Dear Chicago

I am hiding in the bathroom at my own party.

One of the nicest, most understanding things someone has ever done for me was a few years ago at a Memorial Day party. My friend Kristin came up to me and pulled me into her bedroom.

"I know," she said "you have a tendency to get overwhelmed at parties and you just leave. I want you to know that if you need to come be by yourself for awhile, you can come sit in here and no one will bother you. You don't have to leave."

It was an incredibly kind gesture, one that indicated how well she knew me and how much she loved me.

Anyway, that was a few years ago. Tonight, Saturday, I'm in the bathroom at my own party, crying so hard I'm running the water so no one hears me.

***

I keep looking at apartments in Chicago. 

My browser window, at any given point in time, has between ten and fifteen tabs open to different apartment hunting websites in different cities. The majority are Chicago and Seattle, with a few token ones open for D.C., San Francisco, and Boston. 

Call it winter madness or a case of the doldrums or whatever the hell you want, but I can't stop thinking about . . . being somewhere else. 

***

My love life is a disaster. 

I'm serious. FEMA needs to be called. Religious people bearing bowls of soup need to stage an intervention. Someone should have a benefit concert because this thing is a certifiable calamity. 

The winter months have always been a little tricky for me. My past relationships have all started November-ish and run through the spring, so it's hard not to feel like I should be with someone. The weather is nasty and the thought of having someone to snuggle up and read with is, well, appealing. I am freezing from the months of October until May, so another body in the house would be deeply appreciated. 

On top of that, nearly everyone I love has gotten married in the winter. And in the face of my parents' thirty-second (thirty-second!) wedding anniversary and the prospect of going to another wedding alone I made some extremely regrettable choices (the kind that make you want to take a bath in lye). 

It's a tricky thing, wanting someone to want you. It almost never shakes out the way you hope.

***

It's the prospect of buying bookshelves that has me looking at apartments in other cities. 

A friend and I make a special trip to Ikea to look at getting me some big girl bookshelves, enough that all of my books will actually fit in my apartment. Despite the fact that I've put the money aside to purchase said bookshelves, when we get there I dither over exactly what I want (as if I didn't already research them online and come in with a shortlist and an estimated number for the square-footage I'd need to comfortably house all my books.) 

"None of these will fit in my car. But I think I've made a decision. Maybe we can come back another time?" 

I have schlepped my goddamn library across the state of Minnesota more times than I can count. Do you have any idea how much space several hundred books take up? A lot. They take up a lot of space. And I've never had enough bookshelves to house all of them. 

Buying shelves just seems like such a commitment. It's a statement that I am going to be in this apartment in this city, in this life for long enough to settle in to something. 

***

I'm in the bathroom crying because of a conversation I overheard.

I was in the kitchen doing the washing-up. Some of the party stragglers were in the other room chatting. Because my apartment is the size of a matchbox, I could hear the conversation they were having. It was about work and what projects they have going on (these are my artistic friends) and I overheared one say to the other "Yeah, I stopped doing pro-bono work, but Kel seriously needed help with this work project, and you know, she's just fantastic so I said yes." He paused "I hope that girl gets everything she wants out of life." 

I didn't hear the rest of the conversation because I'm hiding in the bathroom crying fit to beat the band. 

***

I cut and run. 

I've done it my entire life and in every aspect of my life. Work gets tough? Find a new job. Don't like a city? Move on. Relationship getting to be more work than you anticipated? Dump the guy and move on. 

I talk and write so much about my desire to unhook my safety line of self and fallfallfall for someone. But the truth is that I always have a backup line. There's always a way for me to back out when things start to last for a minute longer than I want them. It's so much easier to get wigged out by commitment and have an extremely regrettable one night stand, or to fall for people I know won't work or I won't like in two month's time than think about why I don't have the kind of relationship where we're celebrating an anniversary. It's. Just. Easier. 

I am living a life I love. I am actually surrounded by people who would do anything for me, who want to see me successful and healthy and happy and who are willing to make actual honest-to-God sacrifices to make those things happen for me. And my response is to think about moving somewhere else. 

That realization hits me with all of the force of a cast-iron skillet to the face on Saturday night, when I overhear the conversation taking place in my living room. That kind of pathological fear of commitment isn't living. It's just suicide by tiny, tiny increments.