On the one hand, I could study brain inflammation and MRI indices in people with schizophrenia versus healthy folk at a new university, live my friends and helping them cope with a divorce, and reconcile myself to work for people that threw my trust to the dogs. I could also sell my car and take the subway.

On the other hand, I could study brain inflammation and MRI indices in people with Alzheimer's disease and metabolic syndrome versus healthy folk in the same place I work at now, live by myself without much of a social life to speak of, and work for people that have always been there for me professionally and personally. I could also keep my car and not do much with it besides commute and possibly take it up to Devil's Lake and Detroit to visit Nicholas.

Honestly, the only thing that would motivate me to go to Penn right now is that people I deeply love need me. I need them. I need some social stability. Left to my own devices, I will drift for however long I'm here until I find the next social group to engender myself to. Even that is iffy because, I'm guessing, the relative likelihood of people my age still aggregating like they did 8-10 years ago is dwindling. Most of my friends are married. I just worry. It's understandable in a jejune way. I worry that all I will just become the token older person among younger people. I worry the stable and supportive women direct and vaguely of my type are going to Avalon, whereas I'm left to wonder just what to do. I worry that despite my best efforts, I am a man apart by design and inadvertent volition, and that the people in my life will just come and go as I get older and older. It was fine when I was very young. It's still okay now. But this pattern cannot keep repeating itself.

I know exactly the type of person I want to be with, but now is a time of transition and muddled change. Oh one shouldn't worry etc. etc. I have read the articles. I have better learned what is wrong and right with me. But you do begin to wonder. You begin to think. You begin to just want to settle and hope that was good enough. That's exactly what I just wanted to do. It is born of fear. And I must show uncommon courage or luck to find something otherwise.

I haven't made a decision yet. But it sadly makes the most sense to stay here. It's fine professionally--perhaps better, actually--but Madison is a place of transitions, a city of gates. I cannot help but think that I am standing at an underground station by the subway track. I am waiting to get onto another train, to another destination, to another space even more remote for the one thing left for which I have a white-hot passion, to another set of circumstances foreign and yet familiar, entreating, interesting, but ultimately similar.

I can't be a boy for much longer.

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