Sleepless in Chicago

I've never felt loneliness in a city. I'm not an extrovert by any means. Left to myself, I prefer the company of a good book. It is precisely why I love cities. They've almost drawn me out against my will and when I've experienced it, I've felt deliriously happy. 

There is no city like Chicago. I remember moving to Chicago after Business School. Summer of 2011 a new job in hand. New beginnings, new possibilities and single. I remember it being the best feeling in the world even though I'd moved to a city where I practically knew no one. It should have been scary but it wasn't. Weeks after I moved, I remember riding a subway train and asking a stranger for directions. When she heard I was new to the city, she gave me instructions on how to prepare and dress for the winter - what jackets to buy, how to layer etc. While talking we both missed our station and so we got off at the wrong station and chatted some more. We exchanged numbers and I invited her to my housewarming party. I remember every detail of that encounter because it was the epitome of possibilities - A stranger turned best friend in a matter of minutes.

Chicago was also the city where I developed my intense love for Friday Nights. I still feel interminably blissful on Friday nights. The feeling of liberation, of possibilities of life itself taking meandering turns.. My abiding memory of Friday nights was meeting and navigating weirdos on the red line at 2 am. It was scary and dumb, something to chalk up to the hedonism of youth, where one feels nothing but invincible. That was how I felt - Happy, Light like I was floating on confidence filled with wonder for the next adventure.

Chicago was also the city where I met my husband. I still remember seeing his kind nervous face outside the café shop for our first date. We met in the heart of the city, surrounded by the hustle and bustle, momentarily submerged in the ear splitting noise of a Chicago ambulance. It was the genesis of our very own cocoon. After, our date when we had parted ways, promising to meet again, I remember looking up at the towering skyscrapers of the loop, with a flushed and feeling fortunate to be speaking with someone who was a zillion times smarter than me and funny. How is it that cities can do that? Expose you to a new way of life, to people from another country, to the drawing rooms of the sophisticated or perverse and change your world view constantly?

Fortunately for me, I've never felt the cool wrath of a city in Chicago. I've felt it in other cities but in Chicago I've been the happiest. Which is weird because everyone warned me about the cold and how I'd be miserable. I wasn't. I remember the cold as something to overcome, as something that would erase my tropical upbringing and turn me in to a midwestern hybrid. And I did. I learned how to layer, I got the right boots and jackets. I learned to say goodbye to fashion and embraced functionality in the 3 winter months. I drank heavily and ate carb heavy food with abandon. I have memories of leaving bars and pubs in -30F, feeling buzzed and getting hit by a blast of frozen air and feeling happy. Of laughing so hard, that your breath froze over. I had conquered Chicago winter, I was a new person. I was a Chicagoan.

I'll never forget eating at the fanciest of restaurants I'd ever been to, not blinking a the check and wondering how I'd become that person sat through 23 courses of not quite food. How was I this person that could not only pronounce Foie gras but also develop a disdain for it? How did Korean Bibimbap become comfort food that I craved for on the coldest nights? How did my reality come to exist in an apartment surrounded by other skyscrapers. It felt like I was living on the edge of my existence and everyday I shed a little part of me, to become a newer me. A me that pronounced roo-sa-velt like a Chicagoan, a me that felt like I had grown up here. A me to whom hockey games became a ritual. A me who had firm opinion on why The Cubs are loathsome.

As with the cycle of growth comes stagnation. My husband got another job in another city. I started hating my job and our apartment started to feel tiny. The view started to get old. A few health issues cropped up and I remember a year of hospital bills that never stopped. My body was tired, my mind was exhausted and I needed a change of scenery. I remember my last night in chicago. We went to our favorite restaurant in Chicago where the bar tender knew us by name. When we told him we were leaving for good, he actually became sad. He then poured out 3 shot glasses and we all took a big swig of some fancy whisky together.

Then, all the bar patrons teased us for leaving the best city in the world.