Moving On

The Bean, my own pic from my first time in Chicago.

           This is the very first time in my life I can’t wait til the end of summer.

            For those of you who don’t know, I’m making the move to Chicago in August. This month marks the point where my brain finally slipped into Holy shit, I’m leaving mode.  It began the minute the boyfriend and I set a date for our apartment hunting trip in July. I began making appointments with various apartment brokers and agencies and it just hit me. I’m leaving. I’m actually leaving. Not just BG, but the state in which I grew up. I’m going to be 7 hours away from my family living in a big city where I know essentially no one.

            Holy shit!

            I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I grew up in the tiniest little town and graduated high school with the kids I’d known since kindergarten and grade school. Moving to BG was a big culture shock. I remember it being so strange going down the street and not seeing the same people every day. And now I’m planning on moving to a city with a population of almost 3 million. Shit! I’m going to feel so small, so lost, so insignificant. Am I, one who very much enjoys being unique, going to be okay with being just another face in the crowd?

            Heh…I love how I’m worried about feeling insignificant and not so much about the higher instance of muggings, assaults, and break-ins that come with living in a big city. Priorities, Dee. Priorities.

            Anyway, though I’m terrified for so many reasons, from being swallowed by a huge city to finances to making the huge commitment that is moving in with your significant other, I couldn’t be more excited. I’m moving to Chicago. The city I fell in love with immediately upon stepping foot within its borders! The theatres, the festivals, the nightlife, the restaurants, the parks! (Even my ideal grad school is there, though with my current writing skill level and lack of publication, I’m not really holding my breath in that department.) And oh, dear god, the history! Not only a focal point of the jazz age, with which I’m fascinated, but also its connection to Italian immigrants way back when, the campy love they keep for the Capone age. Not to mention the dancer Little Egypt introducing America to belly dance at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893!

            And Jesus Christ, The Dark Knight was filmed there. Chicago is my freaking Gotham!

Thank you, Little Egypt. circa 1893.

            I’m so excited that “Is it August yet?” has become my mantra whenever I’m frustrated with work or classes, dealing with the strange rise in social drama that’s been happening recently, or being bored to tears by the sometimes dull summer days in BG.

            I am not, however, dying to escape “this town,” which so many people have called BG with such disdain. Seriously, I hate it when people blame whatever plight they’re going through on the city in which they’re living. Friends of mine have called BG a black hole…as in you’ll be trapped here forever if you don’t get out right after graduation. Other friends have blamed their own social drama on the town itself or “The people” in “this fucking town.”

            …Come on, really?

            That kind of stupid shit was all right to say when we were all whiny adolescents and didn’t know what the hell we were talking about, but as 20-somethings with college degrees and/or a significantly higher level of common sense than the average hormone-ridden teenager, you’ve got to know that both of those statements are utter bullshit.

Taking a look at the black hole thing…calling BG—or any college town—a black hole or a spider web where people get stuck after college is just stupid. Yes, there are some people who stick around their college town after they get their degrees, some of whom even end up settling down there. But here’s a question for you—why is that a bad thing? Why is it so terrible that someone found a place where they feel comfortable, and that place happens to be their college town?  I really don’t get why that’s looked on so harshly by others. Maybe people see it as refusing to grow up or something, but I don’t. Compared to many places, BG is cheap. It’s a good place to live while paying off loan debt, for sure, if you don’t want to move back in with your parents. It’s cute, respectably diverse for a smaller farm-heavy town, with a great community attitude and respect for even the most radical or theatrical political, social, or religious parties (I’m looking at you, Screaming Preacher.) Why do people feel that it’s such a terrible place to get ‘stuck’ in?

In my personal case, I’m friends with a lot of theatre kids who had Big City Dreams of moving to NYC and being on Broadway, or becoming film stars, etc, and once they got their degrees, they ended up staying around instead of leaving in pursuit of fame. Others have judged these people as getting ‘sucked in’ by BG, screwed without any hope of escape because they failed to take their degrees and flee. But is it that BG is trapping them and sucking their dreams away…or is that just reality sinking in? So many people in our generation dream of fame and seeing their name in lights, but the truth is that hardly anybody becomes a star. Honestly, have you ever heard of an acting major who isn’t saying they want to move to LA or a musical theatre student who doesn’t have their sights set on Broadway? People have big dreams, and more often than not they fall by the wayside. And I guarantee you, it’s not because they stuck around a town for too long.

