You can check out any time but you can never leave

If you don't know what that line is from I can't help you. I can tell you I didn't think of it. You know I thought once I stepped off the ship it would end. For almost 2 years (I think I knew on some level it was inevitable I was going to end up on the croooooooooooooozzzzzzzzzz ship) I dreaded the encounter, anticipated it. It triggered dormant rage issues, it triggered yet another power struggle with the Gods who raised me, it triggered a dispute with my wife, a drama with my daughter, I am going to have to withdraw more money from my retirement plan just to cover my side of the trip expenses - for a trip that I dreaded and never wanted to do in the first place - I mean I AM NOT COMPLAINING (it may seem like it) in that I know this is all my KARMA - and nobody took a gun to my head or anything - even though a wife's pressure in some ways is probably worse - but what I am saying is that out of my own seemingly FREE WILL (if that really exists) I did agree to go on this dreaded outing - and during the trip - it really - amazingly - wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - thanks to the miraculous escape of Deck 7 and the ability for me to retreat with my guitar. The food - I'd give it a C+ - and the family interaction was about what I expected it to be - restrained, polite, distant. I just thought once I walked off the ship it would be over. But

IT'S NOT OVER!!! - I keep obsessively having bad dreams about ships now. I am stuck on one, I can't get off one, I am back to the scene of the crime and it won't leave me alone. Every fucking night I dream about a ship and this is haunting me and I think I am really messed up now. What's going on? This is going to screw me up. I may even have to do something really drastic - like quit my job, have my house foreclosed and show up at my parent's front door with a beggars' bag and see if they will let me move back in with them - because I can't get these dreams to go away. I am haunted now, I am branded for life - I will spend the rest of my eternity in a dream world as a prisoner on a haunted ghost ship and they won't let me off the boat. When I die and go to the next realm I know where it will be - I will be spending limbo on a ship. And I thought it was all over - but it's not - HELPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!