failing institutions. When he then ascended to Treasury secretary in 2009, Geithner became the public face of an economic-recovery program that, in Paulson’s words, “polled worse than torture.” The far-left labeled him an Ayn Rand capitalist, the far-right a socialist. Sheila Bair, the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, called his appointment to Treasury a “punch in the gut.” The Daily Kos, a left-leaning blog, published a story titled, “Why Tim Geithner Should Go to Jail.” At the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2009, even President Obama joked that a goal of his second hundred days would be to house-train his new dog, Bo, “because the last thing Tim Geithner needs is someone else treating him like a fire hydrant.”

Through it all, Geithner has maintained that saving the banks was the only way to protect the U.S. economic system and, by extension, its taxpayers. “I would say that there’s lots of messiness and unpleasantness and awkwardness and a lot of unjust collateral beneficiaries of our rescues,” he told the students at Harvard. “No doubt about it. It would be nice if it were otherwise.” But there was a more salient point he wanted to convey. “People think we gave the banks this free gift of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, using the taxpayers’ money that we would never see again,” he said. “People thought we would lose $2 trillion on our financial rescues.”

He paused and looked out at a crowd that, it’s safe to say, probably did not fully appreciate how intense the anger around the financial bailouts had been and how close the country was to the precipice of a full-on depression. “We are going to earn, all in, a couple hundred billion dollars,” Geithner said. And six years after the bailouts, the too-big-to-fail banks and the insurance giant A.I.G. have since repaid the money they took from the government. Even the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-lending companies that once had to borrow $187.5 billion, have turned profitable. “Much of the dominant view about the strategy,” Geithner said, “is the inverse of the truth.”

To clarify his perspective on all of that “messiness and unpleasantness and awkwardness,” Geithner has spent the past year writing a book — “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises” — that will be published on May 12. It is filled with revealing and sometimes gripping behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Geithner acknowledges for the first time, for instance, that he was initially at odds with Paulson and Bernanke over whether to bail out Lehman Brothers in advance of the famous weekend meeting in which they sought to find a solution before the firm collapsed. (“I sensed their advisers pulling them toward political expedience,” he writes, “trying to distance them from the unpalatable moves we had made and the even less palatable moves I thought we’d have to make soon.”)

Geithner also discloses that some members of the administration talked openly about nationalizing some banks like Citigroup. (“If you want to go in, you better be sure there are W.M.D.'s,” Lee Sachs, an assistant secretary of the Treasury, said during a meeting with Obama in the Roosevelt Room.) And Geithner discloses that he refused to fire Ken Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, who was near retirement. (“Tim, I’m trying to look out for you,” Geithner reports Gene Sperling, a counselor to him at the time, saying that he didn’t owe Lewis any favors. “If he’s going anyway, why don’t you push him out?”) He even concedes that he and Summers were initially opposed to the Volcker Rule, the widely popular regulation barring commercial banks from proprietary trading. His support, he writes, was “certainly political.”

But “Stress Test” is also surprisingly personal. Geithner confides that he actually didn’t want the Treasury job in the first place and that he tried on multiple occasions to resign, but Obama wouldn’t “liberate” him. He is also forthcoming — albeit in the somewhat unemotional language of the technocrat — about his own regrets. (“Before the crisis, I didn’t push for the Fed in Washington to strengthen the safeguards for banks, nor did I push for legislation in Congress to extend the safeguards to nonbanks,” he writes. “I wish we had expanded our housing programs earlier, to relieve more pain for homeowners.”)

Geithner likes to say that all the criticism and the second-guessing and the vitriol directed his way never got to him. “I try to pay no attention to that,” he told me over lunch one afternoon in New York. Almost indignantly, he added, “Our job was to fix it, not to make people like us.” Later, though, he softened and qualified the statement. “I’m human, and I like to be liked,” he said, “even if I didn’t expect to be liked in this.”

Geithner has remained silent about his time at Treasury, but over the past month, he and I met several times to discuss and debate his tenure. Despite the wonky monotone he often projected during the worst moments of the crisis, he is lively and quick-witted in person, and he has a special proclivity for particularly graphic language. Over lunch at Café Centro, near Grand Central Terminal, he told me a story from a few months earlier: “I was crossing Lexington Avenue and some guy said, ‘You’re one of the Goldman [expletive] who ruined the country.’ ” Geithner said he replied, “Thanks for sharing.” At another point, he cheerfully relayed a story that also appears in his book about the time he sought advice from Bill Clinton on how to pursue a more populist strategy: “You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley,” Clinton said, “and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days. Then the blood lust would rise again.”

