Why it’s probably time for me to leave Chicago.

Chicago, I love you, I really do. You’re beautiful. All of my firsts were inside of you, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to read a map, even if I suck at reading maps I can apparently only do it in Los Angeles. Why? Because I have the worlds worst cell service in Los Angeles so I can’t map out directions, I just have to look at the actual map and figure it out. But, darling Chicago, after nearly 25 years inside your PBR-laced womb, you’re getting too small. I can’t breathe, and there’s nothing left for me to do here. But, let’s be honest, I could never love other teams as much as I love the Blackhawks, Bears, Bulls and Cubs. I’ll only watch Dallas Starts games here and there because I would totally enjoy making out with Tyler Seguin. But… Never mind.

I’m about to go to Los Angeles for the third time in the span of six months. I thought nothing of it, but my father told me I should look for a job while I’m out there considering I like spending time there more than I do in my own city. I always wanted to leave Chicago. I figured I would grow up and probably die here, but I didn’t think about the in-between until I had no choice but to stay here. I had to take care of my mother, as if I would have left her even if I had more help, and then I worried about my father being alone, even though he’s a fully capable and healthy adult. You worry more about a healthy parent simply because he’s all you’ve got left, and you know how hard losing one parent is already.

I have a small family, and I’m close to everyone with the exception of a couple. One of my cousins moved out to Newport Beach, California a few years ago and has a six month old daughter so I see them whenever I go to California. I live two blocks from my aunt and also my cousin, who just got engaged. My other aunt, my mother’s sister, lives in Barrington with her son, and his daughter who likes to refer to herself as my “mini-me.” Needless to say, my “mini-me” isn’t happy that I’m blonde now, because she’s 12 and not allowed to use hair dye yet. My uncle, my mother’s brother, lives near Wisconsin and travels more than I do. My sister lives in Los Angeles, but I haven’t told her I’m coming back yet, or that I plan on moving there.

I told myself when my mother passed away that I would stop being such a fucking pussy and start realizing when opportunities present themselves to me, rather than realize it later. And right now, I’m financially stable and a large handful of my friends are in LA. It wouldn’t be a hard transition. My best friends have made this transition many times, and I suppose, in a respect I made the same transition by losing them and having nothing but the phone conversations left. The friends I have here understand my wanting to leave, and even my father isn’t surprised. He wants to retire in a year and a half and move to Arizona for golfing purposes or some shit I don’t understand. I suck at golf.

We all have to leave our family and our friends at some point.

I remember wanting to move to California a couple of years ago. My best friend had just moved there, and I was sitting on my then-boyfriend’s apartment floor, drunk, and telling him I wanted to spend the summer with her, maybe longer. Unwittingly, I think that’s also when I didn’t understand the concept of “love.” He told me that he didn’t want me to, but had I decided on my own to go, that he would visit as often as possible and call me several times a day. I was 22 and wanted him to say “just go” and break up with me for some reason. I think I’ve always been looking for a reason to go. I’ve always believed in that whole “love” thing, but looking at me, or talking to me for five minutes, probably would make that seem implausible. I guess I wanted to leave so badly that the only person who got to see me in love also had to witness me trying to run away.

Maybe part of the reason I’ve waited so long to make my desire to leave known is that I’ve always been scared of seeming vulnerable or weak. I worry about other people, and that’s part of my avoidance of vulnerability. I apologized and walked away for starting to cry twice at my mother’s funeral, and I asked my 12 year old cousin if she was alright, because she had never experienced a funeral. I remember my first funeral, even though I was 3 and my memory was limited to lifting my grandfather’s hand, and dropping it.

I still need my best friend, and she lives in New York. But I would never live in New York. Part of me wanting to leave is to give my dad the “OK” to go where he wants to retire. He always said he would never leave Chicago unless “his girls were settled.” But even if either of us came back to Chicago we would have family here. And our selfishness in not wanting out father to sell our childhood home… we can’t hold on to that. That sucks for everyone. But our parents had childhood homes, and they’re over it. You make a new home. I’d only hold on to mine because I fucking miss my mom, and all I know is my mom and I in this house. But I can’t do that.

