I spent the majority of today being useless. Sure, I tidied up my room, went for a jog, drank coffee, and even ordered my first winter thermal t-shirt online; but after that I lost motivation and fell asleep for several hours. I had every intention of venturing out and finding an aspect of the city to feel like home to me.
After living in Chicago for just over a year; I'm still attempting to figure out what constitutes feeling "at home." I have been missing my family and friends rather horrendously of late; despite never truly feeling content to just be home in my hometown. I'm starting to realize physical location might not be my issue. Moving halfway across the country was never supposed to be a cure-all. I knew that. I also know I have a tendency to live in the past. And on my jog through Palmer Park on an almost perfect fall morning, I thought about moving. Not necessarily moving home, just moving on.
When I get depressed, I often revert to the self-destructive coping mechanisms I adopted as a kid. And I wake up feeling like that seventeen year old girl in the hospital. Lots of bright white lights, a numbness in the chest, the hollow howl of your heart when you realize you weren't able to let loose your grip on that which is holding you down. Maybe the fatigues of memories mellowed by years of starvation, alcohol, and sleeping aren't necessarily for wearing anymore. Maybe they're meant for packing away neatly; only to serve as reminders of why you're lucky - taking up minimal space until you figure out how to haul them to a side street and watch them being tossed with everyone else's emotional excess.
I don't feel so different anymore as I've encountered more and more people with similar scars. But I still have that sense of feeling alone, which I admit is self-inflicted. And the older I get, the more I'd like to lose that feeling. And in order to do that, I have to decide the best way for me to move on. That starts with remembering that at this point in my life - no one hurts me but me. No pawning off of pain, no making someone else responsible. I make a shitty decision, then I've made that shitty decision. I don't have to be forever seventeen and half-dead; I never have to be anywhere I don't want to be.
Because even the littlest birds were meant to fly.
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