As an American, fuck yes, absolutely, 100%.

As a Texan, fuck yes, absolutely, 1000%.

The wife and I are already considering leaving the state. Prices for everything are rising to ridiculous levels.

An apartment I could have afforded on my own a decade ago would require three incomes, and the neighborhoods are no less violent and crime ridden. Food deserts, lack of health care options, lack of gainful employment in that geographic area, all deterrents to paying more than I do now for a mortgage.

If I thought I had the skills and wherewithal to strike out and homestead I would. Alas, I do not.

I long to leave "the grid," but require medication to function as a normal human being. As such, I am beholden to the system. I must cooperate against my better interest to attain medication to live. I am, for lack of a better term, a slave to it.

Before anyone comes in calling a race card play, or any other shit, I am a cis het white male. In theory, I am the problem, and yet I suffer the same.

I decided at the age of seven that life, as we know it, was not worth living. 30 some odd years later, that has not changed.