I think about a lot about how when I moved to Chicago, I was the exact same age my mother was when she left it. And I think about how at the time she left she probably never would have guess that it was the beginning of the end of her living in Chicago, that she was about to meet the man who would take her away from that city.
I think about how they both lived here when they were only a little older than I. About how they walked down the same streets and L stops and also stared out at Lake Michigan and felt the same way I feel when you first glimpse the Sears tower coming in from the red line. (I guess they probably would have taken the brown line or the blue line. But the feeling remains.)
It is easier to be yourself when you are known well. Or maybe when you're loved well. How lucky I am to have been both. Known intimately and loved deeply. Sometimes I miss Kansas City so much it feels like a string tangled around my heart and pulled from both sides. My eyes can fill with tears with just the thought of sitting back seat middle of Kate Jone's car. I want to wake up in my own bed. My family lives in a different state.
But more and more when I go back to my dorm at night and fall into bed, it feels like my bed. And I can get basically anywhere on the L. And my voice no longer catches when I talk about going back to campus and I say "go back home"
I still miss my friends and family. Its hard to be yourself when you are not known. I worry about what every action says about me. I think a lot about consistency. What people see what they see me. At home, I felt like who I was, how I saw myself, and how others saw me, was almost one line. They were at least parallel. Now I have no idea about any three of them. They're that tangled string wrapped around my heart I guess.
I care less about the weather here. I don't know what that means, but cloudy days don't ruin my day anymore. Maybe they will once the excitement wares off.
What else? What do I want to remember? The feeling of driving up with my parents, back seat middle so I could see both of them. I don't know who out of the three of us was most nervous. How I felt during the drive that I must have taken a hundred times before, but knowing this time I wouldn't be taking the same drive back in a couple of days. Leaving my dorm to go where my parents would drop me off and falling apart. Saying goodbye to my parents in Halas and meeting Clare for the first time with a red and blotchy face. Lying alone in the cold wet tent and wanting to die and go home and throw up and scream and cry. How the next morning came anyway. Hearing Lauren say goodbye to her family, uncomfortable intimate with the girl I'd just met. Something I shouldn't have heard. A moment of vulnerability you never see. The first time I rode the L I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo with Clare and Andrew and Christine and it was the first time I met Christine and I really didn't know Andrew and Clare either and I felt so excited I couldn't stop smiling. Andrew showed me the place on the back of the last car where you can look out to the back and I fell in love a little bit. I left the zoo after 30 minutes to head back to a show at Loyola and I walked down Lincoln Park streets and felt so damn real. And I passed by the street my parents' first apartment was on and the sun shone off the pavement and I took the L back by myself and felt more alive than I think I might ever have before. Exploring Chinatown with people who knew the city as much as I knew Westport or Brookeside. What it felt like to sob alone in my dorm room for the first time, and what it felt like to put myself back together again. Sitting outside on the grass near the lake, exactly how I imagined it. Walking through the loop with Ryan, who I used to hate. Ryan, who has become my best friend here. Being downtown at night. Being downtown and knowing where I am. Seeing Alex. Home and here in a person. Sitting in classes I love, theology and science and math and learning, why did it take me so long to remember how much I love to learn? Studying late at night with Ryan. Calling Nicole and feeling that feeling I thought I'd forgotten. Crying for hours over my first mistake (misread the syllabus. missed four assignments). It not mattering. Sitting at breakfast and Andrew shows us a document he made of all the ridiculous things Christine has said, my first inside joke. The feeling of belaying someone, of pulling them up. The strength growing in my own arms and legs. Seeing Andrea (that's what I'll call her now. So grown up.) in Chicago. Sometimes I feel I'm still there, sometimes I feel like that's a lifetime away. More and more, I feel here.
"You'll feel so homesick that you'll want to die, and there's nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won't kill you. And one day the sun will come out - you might not even notice straight away, it'll be that faint. And then you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who's only yours. And you'll realize... that this is where your life is"
The sun hasn't come out yet, but its coming out soon. Even now as the days are colder and the night comes sooner. I remember that night, sweeping floors at work. The man, slightly drunk probably, telling me today was the longest day. From here on out, it gets darker. I remember feeling I was on the cusp for sooooo long. I fell, and now I find myself here. Most days, I explore and feel and laugh and study and cry tears of joy and know in the deepest part of me that I belong where I've landed. I still look up sometimes, but my feet are on the ground.
Now I'm here but part of me will always be there. But I know when I come home part of me will stay here now. The damage has been done and I've permanently split myself in two. Half here, but half there. Some of me will stay in both places, and I'll never get it back. Whether I go here or there, I'll have to come and visit myself. I've broken my own heart. I cry bitter tears because I got my divine recompense, but recompense means I've lost something, even if I get something else, something good too. No thing is good in the same way. But still good. Yeah, still go(o)d.
So, in short, I'm ruined for life.
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