Chicago. The first place that really felt like home.

Visiting Chicago has been bittersweet and emotional. This is the first time we’ve really been back since we left in 2015. This city was the setting for so many formative early adulthood moments, relationships, and memories. This is where I learned how to make friendships outside of the safety bubble of a shared educational experience, where I worked my first non-internship job as an architect, where we learned how to be married, where I witnessed a church fighting for justice and advocating for people outside of its own walls for the first time, where I said “yes” to almost everything so that I would miss out on nothing, where I gained weight because of all the delicious food at my fingertips, and where I kinda broke even on that because it was such a vibrant city that I walked everywhere. 

Nostalgia washed over me time and time again this week. As we walked down Chicago Ave, the 66 bus clunked by and I recalled when I sat on a suspiciously warm bus seat one winter day on my way to work and to my dismay, my pants were drenched in some mysterious wet substance.

Continuing down Chicago Ave, I remember walking across the I-90 bridge in my early career days, longing for a future day when I would finally feel confident going to work. One day, I want to feel like I know what I’m doing. And then I remember a day much later, walking across the same bridge, recognizing that that day had quietly arrived somewhere along the way. 

As we turned the corner from Chicago Ave onto Damen, I remembered an evening when there was a heavy thunderstorm and we thought it might be fun to go and play in the rain like they do in the movies. We ran down our little alleyway and the thrashing wind pushed us into our street, where almost simultaneously, loud thunder shook the sky and a few branches cracked and fell off of a nearby tree. We ran back inside and decided that the concept wasn’t that romantic. 

We continued the familiar walk to Wicker Park that we used to do multiple times a week. Seemingly every corner and block lent us another story from the past. Meeting up with friends in the park, happening upon Renegade Craft Fair for the first time by accident, walking into a comedy show by chance, learning I like scones at a place now shuttered. 

Cam’s first job was in Fulton Market, which is the neighborhood where we saw the most change. It’s nearly unrecognizable! When we lived here, they were processing chickens at a place that looks like it’s on its way to becoming a fancy restaurant. 

This week, meeting up with friends has been sweet and comfortable. There’s something about reconnecting with certain people where you fall into familiar patterns, while welcoming and respecting the new growth that you have both experienced. And it’s not about whether you’ve diverged from each other or remained the same, but about respecting the space and time that happened, and connecting regardless. Living in Chicago may be a chapter that has closed, but some friendships and connections transcend the somewhat arbitrary limit of geography. 

It’s been strange to step into homes like the one that we probably would have had if we had stayed here, like visiting an alternate reality. Ultimately, it’s too hard to separate my feelings about Chicago from my recollections from this time in my life. I was afraid that I would want to move back after visiting, but - I don’t really want to go back. I love my life now, I am grateful for what I’ve learned, and I appreciate where I am in my journey. 

I think what I really feel is a longing for time to slow down or pause altogether.