The Leanover.

The city pushes and pulls and sighs so much that it has become more and more difficult to leave and to want to leave. It functions not unlike myself - glittering and gleaming on the surface, for the casual or the unknown to admire on first glance. Downtown, these sidewalks are tired, used to holding up the weight of the city's admirerers, the huddled masses enamored with the sleek curve of a skyscraper. Someone has to maintain appearances and save face in the wake of the other hoods, all ignored and simmering with angst.

And for a while it did so, continuously, year after year, without complaint. Eventually, the advantages for the naked eye outweighed the disadvantages, and you could take the beauty, the prosperity and cleanliness, and run with it. Sometimes I held on to the sheen of the downtown, afraid to let go and face the consequences of the other city, the rest of the city.

But now it feels so weary and fractured. When we go out, we seek destinations, places to transport us from the reality within our homes. Hopleaf, a beautiful and always overcrowded bar in Andersonville, is where you go to feel alive. Overflowing with bodies, the space is always warm and inclusive. There is there there, something intangible yet profound. We seek it out, regardless of how long the bus ride, in order to relive that first night. It is perhaps the only place in the city to have such an effect on me, and I find myself wanting to go there more than I should, alone or with friends, just to feel that thing deep down in my gut that makes me love this city unlike any other city.

But when I am not there, the pain of second best is all too familiar. Every other place is just that: a place, so indistinguishable that I rarely remember names, and instead focus on physical landmarks.

That place on Irving Park, by the train.

That spot on the corner on Armitage.

It is a familiar sigh, one that plagues the city. For me, a woman who lives among the other half in our northern neighborhoods, I equate the despondency of drinking quarters with the frown of the man across from me on the green line, the desperation of the middle-aged Black woman on the corner, the frenetic temperament of everyone under the age of 18 and currently enrolled in a public school.

You have that one or those few places you love but the rest of it is unsatisfying and the lack weighs heavily on your mind, reminding you of other places and people and things. The lack is there so much, my assumptions of these other things are nearly tangible. Sometimes, I think that if I slip far enough into my own psyche, I can end up at some fantasy that other people merely encounter as reality.

They told me at a young age that my misshapen bones would make walking unbearable and my stature below average. And yet, here I stand, five feet and ten inches, with holes in my boots, holes in my flats and other special shoes. The walking I do now is to make up for the walking I was afraid to do as a young girl, weary of pain that never really came. The walking I do now - across boulevards and abandoned warehouses, around cigarette butts and broken glass - is a testament to walking itself, the places it can take you, the things you discover, the faces you encounter, and the thinking (about goals and regrets and loves) you accomplish, ultimately alone with the world, a singular moving being.

There was something there, something of substance. That is my only explanation for lists and essays and vignettes and endless analysis concerning the end of a moment (a year, a decade). It affirms your life and that you are alive, that you have experienced the things that make life worth living and the things that shape the course of history, that never ending, unreliable, yet motivating narrative. Our lives are mostly consumed by the monotony of everyday experiences that we neglect to mention to friends and acquaintances: the length of our commute, the coffee we drink from day to day, our morning and evening routine. These “end of a moment” things then, are a reflection of everything else, regardless of how miniscule. They represent time remembered, cherished, and altered (both negatively and positively) from the routines that keep you moving when you’d much rather be doing something else. I imagine that if I were living my dream life with my dream career that there would be no incessant need to reflect and remember that not all time was lost. I imagine. Until then however, I’ll take the time to look back in the hope of finding the bits and pieces of music and art and culture and whatever else that get me through each day.

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Click here to read my thoughts on Matias Aguayo, one of this year's most interesting musicians.

This is the first essay in a series of essays I am writing to clear my head and to reflect on the end of the decade, my time of adolescence and the beginning of young adulthood.

Eventually, I began to feed off those faces: young, gaunt, and beautiful. I did not know them (and never would), but I admired their visage, the narrative of their faces examined through black eyeliner, red lips, cutting jaw lines. They were familiar in the sense that I recognized them and felt comfortable when yet another week went by and there they were: all artifice.

The allure of the Misshapes stemmed from the impenetrable layer their parties and photographs exuded. The rotating yet recognizable faces became something of a fantasy, a hyper-realized ideal. My young teenage self saw in them (and their friends) something that I had yet to articulate fully, yet craved immediately and then constantly: the glamour of nightlife, the grit of the city, the freedom to play with my appearance – the first indication of my true self.

They were aesthetically non-relatable and yet I knew that with some effort, I could at least emulate the apparent freedom of choice and control of the self that thus far eluded me in the suburbs.

