If I do, and if I don't. Wow, I was so close today. So close to losing it completely. Everything, all of it, just seemed so on the brink. My good friend in the department is breaking on me...I have to pray she doesn't quit on me. I've worn my way through another civil war with Shannon. The accidental bruise I left on her while we were wrestling on her bed didn't look good to her roommate, either. I'm so close to losing my drive, losing my cool, everything. So, what do I do? I do the stupid thing. I read page 311 in my favorite book. All The King's Men. When Jack Burden summarizes his false premise of responsibility; his romantic notions of history and reality. So I fled west from the fact, and in the West, at the end of History, the Last Man on that Last Coast, on my hotel bed, I had discovered the dream. That dream was the dream that all life is but the dark heave of blood and the twitch of the nerve. I want to believe this passage. I want to believe that we are merely components, soulless components, somehow free from the responsibility of being more than that. (...for nothing was your fault or anybody's fault, for things are always as they are.) I think I would be a lot more calm if I could believe that, but that's my problem. I can't. Neither did Jack Burden.