the move out
I have a confession to make. I've been procrastinating. It's atypical for me to put things off, press snooze, wait for a rainy day and yet the art of moving welcomes all of these ideas. Moving is a pain, yes, but it also offers possibilities, opportunities and radical changes in one's life. Look at Jack in Titanic or John Candy's character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles... these were two cases of folks living the charmed life as drifters who never settled down and were content wherever they were. Okay, not exactly my situation but my rent went up to an astronomical amount and I told myself I wasn't gonna do it anymore. So... I'm not. Instead I'm living on a couch until my trip back to the cold Midwest for hopefully a white Christmas.
Since moving to the Manor in 2007, I have not only acquired trinkets and glassware, dishes and electronics, but as I sit in a newly vacuumed apartment with nothing in it but me, I know that a house really lived in holds much more than a person's possessions. The memories both good and bad, the highs and lows of your life are kept within those walls now sadly watching as you load up and get gone to another place you'll soon call home.
The longer you live somewhere, the harder it is to uproot yourself from the place you decidedly called home. Home is your own piece of heaven, a sanctuary if you do it right. Peace beyond compare. My place became home to not only me but a stray kitty cat I named LSB. I won't go into the details of these initials- I'll keep it PG but my random Larchmont-find gave way to a wildly aware and spiteful cat we'll call Roscoe Javier Jenkins, his more appropriate name my niece Khaila gave him.
The aroma of burnt candles and the framed art on my walls specially placed to remind me of the most important things were what I loved most. Even the temperamental faucet in my bathroom had its own identity-- it was the horrid thing that scolded my hands everyday. Each place has a story of how it came to be. The nostalgia surrounding the city you live in and the details of your meeting, the move in, the decorating, even your first guest. For me, this is just another place I've been able to call home since moving from Missouri to New York in late August of 2001.
My life and times in New York City is another post in itself but the home before The Manor was my studio in Chicago.
Chicago, IL
In 2005, I moved from Weehauken, New Jersey to the Windy City for what seemed like a great reason at the time. I really had two lives in Illinois, one up north in a city called Gurnee (where all there is are chain restaurants, large suburbanite homes and Great America), the other once I moved for a second time was down in the actual city of Chicago. What brought me back to the Midwest from the east coast is the question I get asked the most. Why Chicago? Well, for one reason, I was lonely. Lonely is just a word, but it doesn't encompass all of the things, reasons, realizations that happen for you to say this single word. But I was. I lived with a great girl back east but my family, friends, people and things I knew and loved were all elsewhere. Everyday, I felt estranged, guilty for missing their lives and isolated from the things that made me feel like-me. That's what made me lonely. Not to mention my boyfriend.
So, I moved to Gurnee in hopes of finding something that allowed for my happiness, and I thought it was going to be there with him. I will leave his name out, it really has no relevance in my story anyway, but he was a great person whom I loved deeply. Cohabitation was much harder than I expected. I quickly found a job and ended up working for a Cornea specialist and Express at the mall nearby at night. Looking back, I threw myself into work for lack of anything better to do. Damn if I was going to be a housewife that sat at home all day waiting for her man. Six months was all it took before it quickly dissolved into something I couldn't recognize and within a week, I was packing my stuff and driving a UHaul 20 miles to Chicago.
My apartment in Chicago was a studio, barely 400 square feet with one wall of windows that met my radiator. I remember having to stand on the hardest surface I had which was my metal crown case since I didn't have much... not a mattress or ounce of furniture upon arrival. I remember working during the day for The Support Group down on Michigan Avenue and taking the bus home to paint the white walls a creamy vanilla with burgundy accents. It took two coats, 4 days and a lot of elbow grease before it eventually turned into a place I was happy to be in.
I was there almost 3 years after my breakup and coincidentally did some cool things while living in the Second City. Family visited, I enjoyed my job working in the Office of Communications Department at The State of Illinois and decided to start up my acting career. I signed with two agencies, began auditioning and taking classes at Act One Studios down on LaSalle Street which I walked to from work twice a week. Oddly enough, I was an extra in "The Break Up" with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, ending in a night on the town with the big guy through mutual friends that invited me to their cast launch party. In a way, I felt that I had come full circle from having made the move on my own downtown from Gurnee where I lived with the then-boyfriend. Our break up launched a whole new life for me in Chicago and I'm thankful for that situation although I felt like my heart would never recover. Its' true what they say, everything does happen for a reason... all of this brought me to this place in time and I'm grateful for my time in Chicago.
