Farewell Chicago
It’s funny, but this isn’t the first time I’ve had to say goodbye to Chicago. I forget where I heard it or who said it, but it wasn’t me: history rhymes.
I was fresh-dropped out of college and working full time for the Toolbox at one of their flaghsip stores downtown. I was in an apartment in Bucktown, which was bohemian and colorful due to it’s adjacency to the art college. I was twenty-one, and I was only in Chicago for about seven months before everything went to shit... Of course there’s a story there, and yes, of course, I don’t even need to say that it involved a woman. That’s a tale for another time.
That story ended, and it became necessary for me to not so much “flee” town as so much as “escape” it. A cannonball run of a roadtrip later with my recently-discovered half-brother... okay... that’s a lot of hyphens that will require another story; another time.
I loved living in the city back then. It was alive and vibrant and traversable in ways that Los Angeles just... wasn’t. I love the La La Land north of my home, but I really fell in love with Chicago the first time I was here. There was always a lingering regret that I had to abandon my stake here so soon and never really got a chance to live here for long enough to, maybe not plant roots, but at least get a good taste of the soil.
Virginia and Ohio were very different experiences, but they were fleeting. Texas was extended and thourough, and I can safely say I lived the Lonestar State experience. More stories for other times. What it all comes down to is, while I was bouncing around and trying to find my place away from home- away from California- I always felt I needed to find a way back to Illinois. I had to get back to Chicago.
A city, so maligned in my memory because of lost love, and what was lost in leaving so soon?
In 2019, the time came for me to return. And what a story this has been. There’s been so much. I’ve found a way to connect with my history. I have learned more about my Mother’s side of the family in the last five years than I knew the previous thirty-six. I’ve made countless friends and a few loved, close, best friends.
I finished a book. I finished the first book in a series I’ve been working on for a long time.
Yeah. That one. (Why do you suppose I’m coming home, now?)
And I was able to build a nice life for myself, for a little while, and was able to prove a lot of things I needed to believe. There is no doubt that I am leaving here in much better mental condition than I was when I first left Orange County. I feel like I’m a better man now, and living here has a lot to do with that.
My job. My apartment. My friends and coworkers. The people working at the Tony’s Grocers across the street. So many wonderful things that I had never imagined as the fruits of the Chicago tree.
I want to tell all of those stories and give the Windy City its due, but all in good time. I still have a lot to do between now and Operation: Homecoming. Until then, I just wanted to say:
I’m going to fucking miss you, Chicago. And of course, by “Chicago” I mean the people I have come to love here, and the family I came to love better through living here. I certainly don’t mean it as the city itself, which would be weird to address anything to because, you know, it’s just a fucking inanimate metro-center in the midwest. It has no regard for human concerns. Why would you even think that? That’s weird.
I suppose it will be okay, just this one time, to end on a sincere, honest, and vulnerable note; I will sorely miss a lot of people here and it breaks my heart a little to leave.
Okay... I’m just gonna let that hang in there without tagging this with a joke. There. Cool. No smarmy line. I’m proud.
Or. Shit. Damn, I went a little meta there, and doesn’t that count for some kind of post-modernist version of humor? Damn it! Okay, me pointing that last thing out is DEFINITELY creating some kind of ultra-commentary and that alone is probably---
(aren’t you going to miss this nonsense, Countryside?)
