Warning: Liberal arts, semi-angsty, teen girl writing

Dearest readers of this blog,

I greatly apologize for my disappearance. To be quite frank, I feel like there is not a whole lot in my life to comment on. As I was reflecting a few weeks ago I feel as though the longer I live here the less I have done. I go to school, volunteer at the Swedish Museum in Andersonville, do my homework, and sleep. That being said, my life is still filled with daily stories, just ones that have less impact on me. But, I will try to go through some of my most recent musings for the sake of content. 

First off, an update on my life here at Loyola; quite frankly, up until about two weeks ago I was still completely unsure on how LUC (Loyola University Chicago so you won’t get confused?) fit into my life as a whole. For most of you who know me, you will probably be able to guess, I do not handle change well. I unfortunately fall into the category of “My entire life has been changed, my dreams are dashed, and I might as well give up now” nervous control freaks. Furthermore, as someone who spent so long trying to escape the busy life I lived in high school by thinking and scheming about what my life would be like after graduating, the college admissions process ate me up in a way I would have never anticipated. Only recently have I really been able to realize the advice that people would give of “you’ll end up where you need to be” would apply in a way that I had not previously realized? I really truly thought that Loyola had to shape itself and contort to fit my original dream of college: small, liberal arts, suburban, out east, and a women's college. Now to literally anyone, you’ll think to yourself “But LUC cannot be those things by nature” and yes, on an intellectual level I had realized this, but on an emotional (soul-level?) I was trying to compensate for the shortcomings of a dream I thought I deserved to live out. Now I don’t want anyone reading this to say “But you did deserve to have a dream come true!” (I’m getting really good at having a two-sided conversation with myself huh?), and in a sense you would be right. But back to the original point, I was so unhappy here because I could only compare my experience to something that I made completely idyllic. So now, in March, staring down my last 5 weeks as a freshman here, I have felt that I can both intellectually and emotionally accept all that my life, in reality, brings me. I am finally content, both looking into the past and all I did to get here, as well as looking into the future and what I can create for myself. 

To continue my poetic commentary on life and human nature (Liberal arts college rah!!!) , the city of Chicago. As anyone who asked me recently (including my co-worker Bob, to whom I responded wayyyy too fast that I didn’t like the city), I had my mixed-mostly negative, feeling about living here. I’m not going to completely retract that comment, I still have my ups and downs, but can say that I understand the city more deeply. I recently came across a quote from a TikTok, yes, and I’m not embarrassed to say that! I spend way too much time on that app but hey, what’s it to you. The context behind it for those who have saved themselves from the addictive rabbit hole that app is; Chicago recently had an uptick in people celebrating how “so totally great and magical it is to live here”, and rightfully so, it started a conversation of what it's like to live in a city that, like anywhere, contains multitudes. The quote that this creator chose to sum up what Chicago is was originally written by Anthony Bourdain (RIP). He said, “You wake up in Chicago, pull back the curtain, and you KNOW where you are. You could be nowhere else. You are in a big, brash, muscular, broad shouldered motherfuckin’ city. A metropolis, completely non-neurotic, ever-moving, big hearted but cold blooded machine with millions of moving parts  — a beast that will, if disrespected or not taken seriously, roll over you without remorse.” I truly feel this sums up what it is truly like to live and work here, and now I guess I realized that I just got a little rolled over and flattened. In a conversation I had with Sydney recently I illustrated the reason for my change of heart, “I finally figured out that I can love Chicago, but I can’t trust Chicago.” To which Sydney, in a nicer way than what I am about to paraphrase here, said something along the lines of, “Yeah, duh.” I’ll follow that exchange up with, I say “trust” colloquially, I am not, nor was ever a particularly trusting person. But I guess I had equated the love you feel for others the way you would feel for a place. I guess I just thought that you could not love without trust, and now I know you can; It’s just a different kind of love. Now, I want to avoid the pit I am writing myself into of “things an 18-year-old has realized that everyone else knew” and truly say that I don’t think these are life-changing revelations. I would say they air on the side of explanations for how I felt, and the perspective I was writing from previously. Also, don’t get me wrong, my luck has not changed. I still have my fair share of red-line stories and dealing with the general weirdness and inconvenience that comes with putting so many people in one city. But to put it into more concise words, I still don’t love Chicago, but I accept it as it is. 

I know this post is already going to be super long, chunky, and also contain like zero stories of things I’ve actually been doing, but I really just wanted to get where I stand not just as a young person experiencing things, but as a person who is actually experiencing things.

To sum up things and put it on a more positive-less philosophical note, I have had so many great (and not-so-great, but interesting) experiences in my spring semester. I have been to the opera, declared an Anthropology minor, joined clubs, gone out and tried for things, and still managed to get an average of 8 hours of sleep. I get that this might sound like an “I’m shutting down the blog post” and if you’ve seen my writing schedule you wouldn’t be unfounded in that. But to make things clear, it's not! I still plan on writing, when I can, and when I want to. But if you feel that I have been absent from your life for too long, shoot me a text! 

I’ll include some photos below of me, out and about, like the city girl I am now. They won’t have captions cause it takes me like, way too long to assign them on Wix, but they should all be decently self-explanatory. 

Finally thank you for reading this weirdly long and semi-sappy post, I really did not intend to write it like this but it just kinda happened. I will again promise that I am doing just swell. Also, a final note to my mother that if you say anything weird in the comments I will delete it, with love. Interpret “weird” as you must. 

With all the love I can give, 

-Gretchen