How I envy this woman, with her monitor wipes and floppy disks.

This is where I was mugged, in Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn. The tan townhouse, in the little front stoop area.

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This is where the handlebars fell of my bicycle, I hit a car head on, and flipped into the road, and where some kind woman pulled me onto the curb and saved my life.

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I lived in the yellow and red apartment building on the right for 2 years.

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This was where my office was, on the 20th floor.

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I used to walk this road home every day, whether at 6AM or 4AM. With my friends, with my boyfriends, with one night stands, alone, with my iPod, even caught up in a conversation with a stranger I had met on the subway 5 minutes prior.

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This is the place I stayed for 3 weeks with my great friend Ellen, where we slept on the hardwood floor in sleeping bags and they had the ugliest couch in the world delivered.

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You have no idea how much I miss it all. I haven’t been the same since I left.

I’m so embarrassed at my last job, I’ve thought about taking it off my resume. I’ve thought about starting over entirely and working retail for the first time in my life, even though all I possess are white-collar types of skills. I feel extremely useless, because after all I’m simply not being used.

And since I’m too poor to do anything, even drive my car, I just sit up and watch the same old television, sit in front of my computer and dream even harder of a life outside Texas. This song always comes to mind, as well, and it’s a cheesy one. It’s embarrassing to even think that this is how I regard my unemployment. But I do feel like offal, I feel like I’m in the reject pile. Yet I have no choice but to look harder if I really want to get somewhere with my life.

Last week, my mother said I should consider delivering pizza. They didn’t call back when I desperately phoned up my nearest parlor.

Though I saw it all around
Never thought I could be affected
Thought that we’d be the last to go
It is so strange the way things turn

The problem is that what you are ready to return to doesn’t just reappear in front of you — a night full of friendship, a romantic interest or two, sex, places to be. I have none of that right now. So many of my nights resemble the nights of my early 20’s — just me, my car, my music, and endless empty sleepless nights. Like then, I had just one close friend. Back then, it was Farah, who worked at a restaurant, who I’d drop in on often, and then we’d go back to her place and laugh at how funny but lovely Kate Bush is. Today, it’s my friend Hunter, who works at a restaurant, who I drop in on often, and we go back to his place and sing, “rolling the ball, rolling the ball, rolling the ball, to me?”.

I don’t know how I got past those early 20’s without Farah, and I don’t how I’ll get past these proverbial “six months in a leaky boat” without him, either. They reminded me, during dark moments that I always thought would be the last and the end, that I’m a nice, funny person whose presence is not wholesale rejected. For those like myself who have suffered from chronic depression, socialization difficulties and mood disorders for most of their life, someone like myself never assumes that they’re loved, or even liked. I can’t stress that enough to those who are “mentally sound”. I wake up almost every day wondering who’ll have me back in their lives, and I only go to bed happy if I feel like I’ve earned that right. It almost resets itself daily. Don’t try to question it if you don’t understand it. You don’t have to — besides, it doesn’t hurt to show others you care, right?

I know my time is yet to come, but for now, I just sleep all day and drive my convertible into the sunset, wondering when the proverbial phone of life will ring. Wondering if someday the left turn I take down this road or that road will be the last. I look forward to the day when I can ride off into the sunset, with a good excuse and a future waiting.

“I get up in the evening, and I ain’t got nothing to say
I come home in the morning, I go to bed feeling the same way”

It was 72 degrees outside, or at least that’s what the bank sign said, but I believed it this time. It felt crisper and drier and more normal, more god damned temperate for a change, than it has been in months. A small but noticeable drop in temperature gushed down through the glassless already-rolled-down windows as I drove down Mopac through the Barton Creek greenbelt. It felt lovely to be speeding, going 72 in a 65, instead of 64 in a 65 for a change.

I admit, I felt a bit free spirited for a change, the way one gets when one no longer has to worry about the drugs in one’s pocket, or the phone call to work one would have to make if suddenly arrested for a forgotten traffic ticket from god knows when.

Driving through downtown now, the skyline so bright and still boldly illuminated at 11:30PM, a feeling of renewal came over me. Not because of the skyline, or the fresh air through the city I grew up in and still live in. Because I was knee deep in Austin, accepting its place in my life, and ready to move on, to leave it for others to enjoy. I felt unencumbered from a job I hated, a job which was a series of thankless tasks combined in a nauseating aggregate, tolerating a business as it endured its proverbial menopause, stressing out over the problems and neglect others caused but that were suddenly my own because I dared to bring them up. That is no longer with me, no longer my concern. I moved back to Austin to get myself in shape, after all.

As I climbed altitude out of the river bed and into the inner suburbs of a growing city I grew up with myself, it no longer mattered to me that I had less than $10 to my name. Come take what I have, I thought to myself, come take my minimum payments, you won’t find them in these pockets. My mother, my family, whomever is owed money by me can take a back seat to my mental recovery. I will get them back, but for now I have a dream to fulfill, an itch and a desire I’ve had ever since I got this little convertible.

How sweet it would be, I thought, and I still continue to think, if I could drive this car right out of town and arrive in style to the destination of my choosing? No victory would be greater than the victory of choice. And we know by now what my choice is.

I know what my choice is, but I don’t know where I will end up. I don’t know if it’ll be a chance to see Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, and LA before finally meeting my tomorrows in San Francisco, or if I’ll drive all night on gas-station coffee, stopping only for Dollywood and for a night’s sleep in the Smokies, the next afternoon savoring the baroque and lonely autumn leaves of Winchester, Virginia, to be with Patsy Cline 45 years after her death, then finally racing up 95 until the industrial skyline transitions into one of multi-millionaires and co-ops with waiting lists. I don’t know what city i’ll end up in, but I know I’ll be leaving Austin.

I don’t know when, but I know what. And I know what I have to do to get there. And I know who I have to thank for getting me back where I belong. Tomorrow, I start that journey which is entirely certain in result but uncertain in trajectory. I am excited to be seeing those who I’ve missed dearly, who I’ve cried over, who I long to laugh with again, at least in the same room and not over a keyboard. I’ve made my plans.

I have been so exhausted and depressed that I sleep 12, 14, 16 hours a day sometimes. The only way I can motivate myself to stay awake is to drive, as if I’m pretending to leave Austin for good. I’ve been doing a lot of pretending lately. I fantasize that I drive down Interstate 35 only to never, ever return. Could I be harsh when I say that I’d like to never see this place again?

• Associates — You Were Young
• Split Enz — Hard Act To Follow
• Depeche Mode — My Secret Garden
• Chrisma — Wanderlust
• Hall & Oates — Gino (The Manager)
• Jo Lemaire — Je suis venue te dire que je m’en vais