I guess I’ve failed anyone who reads this blog. I always intended it as a place of thoughts, and instead I find myself dropping my frustrations and daily activities into it out of duty. I owe you thoughts, I owe you my rational observations of the city I live in.
I attempted to start a blog about Chicago and the things I’ve learned from it. I failed in that.
I wish I could capture the moments that I see everyday, whether it’s the woman who sits begging for change by the church or the way the el slides away from the station. I wish I could capture the urgency of the city, the anger, the hidden histories. And perhaps I’ll try harder and get better at it and be able to fully explain my journey here.
Because it has been a journey.
I get teased about the state I was left in the first time I landed here, my very first day of college, a skinny lost freshman crying. I found a little white beanie bear that mom left for me, but it wasn’t any help. It made it worse.
That night, I threw up in the common bathroom, the sound echoing through the halls of my floor. My roommate, Ashley, who now has a baby girl about three months old, came in excited. “There’s a bulimic girl on the floor!” she exclaimed.
“No,” I replied. “That was just me.”
Since, I’ve traveled back and forth. I’ve never really felt at home here, I won’t lie. Perhaps the decision to come to Chicago has never settled properly on my shoulders. I have loved it. Chicago is a place I hope everyone has the chance to experience at some point in their lives. It’s also a sick, twisted city, a place of broken dreams and broken hearts. I wonder if I’ll ever find the pieces of myself I’ve lost here.
I’ve kept coming back, kept leaving, repeated that pattern as necessary. But to what end? I see the final end now: we’re coming up on it. May. But then it extends again, a broken promise. Rome? Not anymore, perhaps. Then June, July. Definitely at August’s approach, I shall be once again moving somewhere west, somewhere familiar, somewhere home.
I’ve gained my freshman fifteen, lost it, and gained some again. I’ve settled. I’ve been in love, once or twice here, always finding it lacking. Hunter loves me, that much I know. I guess I love him, but what do I know? I’ve been struggling, wanting something else, knowing I can’t just jump ship and fly to where I want to be.
Is somewhere else the dominant theme in my life? Will it always be someone else, somewhere else? Me wishing I was somebody else?
I find that I am rooted in myself, and in that, I take comfort.
I trust myself, but I’m unsure of my direction. Where does life go? What now? I was talking to an old friend who’s finally enrolled in DADC after years of jostling around. Upon hearing about my guidance counselor aspirations, he tells me he’s sure I’m selling myself short. And maybe he’s right.
Here I am, ready to go, ready to hop away again, but I have no plan, as usual.
Unsteady, unsure. How can I convey all of those thoughts to my readers (all three of them)? How can I tell you that I wonder a hundred times a day if what I’ve done is good enough? If the path I’m on is the right one?
I promise, I try so hard. I’ve fallen into melancholy lately, unsure, unsteady, unhappy. Very unhappy. It’s as though every week is a struggle, a race to the end. To Friday. To sleep. To what? To another week, oh dear.
I got what I was waiting for last night, the communication missing from my daily routine. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until I had it, and now it’s gone again.

Oh to have everything I dream of, wouldn’t that be beautiful?