"...turned and walked away"

I was not trapped. I was here on earth because I chose to be. And it was no skin off my elbow how I had been given the gifts of life so long as I possessed them, and I possessed them then--the tie between the wet grass roots and the hair that grew out of my body, the thrill of my mortality that I had known on summer nights...I looked up at the dark house and then turned and walked away.
john cheever