I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.
I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.
I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn't quite hit my goal by age 30, but I'm close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that's meaningless until we IPO. But it's profitable, and in the meantime, I've adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I'm content.
All the people saying "yes" are incorrect. Running on pavement and running on trails exert different strains on the body, but not less. The tendency in road runners is to end up with tibial stress fractures, and in trail runners it is metatarsal stress fractures, but the injury rates are similar. Trail running requires stronger stabilizer muscles (primarily gluteus medius) to maintain knee health in the long term, but this is a problem for both as well.
Use good shoes, strength train your gluteus medius and calves, do most of your miles at an easy pace, and you'll be running for decades, regardless of your chosen surface. You might even change it up and do both!
(My credentials are that i am an ultramarathoner and have run half a dozen races between 26.2 and 50 miles, on pavement and trail, and i have been coached by a professional ultra runner for several seasons.)