Yes, the world breaks everyone, and makes them strong in the broken places, and so on. And though I have gotten much tougher about a lot of things, I have also gotten softer with people. I cannot bring myself to hate anyone. Outside of just being a total waste of time, there is no sense hating anyone. It doesn’t do anyone any good and it is a bad feeling to keep locked inside your brain. You would think that finding sympathy in everyone, even the “bad” people, would make navigating these screaming three dimensions easier than before, but in fact it has made my own life a thousand times more difficult. Because even when I am gentle with people, especially those who don’t really even deserve it, they will not extend you the same courtesy. They will use just see it as a weakness and a way to crush you.

In the last two days, I have been spit on, screamed at, harassed, insulted, and humiliated by way too many people to count—and all of them were strangers. Some of them were just people walking down the street. And all I was doing was reading a novel outside of a bar where I work. I did not flinch when a man screamed in my face and threatened to slit my throat, and I did not get enraged when a bar patron took my book and tossed it into the middle of the street while his friends laughed at me. I cannot hate them. I am not even fighting an urge to hate them, the feeling just isn’t there. If anything I just felt sorry for these people. And I don’t mean I look down on them. I truly have sympathy for them, because Hell is themselves. It must be really awful to carry around so much cruelty and hatred inside yourself.

Still, I have to get away from everyone. I’m too sensitive to keep this up. It is a shame that you could want to love people, but are too besieged to be around them in the first place, and so you have to disappear. Then I guess the only people left over are the ones with all that bad wiring.