Single-Track-Railway Feeling

I say that I want to leave here for California, but a fortune-teller whisper suggests that I never will. Not because I'm trapped, but out of my own free will. How ironic, because New York City is this place that made me say "I feel trapped" and "I'm so stuck." This place makes me feel like I have no place. Whichever room I enter, I feel like either an outsider or an imposter. I'm not high enough yet not low enough; not cool enough and not uncool enough; not fancy enough and not casual enough; not Western enough and not Asian enough; not confident enough yet not modest enough. Am I playing tug-of-war with a city not meant to be mine? Why does a mere sixteen months make me feel like I'm too deep in to reverse my steps? My destiny threatens that it won't come undone. My confidence claims its death in middle-school Spain. Yes, I tell myself I can build something beautiful with what I have, but how? Something makes me feel—that New York City, I'll stay with you until I'm dead; New York City, I'm going to bury my bones here. Is this persistence or foolishness? Patience or stubbornness? If need be, tear open my blind spot that I may redirect, even if begrudgingly, painfully, in loss, in emptiness, in confrontation and in setting my face like flint.