Little of this personality emerged when Geithner was in office. A career public servant, whose work often took place behind the scenes, he seemed an unlikely fit for a high-profile position in the Washington fishbowl culture. When his name was floated for the Treasury job in the fall of 2008, he was busy helping stave off, as the president of the New York Fed, the collapse of Citigroup. Geithner had moved for work before, during the 1990s — from Washington to Tokyo and back to Washington for jobs at the Treasury Department — and now wanted to stay put in Larchmont, N.Y., a comfortable suburb a half-hour from Manhattan. “I felt guilty that I was even thinking about relocating again,” he writes in his book. “I had also promised Carole” — his wife — “that we would never again live apart, not for anything, and I knew we couldn’t move the kids in the middle of the school year.” Carole Geithner, a social worker and author, was openly resistant to the idea of her husband’s becoming the next Treasury secretary. “Carole didn’t just have reservations,” Geithner writes. “She was opposed.”

When he was summoned in the fall of 2008 to see Barack Obama, then a candidate, at a W Hotel in Manhattan, Geithner offered a series of arguments to disqualify himself from the job: He looked deceptively young; he had little media experience; and, he recalls, “in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, the public would want to see a familiar and reassuring face in charge of the country’s finances.” (Geithner, after all, had spent his career with titles like “deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy.”) Perhaps most crucial, he writes, he told Obama: “I’ve been up to my neck in this crisis. You’re going to have a hard time separating me from these choices if you ask me to work with you.” The implication was that by appointing Geithner, one of the main architects of the rescue strategy, the president would essentially be forced to endorse the bailouts, which could have negative political consequences. He suggested to Obama that Summers or Robert Rubin, his mentors, would be fitter for the job.

But Geithner and Obama had a somewhat natural rapport. Geithner, like Obama, had an itinerant childhood. His father worked for U.S.A.I.D., and the family lived in India, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Thailand. In the conversation, they discovered that Geithner’s father ran the Ford Foundation’s Asia grant-writing program in the 1980s at the same time that Obama’s mother was at its office in Indonesia. It was a nice coincidence, Geithner says, but it still didn’t make him want the job.

‘The accusation or the charge that our motivations were to help banks is kind of offensive to the people who worked with me and definitely to the president.’

That didn’t stop Obama from inviting him for another meeting after the election, this time in Chicago. On his way to meet with the president-elect, Geithner bumped into Summers, whose name had also been floated for the Treasury job, at O’Hare International Airport. “I ran into Larry, who was, I’m pretty sure, in the process of checking the Intrade odds on Obama’s choice for Treasury,” Geithner writes, referring to the online market where investors bet on political outcomes. “It was kind of awkward for both of us. I told Larry I had not sought the job and had urged Obama to choose him as secretary, which didn’t really make the situation less awkward.”

On his way back to the airport after his meeting with Obama, Geithner received a call from Rahm Emanuel, who had been appointed the president-elect’s chief of staff. Emanuel wanted to know whether Geithner would accept either the Treasury job or a job as the director of the National Economic Council, a less-prestigious post, if one of them were offered to him. “I said I would not do N.E.C., but if you asked me to do Treasury, I would do Treasury,” he said that he replied. In Emanuel’s telling, Geithner was not drafted into the job with such reluctance. “I’m not here to disagree with Tim,” he told me. “He said he wasn’t going to lobby for the job or put a campaign on for it, but obviously, if asked, he would serve.” He was asked, and he did choose to serve, and in a role reversal, Summers accepted the N.E.C. post.

The last part of his acceptance was breaking the news to his wife. “I remember the moment,” Carole Geithner recounted to me. “He walked in the door, and I just saw it in his eyes. He couldn’t tell me verbally, because we had a friend visiting who just before said, ‘I don’t think you need to worry, I really think it’s gonna go to Larry Summers.’ And we had to wait till everyone went to bed, and he told me, but I could tell just when he walked in. And there’s this pit in your stomach.” She added: “I’d already had a taste of the fishbowl, and I’d also seen other people’s relationships, what happens to them when they’re in the fishbowl. So I really had a sense of dread.”

That dread materialized quickly. During his nomination hearing, questions emerged about why Geithner had not properly filed his tax returns in 2001 and 2002. Geithner, who after a career in Civil Service was probably one of the least wealthy nominees in the history of the office, told the senators that he used TurboTax to calculate his filings. The perception that he was overmatched for the position was strengthened when he responded to a congressman’s question at a second hearing by saying: “I just want to correct one thing. I have never been a regulator, for better or worse.” The flub, his critics said, was revealing. Geithner had run the New York Fed, whose job is to supervise and regulate financial institutions, at the very moment when Wall Street’s largest banks were gorging on debt and packaging toxic assets.

