big hearts in city of the big shoulders

i briefly touched on about this on instagram. 

let me expand here.

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chicago is our home. it's here where we've made together what we cherish so deeply. we met here. our friends are here. our transition from confident adolescent children to cautious mature people wading the waters of adulthood happened here. yet every time we leave and then return, we come back with equal love and distaste for this place. often more of the latter.

it's troubling to be on such shaky grounds in the place you call home.

for many my senior, this plague is common. but i'm a problem solver. and thus i begin to analyze it. the likely conclusion, the location of residence is the culprit for our agitation,'chicago is the reason we're unhappy. if only we lived in a small town.' so then i take our midwestern asses back to a small town, alike the one i grew up in. and for a minute, we soak in its simplicity. the beauty for the lack of choices for a coffee shop, or restaurants to eat at. the way everyone says hi to you no matter their familiarity. how the parks and beaches are surrounded by the engulfed with absence of sound. then the reality kicks in, we begin to wonder how the hell we'd ever make a living there. wonder how we'd ever evolve. how we'd ever stay interested when there's so little to do. we begin to think how we'd much rather be a little fish in a big ocean. only to return to the city we call home, wondering how the hell we can give it that name when there's too much we don't care for going on, there's too much noise, and we feel lost in a sea of nobodys, where empathy is a rare pearl, in this metaphorical ocean.

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'but isn't there a beauty in the stagnant water?'

'you're young. now is the time to hustle, not for admiring stagnant water.'

'don't you think these water metaphors are getting a little out of hand?

aren't you afraid you're going to lose people?'

'shut it!'

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for a long while, this has been a perplexing notion. how do you balance these liminal feelings?  we could move somewhere else. and we've thought about it. we're still considering it. it feels inevitable but for now we'd really like to be close to family. so what to do, what to do about it now.

until yesterday (july 3rd 2017) , i had no answer.

but perspective is a curious bitch.

in our quest to keep evolving, we just signed a lease for a new apartment, just outside of the lincoln square. a common move for those in the city. but this feels different. we're in a neighborhood that feels so small town that upon our visit yesterday, we both had to continually do a 'mental-check' to make sure we hadn't left. we toured the area and if felt as if we were visiting a completely new city. i caught myself saying 'hey, we're new to the neighborhood...' over and over again to locals & shop owners.

the day felt as though every little thing about the city we wished was different was recalibrated and that we may had found the solution, perhaps it is or perhaps it's temporary one. time will tell but for now, but i'm incredibly thankful and stoked to feel so revitalized about our old / new city.