When I wake up I think it might have been a dream. Patrick wasn't mugged. The four gunshots that went off outside my window never happened, no one hit the deck while I was flossing in the bathroom. There weren't animal parts strewn about the sidewalk on my block as we walked home from dinner. Patrick hasn't lowered his bed to the ground to stay out of the line of the window, and he hasn't put up a concrete slab in that window to block stray bullets. My friends feel safe and want to visit and walk around and spend time here and I didn't make a mistake.

When I remember that it wasn't a dream, I start to invent a new one. I leave New York, I move to San Francisco, I gain terrific insight into my desired career path and live happily there. I move to an isolated home in the suburbs of South Carolina and build a recording studio and I learn how to not worry so much and find that one doesn't need to spend every day waking up and doubting himself.

I'm not afraid of this place, but I am afraid that I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to sleep with earplugs in for a year.