Geithner likes to say that his initial reluctance to take the job gave him an enormous amount of freedom once he had it. On his third day, for instance, while heading to a meeting in the Oval Office, he was handed talking points for a brief statement that he and Obama would make about the latest Wall Street bonus numbers. Geithner looked over the talking points, which were meant to express outrage, and decided he was simply not going to make them. So he sat silently and let the president express outrage for the two of them. “There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” Obama told the press. “Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.”

But Geithner’s refusal to condemn the bankers became a recurrent theme during his time at Treasury. According to Bernanke, “I didn’t and Tim didn’t go very far in lambasting individuals in Wall Street, maybe partly because we were more focused on the problem than on the politics.” Others, however, have suggested that Geithner was simply too cozy with Wall Street. He had never worked as a banker himself, but he grew up inside the bubble of elites. (Before going into government, his first job was working for Henry Kissinger at Kissinger Associates.) He was tutored at Treasury by Summers, who later worked for the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Company, and Rubin, who came up through Goldman Sachs and eventually joined the board of Citigroup, where he has been blamed in some circles for its taking on excessive risky debt that nearly caused the firm to collapse. Each man played a significant role in deregulating the financial industry in the 1990s by supporting the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking; they also pushed to limit future regulation of derivatives.

This criticism that he was too close to Wall Street was also fueled by the fact that Geithner, with his English spread-collar shirts and his perfectly coifed hair, just looks like a banker. He often tells a story about how Emanuel’s wife, Amy Rule, once told him at a dinner party, “You must be looking forward to going back to that nice spot you have waiting for you at Goldman.” During an April 2009 hearing about the financial-bailout program, Damon A. Silvers, a panel member, seemed almost incredulous that Geithner had never worked on Wall Street.

“You have been in banking — " Silvers said.

“I have never actually been in banking,” Geithner interrupted. “I have only been in public service.”

“Well, a long time ago. A long time — “

“Actually, never.”

“Investment banking, I meant — “

“Never investment banking.”

“Well, all right,” Silvers conceded. “Very well then.”

What is certain, however, is that for all the malfeasance of the biggest banks, Geithner had a predisposition that Wall Street, even as it was, remained essential to the functioning of the U.S. economy in just about every sector. “I did not view Wall Street as a cabal of idiots or crooks,” he writes in “Stress Test.” “My jobs mostly exposed me to talented senior bankers, and selection bias probably gave me an impression that the U.S. financial sector was more capable and ethical than it really was.” During his first few months in the job, Geithner fought with Summers, who felt that his protégé had become overly solicitous of the banks. Geithner dismissed Summers as espousing “the hedge-fund view.” (“Hedge-fund executives tended to see the banks as dumb, lumbering giants,” Geithner writes.) He disagreed when Summers suggested to Obama that the administration pre-emptively nationalize banks like Citigroup or Bank of America or even to try to embarrass them into changing their compensation structures. “I feared that the tougher we talked about the bonuses, the more we would own them,” Geithner writes, “fueling unrealistic expectations about our ability to eradicate extravagance in the financial industry.”

Geithner’s stance often came off as aloof, or worse. For all the time he spent focusing on how the financial industry functions, and for all his knowledge of past crises, critics wondered how someone with his experience could be surprised that some bankers might operate less than ethically. In many ways, Geithner’s first year validated the reservations he shared with Obama. His first public speech, as he described it, “sucked.” (As he spoke, the Dow Jones began a near-400 point drop.) Geithner offered his resignation, but Emanuel told him he had to stay. “Given what we were facing, three months into the administration,” Emanuel told me, “finding a new Treasury secretary wasn’t the solution.” Instead, Emanuel says he instituted a quick primer in politics for Geithner, holding a daily meeting with him and Summers in his office to go over talking points and strategy. “We did that for about six to nine months. The answer was not resigning; the answer was building.”

‘I thought the only thing I could really do about that was to make sure I didn’t go work for a bank or a firm that we’d regulated or that we’d rescued directly.’

The job, meanwhile, was exacting the personal toll that he feared it would. Geithner, who lived at a friend’s house in Washington, tried commuting to Larchmont for the weekends with the Secret Service in tow (his code name: Fencing Master) but rarely made it. “We did not see much of him then, I can tell you that,” Carole says. “And when he was home, it was for really brief times.” When the family decided to relocate to Washington, in the summer of 2009, John Oliver, then of “The Daily Show,” reported on the family’s unsuccessful effort to sell their home. (“Hold on. Timothy Geithner, the man responsible for getting us out of this [expletive], cannot sell his house?” Oliver said. “Oh, God.” He referred to the home as “a toxic asset.”) Geithner told his wife that she might want to tone down her media consumption. “He discouraged me from doing it, but I couldn’t not,” she said. “I felt like, Well, our friends are reading this, and people are reading this, and this is what they think about you.”