The first time my mom heard me swear (age 3) was in this backyard. I screamed that my older cousin was an asshole for stealing my basketball. I used the correct inflection, so no one was mad. I said my first word in this house, walked for the first time in this house, and even had my first party in this house and I snuck the only boy I’ve ever loved into my bedroom and he freaked out upon hearing my dad get up to use the bathroom. Obviously it’s important to me, but while I can’t let my family and my memories hold me to one place, I can’t hold my dad back either. I have to let him fulfill his retirement wishes even though my mom isn’t here. I probably have to let him start dating at some point, but as whoever left that tacky brownish-purplish lipstick on his cheek at his congratulatory party learned, it’s going to be a while for that one.

I wish I had something to keep me here, but I don’t. My family supports my decision to go wherever I want to, and I haven’t been a girlfriend for two years, so I can leave. It’ll hurt regardless, but I need to live for myself now.

Why I sucked during my adolescent years.

Technically, I was a blessed teenager. I didn’t have greasy hair or acne, I had and still have 20/20 vision (except for that time I purposely scratched my cornea to get out of Sunday school), I never needed braces, and I was used to being gangly and tall because I was one of the shortest people in my family. And personally, I think I had great taste in music, but that’s because I was the younger sibling. But unless you grew up to be an affluent frat boy, you, like me, probably had a horrible time in junior high and high school.

I also have a sick memory so none of this shit is going to fall out of my brain anytime soon.

1. I got picked on relentlessly in junior high. The details of which are pretty fuzzy to me now because everyone gets picked on and I just accepted that early on. I was cool with being a 5’8″ 12 year old. But the one case of being picked on I will never forget from junior high was my infamous cold sore. Thanks to my father’s bullshit genes, and prior to the knowledge of the expensive-as-fuck-but-completely-worth-it-Abreva, I got cold sores in junior high a couple of times. The worst, however, was during the year/semester we had a goofy and ridiculously disturbing foreign religion teacher. I had gotten my first cold sore that year, and regardless of my pleading with mother, I had to go to school. The creepy religion teacher also had a cold sore. Cue infinite ammo for other preteens to destroy me. “Haha! You made out with the teacher!” At this point, I’d full on mouth kiss whoever invented Abreva, since, you know, I won’t have a cold sore.

2. I was scared of boys, but also only friends with boys. My best girl friends from grade school and I went to different high schools because they lived in Oak Park/River Forest, and I got sent to private Christian school because I lived in Chicago (dad wouldn’t let his daughters into the Chicago public school system, either), and wanted to make an effort to not glue ourselves to each other, as if we didn’t pick each other up from school or practice/get coffee with each other/sometimes do each other’s homework because I suck at math and they can’t write papers/hangout on the weekends anyway.

But I digress. I was bad at boys. Every time a guy would ask me on a date or said he liked me, I would say “No,” and go about my business, yet I only hungout with boys and managed to compose a completely anatomically correct penis in ceramics class despite never having seen a real one before. I “went out” with a guy for a month as a freshman and ended up dumping him because I was tired of asking my mom to drive me to Downers Grove to hangout with him. He transferred schools and I kept about my business. I didn’t like teenagers even when I was one, and I figured I couldn’t balls up and talk to a guy I liked without turning red anyway. I tried once! But I proceeded to turn red and slammed my head into my locker. Now I only turn red if someone smacks me in the face. At least by junior year I had tricked a Fenwick senior into picking me up whenever I wanted because I didn’t have a car and I told my mom he was gay so she’d let me break curfew. It was his fault I almost changed my number after college.

Oh, and I didn’t make out with a boy until prom night. And I did that because I was drunk in a hot tub. At least I grew some balls and went with the guy I wanted to go with because I asked him to his own prom. I never went to my own prom. My guess is they monitored everyone to “make room for Jesus.”

