Slouching Towards Something

We were riding backwards on the red line “L” in Chicago.  I could see the downtown skyline growing smaller in the distance as our backs hurtled towards Evanston.  My friend was telling me that he found he had more trouble taking risks as he grew older.  I laughed and said I considered myself a thrill seeker—in the form of life experiences.  He said he related—that was why we were friends—but I was not quite twenty and he was going on twenty-eight.  “I used to put all my chips on the table every time,” he said.  “But eventually you realize that betting it all and going broke isn’t as thrilling after you’ve done it a couple times.”  My friend was debating quitting his job to move to another state to be with a woman he had only known for one weekend.  It would be a bet on love.  “You’ll see,” he told me as the “L” rattled onwards uptown, past the second stories of Edgewater apartment buildings that all looked similar to my very first apartment which I had rented with my very first boyfriend the summer before.  I shook my head.  I was going to be different.  Things were going to work out for me.  I was going to bet all my chips on adventure, travel, art, and Love.  I was going to thrill in every risk and every payout.  And if I didn’t, then I would do it all over again.    

I couldn’t understand the moral of my friend’s story.  He told me about studying film in college and then moving to LA to “make it.”  He had even made a movie.  Now he was in large amounts of debt, renting a room in Chicago and working as a street canvasser.   He had bet on a dream that was very similar to my own and he had lost.  He kept telling me that he was happy anyways because dreams aren’t real.  But dreams were still real to me.  I was about to quit my job and move out of my prized Lakeview apartment to spend a month in California with my boyfriend before going to England together for the fall semester.  I was going to visit Prague, Vienna, Istanbul, Paris, Edinburgh and many other places and I was going to get closer to the picture I had of the person I was supposed to be.  And I was going to live happily ever after.  And it was going to happen that way because I couldn’t see any other alternative.

It is difficult to picture how things can fall apart until you’ve seen it happen to your own life a time or two.  It is difficult to picture how a broken heart feels more like a broken lens through which you must still attempt to view the world until your boyfriend of three years tells you he is gay and you cry until you throw up.  It is difficult to imagine getting raped the same day you pose for your French visa picture.  It is difficult to imagine running back to Paris because it seemed like the thing to do and then running out of money and having to sneak onto trains and sleep in bathrooms.  It is difficult to imagine moving to New York for graduate school and taking the first full-time job you are offered because you are desperate and suddenly realizing that most of life is not filled with art or travel or adventure and those chips that you had placed on the table when you were twenty aren’t there for you to bet with now. You already used them. 

I haven’t thought of that conversation I had with my friend in Chicago in years, but recently the memory came back to me.  I finally understood the moral of his story.  But then I remembered that he did in fact quit his job in Chicago and move across the country to be with the woman he believed he loved after one weekend together.  I kept in touch with that friend for a while and I saw him when we both moved back to Chicago a year later.  His bet hadn’t worked out, but he had gotten through it and I think that was the point.  There is a second moral to the story of growing up and finding it becomes harder to take risks.  I think the moral is that you still should.  If you don’t, nothing happens.  Life stays the same.  You stay the same.  All of my lost bets and failures have taught me the price of loss.  Idealism and impulsiveness have high costs.  But they have also made me someone I am proud to be—not because I succeeded, but because I failed and I moved on.  Maybe if you have nothing to move on from, you stop moving forward. 

For a long time I have believed that my life in New York would be one particular way, on and on and on…  And it wasn’t that I was particularly happy about it, but I had accepted it.  Now I think of the person I was years ago on the “L” in Chicago.  I was going to be different.  Maybe now the best choice I can make is to be the person I used to be.  Maybe the moral here is to learn to bet on yourself.  And I don’t mean, don’t fall in love or don’t take risks.  I mean, you should do it—but only if you trust yourself to be able to get through it, regardless of the outcome.