Around this time, Geithner consulted his predecessor, Henry Paulson. In recalling the conversation, Paulson says that Geithner confided to him that “Carole is not of this world. I remember that very well because he might as well have been speaking of Wendy” — Paulson’s wife. “There’s a fair amount of hypocrisy in Washington. Before a tough hearing, you’ll sometimes have the congressional committee chairman say to you, ‘I love you, you da man!’ But when the cameras are on and the lights go on, they’ll rake you over the coals for the benefit of the voters back home. And while you may learn to accept this and deal with it, understandably your wife and your kids never do, you know? They take it more personally.” After just two years in Washington, Carole moved the family back to Larchmont.

Perhaps the main challenge that Geithner has found in selling his argument is that to believe that the bailout truly worked, you have to believe that the other side of the cliff would have been worse. This makes his argument something of a counterfactual one, a hypothesis that will always be open to interpretation.

As such, it has left him open to endless criticism that he was a prisoner of “cognitive regulator capture” by Wall Street or suffered so greatly from “Lehman Syndrome” that he became soft on the industry. Simon Johnson, an economist at M.I.T., has argued that bailouts were necessary but executed in the form of a great giveaway. He has compared Geithner to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French statesman “who served the Revolution, Napoleon and the restored Bourbons — opportunistic and distrusted, but often useful and a great survivor.” Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has written in her new book, “A Fighting Chance,” that Geithner “believed the government’s most important job was to provide a soft landing for the tender fannies of the banks.” It’s an opinion shared by Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general of TARP. He told me in an email that Geithner, Bernanke and Paulson “consistently put the interests of the banks over those who were supposed to be helped, like struggling homeowners.” While Barofsky acknowledges that TARP “undoubtedly helped save the system,” he also says, “it was supposed to do so much more.”

That remains Geithner’s fundamental problem. Even those who concede TARP’s success can find fault with it. “It’s impossible to know whether the economy would have bounced back more quickly and we would be closer to full employment now without the bailouts, since none of us know what other policies would have been pursued,” Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, has written. “We do know that we would have been freed of the albatross of a horribly bloated financial sector that sucks the life out of the economy and redistributes income upward to the very rich. For that fact, Timothy Geithner bears considerable responsibility.”

Geithner waved off much of this criticism. “The argument that there was a way to somehow protect people without doing things that looked like you were protecting the banks — was deeply confused and mistaken,” he said, anger rising in his voice. “And the accusation or the charge that our motivations were to help banks is kind of offensive to the people who worked with me and definitely to the president.” But perhaps the more stinging criticism comes from Bair, who has said that Geithner basically made a gamble. “Tim had no idea whether the government’s money would be lost,” she told me. “Taxpayers will never be adequately compensated for the tremendous risks he took with their money.”

I repeated the charge to Geithner. “How could you be certain?” he said. “Let’s just go through the natural experiment. The British tried a couple things that I think are good counterexamples.” He referred to the British government’s lending targets, which were intended to show that the bailouts were keeping credit flowing to regular people. “Not to be unfair to them, but those are largely fake, and they were sort of ridiculous, because their economy was way overleveraged, too, and lending was going to fall even in the best sort of circumstances. And did it help the British in terms of taking some of the sting out of the public anger? No.” Then he brought up the British government’s decision to cap executive compensation. “It wasn’t really designed to change comp,” Geithner said. “It was designed to create the impression that they were changing comp. Did it significantly diminish the popular version of what they did and make them more popular for doing it? No. Was it effective? No.”


As for the argument that he didn’t focus on the homeowners, Geithner said that’s a myth, too, listing TARP housing programs, a lending program to state and local housing-finance authorities and the mortgage-modification-guarantee program. But when I mentioned the passage in “Stress Test” in which he regrets that he hadn’t done more and asked him to elaborate, he became feisty. “It’s kind of too unicorny to frame it this way,” he said. “Because if you suspended disbelief and say: ‘If we had no constraints on resources or authority, could we have done more?’ If we had no constraints on resources or authority, yeah, we could have done more. And we could have done more, quickly.” He added that if they had full control over the government-sponsored enterprises and the Federal Housing Administration, which insures many mortgages, “absolutely, we could have done dramatically more.” He paused for a moment. “But that’s not the real world. In the real world we had to act within the constraints we faced and the limits of the authority we had.”

Photo
The Geithner family about 1966: the parents, Deborah and Peter, the twins Jonathan and David, Timothy and Sarah.CreditPhotograph from the Geithner family.