3. I didn’t like leaving my room by the time I reached 16. I had stopped wearing all Abercrombie & Fitch and started dressing like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, dyed my hair black, and liked to lock myself in my room blasting The Cure. On vinyl. Because I was also kind of a pretentious music snob who would trick my friends into going to record stores with me on the weekends. My parents LOVED this behavior. How happy would you be if you had a teenage daughter who was quiet because she wasn’t running around in your face, but also wasn’t out doing drugs/getting pregnant/doing whatever cooler teenagers did?

I spent so much time in my room “being an individual” that for my 16th birthday, my mom took me to a tanning salon because I was “too pale for summer” as my birthday is in June. However, she bought me an iPod for my birthday, so I loaded it with The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and Jesus & Mary Chain and also locked my door so I wouldn’t have to leave again.

That’s not to say that I didn’t know what was going on in the outside world, though. People called my flip phone from parties to say I sucked, they hated me, and to ask if I was a witch. I said “K.” Robert Smith and Morrissey kinnnnddd of prepared me for that.

We all got death threats once in a while, right?

4. I had really boring arguments with my parents. I didn’t get into a lot of trouble in high school, because I didn’t see the point. I was bored the whole time, but that’s when I’d usually just sit on my bed, write bullshit, and plan for college. The biggest fight I got in with my parents was because I went to a party at 15, smoked pot for a second, lied about it, and ended up caught later anyway. My parents ripped up my concert tickets and then told me I couldn’t go to my homecoming or my friends’ homecoming. I went to both, but no concert, which was what I was really pissed about. I always got pissed about concerts. I was only allowed to see Depeche Mode as a teenager if I went with my much older cousin, and I wasn’t allowed to see New Order because “Depeche Mode is basically the same thing, isn’t it?” I didn’t fight with my parents much at all after turning 16, learning the train system/directions to drive places, and having shitty coffee shop and record store jobs that were solely to afford concerts, which I almost always went to alone.

5. I dressed like a toolbag. Everyone had weird phases of dressing as teenagers. I had too many. I wore a lot of cargo pants at 14, and by 15 was really into Abercrombie & Fitch, but also wearing the goofiest and sluttiest shit to concerts. I was a fucking dominatrix for Halloween when I was a 15 year old virgin. I had a whip and real handcuffs. I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet. I barely knew what a dominatrix was, but I knew enough to get out of the house before my dad saw my outfit. My cousin borrowed that costume the following year. She was 34. I’d like to know what her costume conversations were like at the party she went to. “Oh, my dominatrix costume? I borrowed it from my little cousin! She’s a high school sophomore.”

I wore a lot of eyeliner, fishnets and miniskirts as a teenager. I passed for 21 at 15. I wore fishnets, platform heels, a miniskirt, and a skintight top to a concert at 15, and a drunk as shit 30 year old said he “wanted to look up my skirt.” You’d think I had learned right then and there to stop dressing like an asshole. It was also snowing at this time, as it was December in Chicago, and my mom dropped me and my goofy dude friends at this concert at House of Blues. Yet there I was, sluttin’ it up. Or at least looking like I was.

By 17 I pretty much just started cutting up t-shirts and wearing them as miniskirts. Or wearing a giant t-shirt over tights with high boots and calling it an outfit. I blame Lindsay Lohan.

6. I didn’t plan very well for college because I was, and still am, too idealistic. I applied to schools in New York, Rhode Island (why?), Nashville, and Chicago. I really wanted to apply to a few schools in California, but my mother told me I would barely ever be able to come home because it’s so expensive. The school in Chicago, my backup school, was the one I actually went to. I got into one of the two schools in New York, and I got into the ones in Rhode Island and Nashville. Mom let me drink wine when I got rejected from my top school in Manhattan. I think I only chose staying in Chicago because while preparing to choose a college, a friend and I went down to the lakefront at night and I got all into the Chicago skyline and said “FINE I’M GONNA STAY HERE.”

