Chicago, Part 2

Things Chicago reminded me I love about big cities: 

Seeing/hearing passionate subway lectures and speeches and wondering if they’re the same in every car and what those guys go home to.

People helping strangers on the street and on public transportation.

Watching people and thinking they’re friends or family, then realizing a couple minutes later they had just met and will probably never see each other again but nevertheless made a real connection for one brief moment in their lives.

Walking everywhere.

Getting temporarily lost and seeing parts of the city I wouldn’t otherwise.

Things it reminded me I don’t like about big cities:

Mystery sludge on me from above. Seriously, what is it and where does it come from??

Seeing people who are invisible. They talk to every person who walks by asking for something, and no one turns to look; no one so much as blinks to acknowledge their existence. Putting aside how they got there, what is it like to go through your day with words that don’t reach anyone and a body that no one sees?

Feeling small.

Walking everywhere with a backpack.

People changing their socks on the train.

Getting temporarily lost when I’m racing to make the last train home.

Leaving it before I’ve had my fill.

Chicago, Part 1

I spent the day after my 19th birthday exploring New York City for the first time, by myself. After taking me to see Wicked the night before and helping me settle into my disgusting, gross, cockroach-riddled room for the summer in a Harlem apartment shared with three girls I didn't know, my parents left that morning, and I set out to conquer the city. 

What I remember most about that first day on my own was how empowering it felt to learn New York. I remember taking the subway down from Harlem to Times Square and walking around the theatre district, ultimately landing at a table in Bryant Park, and thinking, "I can do this. On my own. In the biggest city in the country."

I had never really been anywhere on my own other than Bloomington, Indiana for college—a town that mixes Midwest and Southern hospitality and is the poster child for every greenery-covered, idealistic college brochure ever. And which was also less than two hours from where I grew up.

So though I absolutely felt lonely that first day alone in NYC, my loneliness was no match for the enormous sense of strength I felt from being able to take on this huge, tough, loud, crowded, confusing, entirely different and new-to-me city by myself.

As Times Square eventually became my back yard and the place in the world that I know more intimately, and at more times of day and night, than any other place besides my childhood house, I sometimes missed that feeling of seeing it for the first time and learning its nooks and crannies, discovering its secrets, making it feel small and familiar to me rather than a place famous from the TV screen.

Today, to celebrate my birthday (a day early) I decided to go to another big city I don't know, by myself.

This is my view from the train station. I recognize nothing. Chicago is a stranger to me.

And that's what makes it so great. Because I have a whole day ahead of me to learn it.