Congressman Barney Frank, whose name is on the signature, if limited, reform bill that emerged from the crisis, once said, “You don’t get any credit for disaster averted.” But Geithner’s explanation recalled how almost pre-emptively he forfeited the public relations battles at Treasury. When he had the chance to jump on popular issues, like supporting the Volcker Rule, he declined, because he never believed that proprietary trading led to the financial crisis. The big institutions that failed — Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman and A.I.G. — weren’t the types of banks the legislation was designed to regulate, he told me. (He later changed his mind on the Volcker Rule after he determined that it would help make the Dodd-Frank reform legislation easier to pass. Still, he was happy to leave the impression he was against it so as to make it more palatable to the Democratic left, he writes.) When outrage erupted over A.I.G.'s decision to give bonuses, Geithner said they had signed contracts, and the government couldn’t rip them up. These decisions lent credence to the impression that he started with the idea of saving Wall Street instead of the people who needed it most — that he gave a dollar to the banks rather than the homeowners.

Geithner is confident that the empirical data has already vindicated his decision. And while there is some debate over how to calculate the proceeds from the various bailouts — TARP, the auto companies, the F.D.I.C. programs and Fannie and Freddie, among others — the evidence is persuasive. ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative organization, which keeps a tally of the bailout, puts the current profit at $32 billion. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates that Fannie and Freddie will turn a profit of $179 billion over the next decade. (Critics might contend that these figures don’t include the costs of the stimulus or the Federal Reserve’s quantitative-easing programs.) And regardless of the math, a larger point is indisputable: While the returns were never the goal — saving the system was — they are indeed evidence of its success and support, to some degree, Geithner’s counterfactual argument. If the system had been allowed to collapse or TARP had failed, there would have been enormous taxpayer losses.

On some level, though, data cannot settle the argument. During our time together, Geithner spoke about the “collateral beneficiaries” of the bailout, by which he meant the inconvenient fact that certain investors and institutions came out of the crisis better off. And for some, that is direct proof of another counterfactual argument. To believe that the bailout worked, they would argue, you would have to believe that the system itself was worth saving in the first place.

For much of the past five years, Geithner has publicly been fighting with the idea of too-big-to-fail, which implies that executives at the top banks were willing to take on remarkable risks because they knew that the government would ultimately bail them out, given the devastation their collapse would bring. Geithner and Obama marketed the Dodd-Frank bill as a way to end future bailouts. In 2010, right before the bill passed, Geithner said, “The reforms will end too-big-to-fail.” Obama went further: “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes. There will be no more tax-funded bailouts, period.”

But it is now clear that Geithner never believed his own talking points. To him, too-big-to-fail and the so-called moral hazard, or safety net, that it would create can’t really ever be fully taken away. During his lecture to Summers’s class, one student asked a question about “resolution authority,” a provision of the reform laws that is supposed to let the government wind down a complex financial institution without creating a domino effect. The question prompted Geithner onto a tangent about too-big-to-fail. “Does it still exist?” he said. “Yeah, of course it does.” Ending too-big-to-fail was “like Moby-Dick for economists or regulators. It’s not just quixotic, it’s misguided.”

Geithner paused for a moment. “Can you design a system ever that allows you to be indifferent to the failure of any institution, in any state of the world?” he asked aloud before answering his own question. “You can design a system, and I think we have, that allows you to be indifferent in most states of the world: the five-year flood, the 15-year flood, the 30-year flood, maybe even the 50-year flood,” he said. “But there are constellations of storms, of panics, of fires that are so bad that it’s very hard to imagine that you could be indifferent to the failure of the financial system.”

One exception to that moral hazard, however, seems to be Lehman Brothers. Some have speculated that Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke let the bank fail in order to send a political message about their vigilance. The troika have long said they were always in agreement to find a partner for Lehman Brothers and were prepared to use government funds to make a deal, as they had when they matched Bear Stearns with JPMorgan. All have repeatedly said, under oath, that they tried to do all they could, but that by late Sunday, Sept. 14, with no credible buyer (Barclays and Bank of America, Lehman’s two last suitors, dropped out), an analysis of Lehman’s assets indicated that they couldn’t legally lend money to the company.

Yet in “Stress Test,” Geithner reveals a crucial tactical rift between the three men going into that weekend. Geithner writes that he was worried that Paulson’s public insistence that there would be no taxpayer bailout was being driven by politics, not pragmatism, and that he believed that a “no bailout” message could undermine the government’s further ability to pursue a rescue if one were needed. Instead, Geithner preferred to send the impression that a bailout might be available, if necessary, which could have made the bank more desirable to a suitor. We’ll never know if that would have saved the bank, and Geithner won’t play that guessing game, either. Later, he writes: “These disagreements did not turn out to be consequential. Hank and Ben would have the courage to change course and do what needed to be done.”

