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I love Chicago, I love magnolias, I (have a) love (-hate relationship with) spring, April. The city that I grew up in, that’s become home – I’ll always be here, comfortably, safely. At the same time, I know that my time here is marked by dates; my quarters, which are 9 weeks (10 including finals) are split into deadlines, which makes time accelerate much faster. While my entire life is here – all the people I feel closest to, the tasks and miscellaneous things that give me meaning, the landscapes that I understand – I feel, all the same, that my life is suspended in time while in Chicago. Very rarely do I ever get, or give myself, an opportunity to stop and think about what I’m doing, what I’m working towards, what I feel; as someone who’s grown up around people that, and who herself, values deep introspection and intentionality around their thoughts, words, actions.. this way of life has become frighteningly too easy for me to adapt to. To put a damper on such profound feelings that were so highly revered in earlier years of my own life is terrifying; perhaps that’s why I am able to appreciate so my time in New York.

I do love New York – the novelty, the sounds, the people, the chaos. At the same time, I despise New York for the same reasons. This feeling resides on such a delicate scale, and I think each time I’ve gone back my resulting perspective has significantly altered; for example, after this trip, I think I love New York, but just last year this time, I disliked it. The way I love Chicago exists in a completely different realm – while I also attribute pieces of myself to New York, am familiar enough with certain areas, have many fond memories – my highest highs have always been in Chicago, and some of my lowest lows also call this city home.

Yes, people I’ve met in New York I’ve come to call home, but all the same, the people I’ve met in Chicago are so thoroughly and sufficiently become engrained in me that I cannot fathom thinking of myself as an individual without their influence.

New York allows me to breathe, to think, to simply be – Chicago is the source of my contemporary self, and there’s nothing I would do to change that. Love, after all, does not begin or end in the way we think it does. Silent understanding, acknowledgement, sharing, forgiveness.