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In order to grow, I promise you'll have to let go of some habits. 10 times out of 10, they'll be the habits you're most in love with.Brandi L. Bates
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THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street.For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.Brandi L. Bates
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Remember to remember: sometimes your adversary is your biggest asset. Where would David be without Goliath? Jesus without Judas?Brandi L. Bates
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Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you.Brandi L. Bates
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Drama does not just walk into our lives. Either we create it, invite it, or associate with it.Brandi L. Bates
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Understand: I don't ever want to be equal to any other being. I always want to be greater...in all things, in all circumstances.Brandi L. Bates
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The reason why many people remain on the bottom is because they play to 'not lose', as opposed to playing to win at all costs.Brandi L. Bates
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No one is born with equality. We all come here with varying degrees of opportunities, qualities, strengths, weaknesses, IQ, etc.Brandi L. Bates
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Be selective in your battles...Brandi L. Bates
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The greatest minds are like film, they take the negatives and develop themselves in darkness...Brandi L. Bates