May 17, 2016
Nora and I spent our last day wandering the streets of her city.
We weaved in and out of the busy streets, the sun shining above us as we stopped in a small cupcake shop before walking to the Chicago Zoo. In all honesty, I don’t remember much of the zoo itself–just the laughter bubbling up out of our throats and the cacophony of the crowd’s chattering around us. The sky eventually lost its luster, clouds rolling in before we left for the evening after having our fill of the sites and sounds of the exhibits settled at the center of the city.
I was left with a feeling of gratitude so big it threatened to spill over the edges.
Meeting and spending time with online friends is such an opportunity, not only for the friendship to grow, but also for individual growth. There’s something about leaving home to experience a life with someone else that tilts your perspective a few inches to the left. Like looking through a window. Like opening a new door you knew was there, but had never thought to look through.
I spent an entire week in this city with Nora, spending our days laughing over the donuts I obsessed over. Grinning through a symphony orchestra’s performance in the theater. Watching a magic show drama play out in a dimly lit backstage. Playing with Nora’s dog, Ellie. Eating square-cut pizza on her back porch steps. In a way, it didn’t only serve as a break from the real world–my real life–but also as a break from the pressures I had unconsciously placed on myself.
I just crossed the country to visit Nora on my own, separate from the friends and family I had waiting for me back home. I didn’t set boundaries for myself, wondering if I would step on someone else’s toes. This trip had begun a difficult–and eventually long–process of self-realization, where I discovered I wanted more for myself than I had been willing to accept up until that point.
I wanted more for myself, I realized, because I had been accepting the minimum without question.
And this realization came on some of the many nights spent there, sitting between friendly strangers, laughter lodged between lungs, gasping for breath. On bike rides through the neighborhood on wheels too tall for my short, stocky legs. Through late night drives with the radio turned up as Modern Baseball scratched out through the speakers. Under the yellowing light of the street lamps on the edges of the roads.
We spent one of these nights in Chicago sitting in a French cafe as a friend of Nora’s closed up shop, chatting about life and loves and loss and the little in-betweens we tend to forget about as we outgrow them. The lights dimmed in the front of the shop, the looped lettering scrawled backwards on the glass reflecting it back into the shop. We ate bits of baguettes and brie, ripped up by hands sticky with sugar, and talked.
I mentioned this, sitting on a stool in the back room.
I always thought I should be the one others should lean on. I should be there for other people when they were struggling or having difficulty. I did that with most of my friends. I definitely did it with my first relationship, and in my second, without thinking. In some ways it helped–in others it was devastatingly crippling. And in a lot of ways, that began a long period of self-neglect that gave way to a mixture of anxiety and apathy–a combination that would have a profound effect on the way I dealt with everyday situations, and it was something I did not realize until much, much later.
I think it took this experience–this travel–to really open my eyes to how my friends and family lead different lives than I do.
I know that seems silly to say. What do you mean, Sam? Of course people experience life differently, we’re all born under different circumstances!
I think it was the unveiling of a naivete.
It brought me back to myself in a way that staying in Oklahoma never could, and I think the recognition of that fact set off a large series of events that eventually changed who I was–and am–unavoidably and completely. I was no longer the same person when I came home a week later. I recognized the long road ahead of me, yes. I knew there would be potholes (not unlike the ones on the roads here in Oklahoma). I knew there would be hills and valleys to traverse.
But, honestly?
The road ahead couldn’t be that bad compared to the deep pit of apathy that I had just left, the creaky wood of the ladder I had used to climb out finally giving way once I reached a new sunrise.
I was finally changing.
And I liked the feeling.
Sam