Chicago Re-Revisited: Or: My Capacity for Indecision

Oh, great Bean, how you elude me.

 
          Hey all. This blog is going to be decidedly not funny or clever, so feel free to skip it. I promise to post a more entertaining blog next week, but right now, I have other things on my mind.

            I’ve been conveniently jamming my failure to get to Chicago in summer into the back of my mind as I’ve lived and worked in Columbus. But after a conversation with Fratello about the dreams we had in college, it’s been burning a hole in my brain.

            For those invisible/imaginary blog followers who don’t know, in March of 2011 I went to Chicago for the first time and immediately fell head over heels in love. That November, I made the decision to move there. I saved up (mostly loan money), I spent days, weeks, months researching the best neighborhoods and the sort of work I could hope to find, and getting pretty fucking excited. The Boyfriend (who had hopped into my life about four months before I was supposed to leave and was somehow totally cool with dropping everything and moving to Chicago with me), my awesome cosigning parents, and I headed up there to apartment hunt in July with $10g in the bank and a ridiculous amount of excitement.

            And we totally failed.

            At the time, rental availability was less than 3%, and as far as Chicago was concerned, we were bottom choice. We were rejected like an incompatible organ, and my heart was broken. I bottled up my hurt and we decided to go with Plan B: Move to Columbus and save up for Chicago Round 2.

            Well, we’re now seven months into Plan B, and here’s the good and bad of what’s happening:

The bad:

We’ve been largely living off one paycheck rather than two (til next week anyway), so we’re lucky if we’re able to pay our bills by the end of the month, forget about saving up money.

We moved to Columbus to experience the city, which is amazing, but we haven’t had the money to do anything. We only live 15 minutes outside the city, but if we wanted to, say, take a cab to High Street and have a night out drinking, we’d be spending $60 to get there and get home. We’d be $60 out before we touched a single drink. Also, because of the above, we haven’t been able to go to restaurants, museums, anything, really.

"Everything burns." especially money.

When I’m angry, I am a horrible person to be in a relationship with. And finances have made me angry about 80% of the time I’m home. I honestly don’t know how the Boyfriend puts up with it.

Columbus is an amazing city, but it’s not Chicago. And it’s Ohio. I’m not one of those people who hates where they grew up, I’m not, but I don’t see myself living in Ohio all my life. I mean, I could if I had to, but…I don’t know. I want to experience more of the world than Ohio. It’s hard to explain, I guess it’s more of a feeling than a logical train of thought.

            But for all the bad, there is a lot of good in our having moved to Columbus.

The good:

           

            The Boyfriend just landed an absolutely amazing cooking job at a hotel downtown. I don’t know his rules of company/blog fraternization, so I’ll just leave it at that, but it is an amazing job and he’s making a great amount of money (for our poor asses, anyway) with it.  So our financial problems are going to be at least lessened very soon. Optimistically, we’ll be living more comfortably and might even be able to go out and see CBus.

            Booky Wooks. Nuff said.

            Two words: Belly dance. Holy shit, guys. There is a huge belly dance community in this city. I wasn’t here two months before I landed in a troupe. If I were up to the skill level I want to be, I could be performing three or four times a month. If I were at professional level, I could be performing more than that! There is a belly dance event everywhere you look. Compare this to BG, where belly dance was confined mostly to county fairs, retirement homes, and the occasional restaurant gig. And because CBus isn’t a “big city” like Chicago or New York, performers aren’t a dime a dozen, so a dancer just starting out a troupe/solo thing like me has a shot in hell of scoring some gigs and actually getting their name out there. For belly dance alone, I could see myself settling here and being able to live with the decision.

At our debut performance.

            Because the Boyfriend is now working downtown, we’re looking for places closer to the action. Assuming we can afford a place that close (living downtown is a wee bit pricey), going out to the bars at night won’t be such a ridiculous expense. And I think I’ll be happier to be in a more active part of the city. I mean, sure, there’ll be college kids around and all that insanity, but I think I’ll like that. …Except maybe during football season. But either way, I think I’ll be happier. And The Boyfriend will be, too. He won’t have to ride the bus for an hour and a half to and from work.

            So, there have been good and bad things about our following Plan B. But for the most part, when I think about Chicago, my heart sinks. I can’t describe to you how I felt when I first walked the streets of that city. It’s my Gotham. I love it. I adore it. And I know I have many years of life left to live, but I feel like I somehow missed my window to live in Chicago. I know that thought doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: I don’t own a house, I don’t have kids to uproot, I don’t even have an established career. The Boyfriend made it clear that he’d follow me anywhere four months into our relationship. Yet the more I think about it, the more afraid I am that I won’t ever get to Chicago.

            My conversation with Fratello was about our dreams. Mine was Chicago, his was New York City. Both of us instead are here in Ohio, working full time and scraping by by the skin of our teeth. I don’t know about him, but the whole thing makes me sad. I didn’t have lofty dreams of fame and fortune. I just wanted to live in my Gotham. Friends and even family of mine have made it to Chicago, and I couldn’t get my foot in the door. I could latch onto the comforting thought that maybe I’m not meant to be there yet, but I honestly don’t think that way. And if I’m being totally honest with myself, I’m a little conflicted. As I’ve mentioned on this blog, I’ve been having semi settling instincts lately, with babies all around me, and I’ve gotten a little sick of apartment living. I even found myself daring to peek at a place that was listed as “Rent to Own” while I was starting to look for the new place closer to downtown. Rent to own…what the hell? It’s like I have two brains that want two different things! There are even times, when I’m feeling very lonely, that I want to drop everything and run back to BG and into the arms of my Theta friends and my beloved darkling throng at Ination.

            So in short, I may be paying bills and working full time and having baby fever/settling down feelings, living in the infamous “real world” that I dreaded so much in college, but I am still largely a Lost Boy who doesn’t know what the hell she wants in life. My heart still aches for Chicago, yet I can picture a good life in Columbus, but sometimes I want to run from it all back to BG, my Neverland, and even other times I miss being close to my family. Chronologically, I’m an adult. I should know where I’m going to be, right? I should have some sort of plan, I shouldn’t be so torn between so many things.

            Well, one thing is for sure: we will be in CBus for another year. And seeing as The Boyfriend has landed a dream job, it might be even longer.

            …That thought just made me very happy and absolutely petrified at the same time.

            I need a shot.

                                           

Ohhh, hello, old friend. And Happy St Pattie's Day, everybody.