It had been the opposite of peace — a low, constant, grinding war against my own voice, a daily suppression of my own instincts, conducted so quietly that I had mistaken the absence of open conflict for the presence of calm.

Real peace is not the absence of conflict.

It is the absence of the thing you were staying silent to avoid confronting.

You do not get peace by staying quiet while people hurt the ones you love; staying quiet only preserves the conditions that make peace impossible.

You get peace by confronting the thing, by tearing down the walls that kept you trapped in the dark, by accepting the conflict that the truth requires and coming out the other side into a life where there is finally, actually, nothing left to be silent about.

The banquet was not the end of my peace.