chicago II
“a city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.”
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You have been here six months now and things are easier. The shadows more firm. You’ve been cleansed by the spirit of this place: the genial people, the tenacious loyalty, the silent acknowledgment that together you live in a cold and beautiful hell. Even cranks on the sidewalk make you smile, the way their vowels twist in mean Chicago couplets, a welcome palatal grumpiness. You’re the same inclement organism. Drops in the snow. You are home.
So why are you still so far away?
You wonder: Is this just my condition. To thirst, not fill? To yearn, not secure? To hide away my wonder, let others mold me? To only love and lust after spirits—things beyond my reach, barely real, dead ends?
You cannot seem to linger, even when you try. You are like the wind that way. Silky and unknowable and on purpose.
And you think: I love the wind like I love the stars, untouchable and everywhere.
But you can’t love yourself. The last time you were here in this city you were steel beams and obstinance. Nothing hurt. Nothing cut. You did the scaring, the warning. You were feared. Kind of mean. And you liked it.
But now you are pliant, limber. You feel every pinprick. You let yourself be pricked. Your heart is so fucking fragile. And you’re so sick of this shit being the only thing you can write about, your only inspiration. Because you are never enough, for yourself, for anyone. You can’t be. There’s a glitch. Can’t take a compliment, can’t take a win, malfunction, malfunction. You try to seek love wherever you can, with the options offered to you, but it’s useless. Your brain whispers: you are ugly now, old, fat. They only want you in secret.
You’re not even good at being bad.
But there’s this other funny thing. This degenerate part of yourself that the city brings out. Because there are corners where you catch that old whiff of yourself: leather boots, amber oil, whiskey breath, hairspray. And once it’s there—that sense memory—you slip into it. You’re you again, the one you liked better. Mean, sure, but fierce. A boiling pot with no lid.
But it comes with an ugly accessory. Something you tried to beat out or at least stuff away. Something you’re ashamed of, even if at times it’s more concrete than any other state of being.
That haunting, annihilating ego.
You’ve never been this way before: The girl who shows up early. The girl who texts first. The girl who is a little too eager. The girl always checking her phone, her emails, her DMs, her likes, her follows. The girl who craves the attention that once came without even trying. You don’t recognize this version of you. You hate being her. She is fuddy and boring. She doesn’t know what to write in her profiles because what the fuck does she even do? Wake up, work, sulk, sleep. Waste away. Disappear.
You deserve better. You are better. You’re better than everyone. You’re different. You’re touched. You’re meant for more. You should be famous. You should be worshipped. You should not be underestimated.
It feels evil to even say aloud. To admit. And it’s bullshit, of course. You watch a TV show where a character says something recognizable: “You have a superiority complex, and you've got an inferiority complex about it.” And you know this too: the hardness you once had? It was a defense mechanism. In truth, you were hurt all the time. People hurt you. There is a reason you are scared of the apps, scared of meeting new people—you remember too much. The things that happened to you when you last used them, that you’ll never share.
But also… in many ways it’s is all just a mood. This melancholy. Many days you are happy too. Content, almost dreamy. Grateful for the scars. Some days—days with friends—you feel so lucky it’s stupid, even. So thankful for the people you came back to here, and who came back to you too. How much you’ve all grown up. How little judgment there is. So much comfort, a whole gulf of it. A herd of immovable bodies who would fight bloody for you, and you them. In many ways you’ve never felt so loved. One afternoon, you’re so filled up by it that you dance around your living room, your kitchen, your porch, thinking: This is all I need. This feeling. These people. This care.
But maybe that’s why the missing pieces feel so enormous. Maybe you’re just a few little shapes away from something complete. Something perfect. And maybe you itch for that so much that you let them hog you, those empty spaces.
Maybe you could accept that you both deserve the love you crave and are also doing just fine. Maybe you could nurture the parts of yourself you’ve neglected without thinking they’re owed. Maybe you could heal the open wounds you’ve pushed to the periphery.
An maybe you could dance more. Put away the phone. See yourself less as a physical body, a thing of commodity, and more as something holy: air, dust, the stars you love. Wind. Not the kind that blows through town as a storm. But a gentle, tender breeze on the Lake Michigan beach, floating along the coast, tickling cheeks, flying kites.
Not everywhere, but right here.
Hadn’t planned on crying during my lunch break. This is beautiful, Lindsey.