"For the purposes of life and conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility."

David Hume

--Letters

what an amazing god damned night.

i wake up in four hours to continue my trip onto seattle.

i can only say that i hope my conduct tonight is an indication of the person i am becoming, who, strangely, has a lot more courage than i thought she did.

i won't go into details, but i will tell you one important thing that i learned tonight:

you have the right, at any time, to declare yourself as an entity inviolate, unwilling to engage in any kind of conduct that you find either damaging to your own character or someone else's. you can, at any point in a descent into unkindness, stand your ground and assert yourself as a person who will not tolerate being talked down to or be made a fool of, nor will you encourage that behavior in others, even if it makes you unpopular or ends the conversation entirely.

in doing so, you will find that the world will not explode nor will all electromagnetic charges reverse themselves thereby undoing the whole of existence (a fear that i held); instead you will find yourself standing up straighter, and a calm fall over you that almost feels like love.

and when you wash your face at the end of the night you will smile at yourself, looking past all the flaws that are the only things you ever see, instead seeing an almost perfect clearness and contentment.