There are many things in life that can root you to one place. A job with a decent salary, for one. Family and other loved ones, for another. And those roots are always within the human being experiencing them…not some ominous semi-animate concept of their location trapping them there. The truth is, the only people I believe are truly trapped in this country are those who live hopelessly below the poverty line, or dying of an illness, or something equally dire and dramatic. But a 20-something with a fresh degree in their hands and six months wait until the loan payments start coming in, honestly, has the world at their fingertips. The only think keeping them rooted to a single place is themselves. Finances are a bitch, which is why so many of us go back to our parents’ to save up, but if you’re truly determined and have the desire to go somewhere else, you can and you will. And of all the things holding people back from their desires, their location has to be one of the least likely reasons for delay.

As for people blaming “this fucking town” on their own social plight/moments of drama between friends, I highly recommend you take your heads out of your asses, because it has to be dark in there. The town you’re in and the people in it aren’t the problem. It’s you. Sorry to shatter the self-delusion. So the girls in BG hate you and tell their friends to ‘watch out’ for you? It’s not BG trying to destroy your reputation…it’s that you spent your college career fucking around and fucking over women. So your circle of friends has alienated you and word has it that you’re crazy and spread rumours? It’s not BG trying to destroy you…it’s that you’re moody, erratic, and you spread rumours. Sorry. Can’t blame this one on a town.

If you’re a misogynist or a psycho bitch, it doesn’t matter where the hell you live. Drama will find you no matter what. You can get a new circle of friends in a brand new place, but if the same shit starts happening again, maybe you should take the hint and point the finger at yourself. And maybe, oh, I don’t know, work on improving yourself instead of blaming an inanimate location on your plight.

Oh snap.

I love BG. I truly do. I’ve already started getting misty when I go through my weekly routine, even though I still have two months before I leave. I’ve slipped into “I’m going to miss _____” mode. I’m going to miss going to Downtown on weekends. I’m going to miss bullshitting at Myles on Tuesday nights with Theta. I’m going to miss running into someone I know every few feet down the street. I’m going to miss Ination like nobody’s business. I’m trying to keep from getting all teary and heartfelt til at least late July, so I won’t get into that too much, but things have definitely begun to become bittersweet.

I’m not leaving BG because I’m afraid of being sucked into a black hole, or because of any ‘horrible people’, or anything like that. I fit in quite nicely here. I’ve carved a little place for myself in this town.  It’s just time for me to move on, like a bird leaving the nest, to use a tired metaphor. Not even to go on to bigger and better things. Just to go on. It’s all pretty instinctual. I began to feel that the storyline of my life was starting to stall, and I’m picking it up again. I’m still a restless girl with a few things to get out of my system before, or more likely, if I ever decide to settle down.

Maybe in signing the wall at Gino's right over the heart of Man, I gave my heart to Chicago. Haaaa.

For those of you who feel stagnant lately, don’t ever think you can’t do anything about it. Don’t ever think that. Change is good, and it is also an active process. You don’t have to wait for change to happen. If you’re unhappy, make the change. It doesn’t have to be as big as moving to Chicago; in fact usually all it takes little changes to make you feel refreshed. If you feel stuck in a routine, change it. Go out on a Friday night instead of staying in like usual. Pick up a new hobby. Take a weekend trip somewhere. Life doesn’t have to be a routine-driven rat race, the same old thing every day. It really doesn’t. Especially not for those of us who haven’t started families or taken jobs with 5-year contracts or bought a house. Those are inevitabilities for a lot of us, and my greatest advice to give to my invisible/imaginary readers is to do what you want while you can. In five years, I probably won’t be able to save up for a bit and just move to a new city. So I’m doing it now. I don’t know about anyone else, but regret is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to deal with. And if I can help it, I’m going to live with as little of it as possible.

Well, as little as I can when I have this little of a brain-to-mouth filter.