The Windy City – Part 1 [Chicago, USA]

March 14, 2016

I have a habit of making friends I don’t see.

This is one of those stories.

I’d traveled to Chicago plenty of times before–with my mom, with my dad’s family, with the high school band on an excursion to one of the wind ensemble clinics within the city. However, this was the first large trip I would take on my own, without anyone else to keep me company. First, I’ll start with this:

I’m a creature of habit.

I spend as little time as possible in my own bedroom, and instead haunt public spaces without any real desire or need to talk to others. I put headphones in so I won’t have to look up. I become so engrossed in my own work that I become oblivious to the outside world. I skimp on sleep to read or jot down notes. I sometimes forget meals, however much I love and cherish the variety of dishes I’ve tried. My various roommates have all joked that I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own, but I now would place bets on who would survive longest.

2015 was a year of change, to put it mildly.

I had recently gone through a huge break up, which catapulted me into a slew of changes I never thought I would have the confidence to undertake. I started to spontaneously travel. I took up kickboxing and ballroom dance and yoga and jogging. I changed my diet. I forged new friendships. I strengthened older ones. I adventured. I impulsively decided to take a semester abroad the next year. I took care of myself. I grew.

And in the beginning of this entire process, I discovered exactly how unhappy I really was.

I don’t think it was spontaneous, in retrospect. I don’t even believe I realized it until that exact moment, when I acknowledged that I had begun the process of uncovering the person I thought–desperately wanted–to be. I had discovered that I didn’t even know who I was. I couldn’t tell you exactly what bothered me, or what I really, truly enjoyed doing or even what was most important to me. I had been buried underneath a mountain of apathy so large that I somehow had lost track of the rope that was supposed to pull me out.

At this age–the turbulent and transient early twenties–none of us are all that aware of who we are or who we strive to be, and the entire process of discovering and then solving that mystery is as arduous as it is rewarding.

So, I decided I needed to leave.

This may look like an extension of a quarter-life crisis, but in all honesty, I did have a purpose. One of my good friends from high school, Nora, lived and grew up in Chicago, and I hadn’t spent more than a five minute period with her in a Giordano’s bathroom (more on that later!).

I had the money. I had the time. I had the very questionable coping skills I had just become accustomed to. Instead of letting myself talk circles around the issues like I usually did, I took a deep breath, centered myself, and called her.

She was ecstatic, and I booked the flight the same day.

Looking back on that moment, I think this was the beginning of my modern wanderlust. I can no longer stay in the same place more than a few months. I love new experiences and the feeling of freedom (or trepidation) that can come with them. I always wanted to travel and explore and experience, and this was my chance to start all of that. I hoped, then, that it would kick off the beginning of the life I never thought I’d get to live, the one where I would live past my twenties, the one where I would fall in love with myself, the one where I was happy.

And I am happy.

And if I’m not, then it, too, shall pass.

It became a mantra, then–a cloak I would wear to ward off the anxieties and insecurities I had harbored and hoarded since I was young.

It, too, shall pass.

It, too, shall pass.

Sam