I’m neither bored nor intimidated by it, but I’m sure as hell getting a bit jaded. Being surrounded by millions of people and knowing that not one of them gives a shit about you, it’s stupid.

Everyday crazies on everyday corners, waxing zany over your everyday lord and savior. Everyday bums pissing in everyday alleyways, paved in flattened everyday heartbreaks that were crumpled up and tossed in the gutter. Deviations from the norm become part of the big picture as habit softens your focus. Careful: this is a threat to whimsy. Remember that disgust and delight are two sides of the same coin.

I suppose it happens in every environment. Suburbs, countryside, city … the world tries too hard, or not enough, and if you dwell on the big picture of your snowglobe you’ll start to notice it all slaked and dripping with sameness. It makes you feel little enough to slide up the neck of a party balloon and ride the wind somewhere better.

Careful, careful. You’re making yourself old.

I moved to Chicago in September 2003 with only one specific goal: to make friends in time to have a substantial twenty-fourth birthday party in November.

Didn’t make the deadline.

On that birthday, after clocking out at my low-paying café gig, I went back to my apartment where my roommates sung to me and fed me cake amid the purple streamers they had draped on the ceiling and walls. This gesture was especially sweet considering they didn’t really like me at that point. The rest of the night was the same as any night, save for the chocolate cake in our laps and the decorations around our heads.

I spent a bunch of time in my room, fielding Happy Birthday phone calls from my friends on the east coast, and I went to bed thinking, “Well?”

That “well?” had become familiar to me by that point. I wasn’t disappointed in myself or anyone else by my lack of social success. I think you guys see me as some kind of partygirl juggernaut, but, truth be told, I’m wormier than that. I’m more like a fog that creeps under the door, which you only notice when you’ve already acclimated to its presence, and then, maybe? You get close enough to look and see rainbows refracted in the moisture. I don’t invade, but slowly surround, and you might notice when I’m gone.

Some weeks after my twenty-fourth birthday, while doing some proper downtown job-hunting on Dearborn Avenue, I passed a newly paved sidewalk. I found me a stick, and, dressed in snazzy skirt and blouse and appropriate accessories, bent down to scratch my initials real big, in a noticeable corner. I’d always wanted to do that. I was comforted by the knowledge that while I didn’t yet have a life in Chicago, I at least had a well-trafficked sidewalk.

Those first few months here, I remember moments by myself on the couch, listening to weekend revelry happening outside. I’d think, “Well?” and wonder how long it would take until I could again join the faceless voices of commonplace noisiness. It filled me with another feeling to which I had grown accustomed: that of biding my time.

It was necessary, but dark and heavy and unhealthy, like I had eaten too much cookie dough, or like I had done something mischievous and was waiting waiting waiting to be discovered. But no one came to ream me out or giggle with me in the glory of cahoots, and I couldn’t think of anything to do but sit there, on the couch, with a pathetic bouquet of canary feathers sticking out of my mouth.

It was a bipolar mixture of hope and dread, which I’ve misguidedly come to use as my private barometer for ballsiness. I figure if I can feel that insignificant and leaden, and neither explode nor run away, I’ll eventually be fine. And now, I am fine. My next two birthdays were comfortably rockin’, celebrated with new and old friends. My formerly distant roommates and I have become close enough to have indelible effects on each others’ lives, in true Judy Blume fashion. But I remember the heavy loneliness well enough to easily recall it, as if I’m empathizing with someone else.

And the time has come to prepare myself for it again. This is a really gloomy way to introduce some really fucking exciting news, but this afternoon, I received my first acceptance from one of my top-choice grad schools. It’s a selective program, and I figure if I got in there, I’ll probably get into some other programs as well, and will have options. This means I’m almost definitely moving.

In addition to the routine uprooting woes of leaving friends and security, I’m already softening my stomach for the onslaught of canary and cookie dough. My insides stretch at the thought of it. I know from experience that what follows the loneliness will likely be spectacular, but this knowledge, ironically, makes me feel aged. The shiny edge of my optimism has dulled. Now, it’s more like I’m giving myself reassuring advice, which hardly counts as optimism. Is this cynicism, hubris, or wisdom? Can a coin have three sides?

It’s a little frightening that I can summon this dusty alcoholic voice so easily, when I’ve drunk nothing but Diet Dr. Pepper all night.

Careful.

All day today, with open wonder, I thought about the great big news and great big choices, and the wacky consequences thereof. The day was otherwise Same Old, with the job, the scheduling, the buses and trains, and the faces, faces, faces.

Coming home, I stopped at my favorite convenience store for the aforementioned Diet Dr. Pepper. The same guys were there as always: the tall, olive-skinned owner, who has stopped charging me tax because I’m the only regular customer who smiles and asks him how he’s doing, and the little broom-pushing troll-man with the simple smile and ashy skin, who I used to think was retarded. (I’ve since realized he’s just painfully, shrinkily shy, and I suspect he sleeps in the storage room and subsists on scraps of beef jerky. He stocks the shelves endlessly, with a calm look of Sisyphutic acceptance. Sweet guy.)

I left the store and was clopping the remaining two blocks to my building, my eyes on my feet and my head far away, when I saw something new:

A kid had chalk-drawn a big, pink heart, smack in the middle of the sidewalk. Inside the heart, scrawled in juvenile penmanship, were the words “It’ll be OK.”

I smiled, decided my feet didn’t need my attention, and looked at the sky instead.

When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff
And when I look up, I just trip over things

- Ani D, my lady of personal coming-of-age anthems

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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