save yourself!

or maybe it's like a cult. where you're strategically sucked in. broken down. manipulated. and the longer you're a part of it, the harder it is to get out. the stronger the pull to stay. surrounded by decadence and sin, you find yourself intoxicated. unable to completely withdraw. you've been exposed. you've seen the other side of the rainbow. or the dark side of the moon. depending on the day. and you start to wonder, "where do i go from here? where else do i go that will understand me? or this place i've been?" no where else seems possible. it all seems foreign.

. . . "Sometimes he wonders if he should leave. Should he leave? The truth is, after only a few months, he finds it hard to imagine living anywhere else besides Manhattan. Once he could have. But since then the island seems to have ruined him for life elsewhere. For six months, he realizes, he has not crossed either river even once. He recalls Woody Allen in "Annie Hall," driving in a daze through Beverly Hills at Christmas. To the rest of the world, even to his hometown and the town where he went to college, he has become allergic." (David Leavitt, 'The Town That Gags Its Writers') . . .

and so there are others. others like me. quietly wondering if this is home. or if we should hop the fence. wondering what we would really miss. but also wondering where in the hell we'd be heading to. . .