A few blocks into my walk, I realize that this is a bad idea. I don’t know why it hadn’t hit me before—walking alone at night, in a city that I hadn’t been to in 10 years, heading towards an unknown destination. The rest of my friends had left about 7 hours ago, and they had already made it back safely. It felt just right when I was booking the ticket, a midnight Megabus ride from Chicago back to Ann Arbor. It would give me a few extra hours in Chicago to catch up with a high school friend, and I could sleep on the bus and spend the next day being relatively productive (which, by the way, did not happen).
But now, swimming in an endless pool of eerie orange streetlights, I feel like a to-be subject of a crime report. “MISSING GIRL: Ann Arbor Police seeking 19 year old girl last seen in Chicago. Friends and family are desperate for answers.†Accompanying photo: my horrifyingly unflattering, jetlagged MCard picture. Nope, when I make it into the paper, I want good lighting, makeup, and Photoshop—the whole nine yards.
I’d never realized that being alone could be scary. Then again, I’d never been this alone. I wanted to leap forward 7 hours in time; I wanted to be back home.
Wait, home… as in my cramped dorm in Bursley, not all the way back in Korea. It was the first time that home truly meant Ann Arbor. It was an odd feeling, realizing that ‘home’ would probably never mean my old childhood room again. During my imagination-induced panic attack, I called my floormates for moral support, not my parents to come pick me up. Huh.
As I settle into my seat on the not-at-all sketchy Megabus (I made it alive!), I think about the last time I was in Chicago. I’d been with my parents—we filled up on Korean groceries, my dad got a haircut and we had sushi at a Japanese restaurant we were regulars at. It was a routine trip; with destinations planned out in advance and a car to drive on roads we had taken for three years by then. The city almost seemed small, because we only went to the places we always went to.
This time, I had made the journey with three members of my new Michigan family; we had no specific destinations, no car, and just Google Maps. At the beginning of the trip, I was confident that I knew the city pretty well—I was welling in nostalgia, thinking of the ghosts of the old me that I would meet up with in memory-laden parts of the city. And in some places, I did. I saw the 10-year-old me climbing down the steps between the 2nd floor botanical gardens and Children’s Museum at Navy Pier. I remember trying to measure the height of the Bean as a school project in 4th grade, and buying a giant Hershey bar at the Water Tower as a souvenir.
But most of the time on this trip, it was a rediscovery of both the city and myself. I’d never before realized how pretty the Chicago skyline was, but after a month in art school I found myself trying to see and capture the beauty of the buildings. I’d never seen the sunrise at Navy Pier, with friends giddily drunk on the magic of the early morning hours. I’d never had Ghiradelli’s Nob Hill Chill (heaven in a cup). I’d never ‘Eggsperienced’ the fantastic 24-hour brunch restaurant (called Eggsperience), nor had I walked there across the city at 4 in the morning. I’d never realized how eerily deserted a large city gets at night, how all the lights are on but no one’s there, making you feel empty yet misleadingly powerful at the same time. I’d never had to force myself to muster courage to conquer my fears ofsomething unknown. As I left Chicago with new memories and new discoveries, I began to wonder what the next trip will bring.
“…You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
All things know, all things know
You had to find it
All things go, all things go…â€
-Sufjan Stevens, “Chicagoâ€
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFrG6S0GnhU]
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