When I ran the earlier passage by Paulson, he paused for a moment. “While we discussed and sometimes debated tactics, we were unified in our resolve to avoid the failure of systemically important institutions and that certainly included Lehman Brothers, where we worked hard right up until the end to prevent a failure,” he said. In his own account of the financial crisis, “On the Brink,” Paulson explained why he was so insistent that the public believe there was no bailout coming. “The New York Fed would be inviting Wall Street C.E.O.'s for a meeting, and we didn’t want them to arrive thinking that we would be there waving a government checkbook.”

Bernanke suggested they “were very much on the same page,” but he made another point regarding the popular opinion about Lehman’s failure. “Ironically, the conventional wisdom now is that it was obvious that Lehman should be saved but that the Fed and the Treasury went ahead and made the big mistake of letting it go,” he told me. “The truth is actually quite the opposite. Conventional wisdom at the time was overwhelmingly in favor of letting Lehman fail, but Tim, Hank and I were very much convinced that we should do everything possible not to let it fail. But then of course we ran out of options.”

In January 2013, Geithner was finally “liberated.” He had been pressing Obama to let him step down since 2010, suggesting replacements like Erskine Bowles and Hillary Rodham Clinton. At one point, during an event at the White House, Obama resorted to taking Carole aside and trying to persuade her to have her husband stay. “I wasn’t an easy person to be convinced,” she recalls. “I mean, I knew it was kind of a hopeless cause — that if he needed to stay, he needed to stay — but I was not easily convinced. And that was probably a little surprising to the president.”

After much back and forth, Obama eventually appointed his chief of staff, Jack Lew, to the job. Geithner returned to Larchmont as an empty-nester, in the same house he could not sell, where he has spent the last year writing his book, working out of the Council on Foreign Relations and giving speeches for six-figure sums. While he claims he is through with government, he still maintains an intimate relationship with Obama, who was rumored to have recruited him to succeed Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

When I asked him about it over lunch, Geithner originally glossed over the point, as if he declined the post. But as lunch continued, he stopped himself. “You didn’t ask me whether — I didn’t say that I declined it, I just said I was not interested in it. Just to clarify.” When I asked if he officially declined, he responded: “I didn’t speak to that question, I was just saying that I didn’t. You said that you — you phrased my thing as if I had declined. I wasn’t interested.”

Geithner admitted that he struggled over what to do next. He didn’t want to go back into government, and he wasn’t inclined to go into academia, but he worried about the optics of going into finance. “I think the perception problem — first of all it’s very damaging to me as I was trying to do some tough things, and I think it’s kind of very damaging to the country at the moment because it sees this basic loss of faith in government,” he said. “I thought the only thing I could really do about that was to make sure I didn’t go work for a bank or a firm that we’d regulated or that we’d rescued directly.”

Last month, Geithner officially began a new job as president of a modestly sized private-equity firm, Warburg Pincus. It may not be investment banking, but it’s possibly finance’s second-most-vilified industry, given how Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital experience played out in the 2012 presidential campaign. It’s very unlikely that Geithner will be using TurboTax anytime in the near future, though; he is likely to make millions if not tens of millions of dollars over the next decade if he stays in the business.

As we spoke, it became clear that this new job was one Geithner actually wanted. “The private sector is what most people do for a living,” he said. “I thought that the possibility some people would criticize me for not staying a public servant was not a good reason not to go try and learn something new.” It was also clear he had finally learned some public relations pointers from Treasury.

On a Saturday in late April, I called Geithner for the last time to talk about the Volcker Rule and a few personal facts. (“I’m almost 5-9, just below 5-9. 5-8-and-¾, something like that. You can round down, you can say 5-8. I’m relatively secure in my height.”) He told me he was enjoying his new job and that he was preparing to take a flight to Asia later that day for work.

I asked if the job meant that he had finally given up socialism, which his more severe detractors had accused him of, and embraced capitalism.

“No,” he said, with a laugh. “I wouldn’t claim that yet.”

LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate,

From the very first day I laid my eyes on you.That's when I knew, I will never be alone again.You're the most stunning girl I have ever known.My heartbeat goes faster every time I see or touch you.Only you know what you do to me I know you think I am crazy and obsessed.Well, I don't really mind at all I know, deep inside my heart, that I love you.My love for you is genuine
You have touched a special place in my heart that no one has ever touched before.I have often shown you about my feelings for you in a million ways that any person can be shown.Made sure you understand to some degree How much I need you and how much you mean to me.This is you, girl, the girl I fell in love with.Your eyes, clear and sparkling mid-sized and sexy.They're like a light in the dark like the horns of the new moon How could I not love you?Your hair,black, shinny and natural soft and smooth, like velvet like a secret place... warm with the sun under the canopy of a magic forest.I am passionate about you girl! Your skin,It's like a park in some far off place.Green with a grass-laden floor, where only lovers lay.I'll hold these dreams, till we're together! I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side

If you counted all the stars in heaven,You would see how many wishes were spent.. in vain.Searching for the dream, that could have been,Until I said your name.One Star heard my tears and fell from the sky,into the fire... I see in your eyes.The more my eyes behold your face.The more my lips touch your skin.The more I'm still aware of your presence.The more I deeply fall in love with you.The more I remember all you did to me.The more your words fill up my heart.The more you make me trust in you.The more I constantly go insane for you.The more you hold me tight to yourself.The more your eyes cross with mine.The more my soul will melt for you.The more you solve the mystery of my heart.The more you remove the worries of my life.The more you reclaim memories of my past.The more you remain brand new in my heart.The more you gaze into my eyes.The more I feel the smile on your face.The more you dedicate yourself to me.The more I love you so much.When the moon shines bright, and i can see the stars, ....i think of you.The way you look into my eyes, The way your soul has a way of creeping into my heart, and making me weak...Your touch sends thrills throughout my whole body, and i crave your warmth and skin next to mine..My body aches when you're not near, and my heart goes hollow when i don't hear your voice in my ear.I would follow you to the end of the world to keep you near me

PERSONA/ LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate

You are like a star from above, someone I know that would understand my love.Ever since you walked into my life ..I've been wishing that in the future you'll be my wife. There were times I just feel so alone,no one to hug, no one to call my own,no one to kiss, no one to love,no one to say "she is all I think of" And it hurts so much, it hurts my heart,forever I've been searching, it tears me apart.To think of these nights, but there is only me,sitting in the dark, wondering where she might be,and to think "what's life without love, what's love without her?why should love be real, if this was ever to occur? Should I give up? or should I look for the one?Should I give all I got till my searching is done?Through all my pains, I thought I'd lost all faith but I know in time that you'd be worth the wait.I start to daydream and think how it would be...a life full of paradise, this love that belongs to you and me. And I know that you will be my sunshine, you will dries the tears I shed. Your smile so beautious, flowers bloom from the dead.Your  hands so soft, gently holding on to mine...the woman of my dreams, I can't believe you are mine. I feel every feeling from your warm loving embrace, The world so is much brighter as I see love in your face. Astonished by your beauty, entranced by your eyes, in shock by the way you kissed, I came quick to realize that you soon let go, and you started walking away...you looked back and said "You'd have me one day" And I thought we were so perfect, that's what it seemed but when I woke up, you left me in my dreams.

       
In the dark, your love lights my way.In the cold, your love keeps me warm.When I am sick, your love heals me.When I am about to sink, your love carries me to shore.Your love is my lifeline. It protects me from hurt and keeps me strong.What would I do without you?I don't ever want to know.My heart starts bleeding after searching for so long.For true love that eluded me without ever giving me a chance.I have fallen in and out of love
Not by choice but by force After being inflicted and infected by love that yields no result. I've heard of Romeo and Juliet. How their love survived the test of time.I have seen Shakespeare in love.How true love was demystified
But all the women I've known and loved never stayed but passed through my heart. Searching through the dictionary of life.True love was really not defined Looking through the eyes of women True love could surely not be found. Could somebody please tell me Where true love really resides?
I don't mind to pay the price of true love that flows from the heart





When I saw her, it was love at first sight.
Since then I think about her day and night.
Her warm embrace gives me butterflies;
She's the one, I can tell through her eyes.

All my life I've searched for that perfect girl.
Since I've seen her she has changed my lonely world.
I love everything she does; the way she walks, the way she talks
The way she licks her lips, the way she moves her hips.

Without her, I wouldn't know what to do.
She's my lost love, it's true.
In my heart she's created such a stir;
Couldn't imagine life being without her.

Seems like a crime- how I love her so much
But she's the only girl with that perfect touch.
Without her, I would be in so much pain.
Everyday I would feel like I'm going insane.

I'm in love and it's something I can't control.
Her love is like food to my soul.
I hope it's soon that she will see
She is the one for me...

REVIEW: ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH VS BATTERY TOOTHBRUSH

At first glance, a rechargeable toothbrush costs more.  But, in the long run, does it really?

Think about the cost of a decent package of AA batteries and how long they last in an electric toothbrush.  On average, one AA battery costs about $1.00 or more.  And, depending on the brand, a toothbrush that uses two AA batteries maintains brushing power (although dwindling) for about 2 weeks.