Mistakes were made, things went wrong! My sister and I ended up at the same school for three years, despite our four year age gap, so that was an awkward reliving of grade school.

But that’s fine, I had a part time job doing her homework for $30 per assignment, I learned that I’m full of shit, hipsters are garbage people, I can get published by being a douchebag, if you flirt with boys they will give you beer but you’ll have to make up a fake name so they can’t find you later, and that I can graduate in five years if I start college as a music business major, decide I want to be a journalism major, realize I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing so I drop all of my classes, delete all social media, turn off my phone and leave the country for a bit, then come back to major in fiction writing but graduate with a degree in journalism and literature anyway!

BEING A TEENAGER SEEMED SO GREAT, DIDN’T IT?

I thought Tinder was a phone game to play while I pee.

I suck at dating. It’s never been a secret. Men who have seriously dated me know that I’ve never been good with the actual act of going on a date. Even in my most serious relationship I suggested not going out on dates because we were both cursed with shitty incomes at the time and it didn’t make sense to be elaborate when we knew we loved each other and shit. I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day and every single time that “holiday” came around when I had a boyfriend, I suggested we just invite our guy friends over to drink and watch movies. I always found a dude waking me up to say goodbye before he has to go to a meeting for a few hours on my day off way more appealing than some cheesy disgusting Valentine’s Day bullshit. My mother was never ok with my lackadaisical approach to that dating shit but it’s just not me.

I’ve been single since the spring of 2012 with the exception of a few “I guess we’re ‘dating'” things here and there, and someone told me about Tinder when I was drunk, so I downloaded the app.

I would almost exclusively “swipe” through the selection of bros while I was drunk or peeing, referring to the app as “Brokemon.” I’d get a kick out of it when I’d see profiles of guys I knew, and analyze my best dude friends’ profiles to help them get girls, which I guess worked out as a few of my friends ended up with legitimate relationships afterwards. However I’ve had many dating blunders from this app.

Date #1 may have been really good looking and tall, but told me upfront that he’s a serious vegan and refuses anything that came from an animal without its consent. I wear leather every single day, love meat, and can make a kickass steak that I prefer to be a little bloody. I ate nothing but beef jerky before our date. He gave me a run down of “vegan beers” (is that even real?), went through my phone while I was in the bathroom, got all PETA on me, then kissed me and ruined my favorite TV show’s finale for me after I told him I hadn’t seen the last episode yet.

Date #2 seemed so perfect that one of my best friends and I spent three months trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with him. If you’re 6’4″ and a former college football player whose awkward phase didn’t extend past age 7 before you turned into a god, you have to be hiding something. But with his constant “I’m completely giving a shit about you” schtick, he either had to be undercover insane or I was just too pleased to question anything. Then I noticed that every time he acted like he wanted to immerse himself into my social life, he wouldn’t tell me he was around until the last minute. “I’m in River North, come here,” and trying to pick me up at three in the morning after I told him I had to be at work at 7:30 am. He dumped me when I was on vacation in California to see my newly-birthed baby cousin.

Date #3 was a lot like me. Which, I will appreciate. If a guy can dish it and take it, I’m into it. But there have to be areas of the relationship where you’re not total douchelords to each other. If we’re that mean to each other it starts to feel like we’re brother and sister. You call me “mean and annoying” and I say “you’re the worst person I’ve ever met”? We shouldn’t be dating. Please tell me more about your rich parents while I vomit on your watch collection.

The app itself is more preferable to dating sites I won’t touch because the only way anyone can talk to you on Tinder is if you mutually like each other, but that doesn’t stop good look looking losers from using the “If I’m a dick to her she’ll respond” approach. I don’t mind a little bit of douchebag, but that’s only if a serious attraction has been established, and I’ll never be okay with a guy who can’t spell, or who puts “your” when he means “you’re.”

Also, fuck Chris Conte for not swiping right for me.