search for sanctuary.

Yeah, a rant: I was looking at a map of the United States, and I realized that a pinpoint would be too big to narrow in on my exact location. It's huge. It's crazy how I sometimes end up driving thousands of miles to get to where I am. It's crazy how far away people are. It's crazy how I never seem to get anywhere. I had this half-baked theory once about how your personal happiness and well-being is closely related to orbital motion and escape velocity. Somehow I managed to write an entire paper on it. Sometimes I wish I still had that paper. I don't know. I always get the urge to just run away, and start a new life; and when things got too familiar, I would run away again. For awhile there, I ran away every summer, just driving for a few weeks. I just wanted to get away. I wanted to prove my theory. I did. I mean, moving makes me happy because I get the sense that I'm going places, and that I'm out there in the world. At the same time, it makes me feel like a complete sell-out because when things get too heavy, I'd just apply the right amount of speed to escape the gravitational pull of the planet. I always ended up making myself more unhappy because I realized that I didn't really have a place in the world, and if I did, I certainly hadn't found it. I wish I could say that I did find my place. I certainly love Philadelphia, but I still feel like a complete stranger. I've met a handful of wonderful people here, and I would hate to leave them. But I don't know. They all seem to know how to grow up, and I still feel like I'm sixteen with those dreams about exotic places and adventures, which in actuality will never happen. These people that I've met over the past four years are the only reason I'm really still here. I would love to keep moving and searching, but I also want to feel like I belong somewhere. I have to stay because I feel that whatever it is that I'm looking for is here. Sometimes, I wish I had a life clock on my hand like in Logan's Run, and it would tell me when I needed to start running. I'd want to be Leslie 8.