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10/14/2006 03:05:00 PM
Convergences
This is one of those times where things begin to fit. Where you pull out your old winter scarf and it feels like home around your neck. Where you walk down the street and say hi to friends you pass who are out shopping on a fall Saturday morning. Where you sip hot coffee from a mug that fits perfectly in your hands. Where you start to see little sparks of how it could all come together, how you might fit somewhere in the world, and how it's ok if you don't fit where you thought you would.
Chicago and me have this anniversary thing. I've been here for two years now. And I can so acutely remember the tang of first arrival, lost and sleeping on the floor of Amanda and Charlie's spare room, with the leaves crunching like cornflakes beneath my red sneakers, with the anticipation of rocketing up 12 floors in a snazzy elevator to my temp agency. Everything felt free, every day was a new tightrope walk. Just walking down Broadway Ave. by the Granville red line stop made me smile crazily. My heart expanded and contracted with the dual purpose of loving and fearing every moment.
Now things are feeling worn-in and homey. I've lived here as long as I lived in D.C., but then I knew that two years was long enough, now two years seems like not nearly long enough. I think I'm taking a longer view of things now. There's less urgency. I thought I had to leave D.C. immediately or become stuck in a suckpool of inertia that would pull me under at age 23. I was pretty sure that "fun" would take a downward slide at 26, so I had to prepare for adulthood to come crashing upon me. There's less of that now. Now I'm just muddling through with fewer strings attached. Leaving TFA meant leaving expectations that I had to be perfect, leaving the notion that life was about doing things you suck at, and trying to realize that there's nothing wrong with being okay.