From this estimate, we can conclude that operating costs for a non-rechargeable toothbrush costs about $1.00/week (the price of one AA battery).  This equates to $52.00/year in operating costs.  And don’t forget about the actual toothbrush that can cost anywhere from $8.00 to $20.00.

If we reach a happy medium and buy a $14.00 AA-powered toothbrush, that means we’re spending$66.00/year for a non-rechargeable toothbrush.  Plus the cost of head replacements.  But since head replacements are similar in cost for rechargeable and non-rechargeable models, we’re going to ignore the cost of them.

Now let’s consider the cost of a rechargeable toothbrush.

These can cost anywhere from $50 to $150 or more, depending on what kind you get.  The ones that cost more tend to have longer-lasting batteries and more features.  So let’s say we meet in the middle on features and decide to buy a rechargeable toothbrush for $100.  Also, let’s assume that operating costs are $10/year for electricity.  This means we’re spending $110 for a rechargeable toothbrush.  This isn’t an annual rate because your average $100 rechargeable model will last well over one year.

Like we said before, at first glance, rechargeable toothbrushes cost more.  So to determine what the better value is, we have to look at some other factors besides equipment and operating costs.  We also have to look at longevity, warranty and effectiveness.

Longevity and Warranty: If you’re lucky, a AA-powered toothbrush you pay $14 for will last for about 6 months.  Because inexpensive technology and materials are used, the electronic system that powers the toothbrush tends to malfunction sooner than later.  This means that you have to add an additional $14 to the annual cost of using a AA-powered device.  Now we’re at $80.00/year for a non-rechargeable toothbrush.  On the other hand, you have a $100 rechargeable toothbrush that comes with a 2 year warranty.  This means you have the toothbrush for at least two years – probably longer.

Effectiveness: Nearly every general and cosmetic dentistry in the U.S. endorse electronic toothbrushes over manual toothbrushes.  They also like to stress the advantages of a rechargeable brush over a non-rechargeable one.  For instance, the former maintains consistent power.  While the AA batteries in a non-rechargeable device become weaker use after use, the battery in a rechargeable device delivers strong, consistent power as long as the toothbrush is kept on its charger.  What this means is simple: more brushing power = a cleaner a mouth.  And a cleaner mouth leads to less cavities down the road, which means less money spent.

Although the American Dental Association (ADA) does not support one model over the other, there’s a clear difference between the cost and effectiveness of each.

It’s also important to think about the environmental impact of each toothbrush.  Rechargeable toothbrushes are “greener” than non-rechargeable toothbrushes because they reduce the need of disposable batteries.

Remember the cost of AA batteries we talked about earlier?  About $1 per battery and needing to replace 2 AA’s every two weeks?  Based off of this, AA-powered toothbrush users throw away around 50 AA batteries each year!

LOVE LETTER: MY DEAREST

My Dearest,

I have lain awake many sleepless nights trying to compose words that might adequately describe the feelings of my heart, but every time I have made the attempt, I have failed miserably. Please forgive me for my poor effort and accept a trite and simple phrase: I love you. I think I can say it no better than that.

The day I met you was the day I knew you were the one. It was like love at first sight. Looks weren't important. What caught my attention was your angelic personality.  At that moment I felt a delirious elation taking over my mind, body and soul.What I love most about you is that we can talk about anything for unlimited hours, as if the clock never existed. We have numerous things in common. Don't you feel like we are meant to succeed?
I?m so happy you're in my life. You are the only woman who makes me feel so wonderful and complete, and I feel so privileged for you to be the first to know that I truly do love you.


I used to think that dreams were only dreams....never to become reality...
that dreams were merely a creation of one's imagination....a concoction of one's wishes and aspirations...and in these dreams, I was King and I had a Queen and to this Queen belonged the key to my heart to me, she's a gift, God's work of art her touch sends chills down my spine...her sweet smile makes my day so fine. She truly is one of a kind. A person i though i would never find and now i believe dreams really can come true and that was the day... i found you.

They say when two people meet...........In the very first .....Second that you lock eyes............you can tell......that your true love..........you do meet
.In that very first second..right before you greet!



Every romantic verse I read,
and each love that I pass by
in memory, they are burned
yet remembered in my sigh.

Holding love too close,
breathing in and letting go,
seeing in their eyes a spark,
that only those that love know.

How it haunts my soul endlessly,
the way they quickly burn me;
how I embrace their flames,
in a way only I can see.

Quiet now I lay down
my heart to lonely sleep;
soon I will drift away,
into dreams safe and deep.

Angels dance and whisper
"soon;" into dark we part;
Shimmering colours swirl
embracing the solitary heart.

I am the one that hears the song,
the one that knows the dance;
Who gives, and cries and hopes,
for that one true romance.