Our American four-squares, our perfectly manicured lawns, our distended dreams: these were the things I thought I was trying to escape. Looking at photos from Misshapes parties, particularly white wall photos, reiterated the supposed importance of young figures whose aesthetics (fashion, makeup, hair) were singular in place and time. That much was clear to me, and that made the ache to escape my life that much greater, the allure of the party that more exciting, and my pull to a city I had never been feel at times overwhelming. I recognized the party as a place and time, a specific setting greatly unlike my own. It was unique, I felt, this beautiful idea I craved at sixteen, at seventeen, at eighteen.

And soon the subjects began to change. Leigh and Geordon and Greg looked more severe, their aesthetic more calculated and singular. Their black was blacker. In the photos, as the audience, people dressed the way they did and looked the way they did because of their surroundings. Unlike the ever-growing critics, I salivated over the idea that the party became an event, an occasion for guests to dress a part and play a role. If we all have to work and perhaps that work left much to be desired, why shouldn’t we find a means to escape and live not according to the dictates of the weekday?

The severity was intriguing. Observing those around me, it seemed as though the weekend was a time to decompress. In the photos, they missed moments to be at one with themselves, outside of the constraints of the made up self, and yet it all seemed okay. Frustrated, confused, and searching for a better idea of myself, the possibility of total immersion in other selves seemed right, or at least right for the right now of then.

I often browsed through photos during my early morning computer class. A friend named Michael – a boy I knew from years of minority clustering in Honors and AP classes – leaned over my shoulder one morning and asked, “Why are they trying so hard?” At the time, I defended the nameless faces. These people – all glittered and glimmered – were one with their inner selves in a way that I was not and perhaps never would be. This seemed true and might be the case for some, but for most, I now recognize the theatricality. The singularity and specificity of the Misshapes party had a direct influence on the viewer who in turn reiterated and amplified the narrative the photos came to represent. As Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography, “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” The theatricality increased with the repetition of aesthetics – of lithe bodies and disaffected facial expressions, of fashionable wares and pursed lips – in the photographs. The audience began to attend the parties as well and performed for the cameras and expectations of the setting. It continuously increased the validity of the setting as a specific, perfect place for me, the audience, the fascinated, shameless audience.

Was I too a mindful sheep bestowing praise on people I did not know yet wanted desperately to know? Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Misshapes was glorified so far as I, the audience, was willing to accept the “truth” perpetuated by the photographs and idealize it. And I did, so far as wanting to go to NYU to participate in it myself, to become some other young person’s idealization.

And what now? I have yet to go to New York. And the party is long over. My freshman year of college in Chicago (unable to afford the exorbitant cost of living in New York), I cried those first few months alone in the dorm. Unable to make or maintain friends, I still felt tied to that beautiful life, unwilling to live and experience completely in the city I have always called home. Eventually, I said goodbye to all of that. Unable to escape, unable to create and cultivate a new persona and escape the self that I hated with a brutal honesty, I closed myself to the world.

I have never and probably will never write as much as I did those first months. Every thought was subject to the pen and paper, the keyboard and blank screen. I was subjected to myself, the real self: the insecurities, the worries, the sadness, the pessimism, the cynicism, the ugly, the hatred, the frustration, those things I tried to ignore. It finally began to go away. The longing was not detrimental eventually, but just another facet of the self, myself, trying to be found when I was clearly lost.

I sometimes lie now, pretending to know about the world and my tastes in it. Most things I cherish now, I was introduced to then, alone with my thoughts and the intricacies of my hidden self. Lizzy Mercier Descloux, all bursts of energy and je nesais quoi , became real at that time as I listened to a compilation and fell in love. The infatuation was immediate and heady, a complete recognition of aural pleasures. My limbs grooved to the music organically, finally feeling at home with something that was and was not. It did not define me or change me, but it felt completely a part of me, a missing piece, the most perfect groove that made my heart skip a beat in the middle of the living I finally accepted and did not need to escape.

And we moved together, full of wanton glee and hope. Tapping toes on concrete, the rhythm of limbs compressed. A sort of skip overwhelms us. This is how we walk on the moon. With eyes and ears attuned to the cracks and curvature of the city, the buildings hovering, the masses quivering. Our fingers laced, holding hands, keep firm grasp in the path of righteousness and possibility. Sticky, sweaty skin on skin, like lovers, meaning culled from the proximity. Our closeness is our oneness. Our oneness is our fulfillment. Our fulfillment is our escape. Breath is full and sure. From the stomach, each moment, rising out of the bowels of the earth, again and again. Again and again. Again and again.

I write down all of my goals, dreams, and aspirations on note cards with as much detail as possible and post them on my walls. I barely look at them and more often than not forget they're even there. I just don't know how to go about accomplishing any of them. Is it just that I've far exceeded what's within my grasp or that I haven't given the effort enough thought? I'd like to believe it's the latter but I'm leaning more towards the former. My pessimistic sentiment certainly isn't helping matters.

Last night, I wandered around Facebook for the first time in months. It was a foolish decision at best. Facebook - for those of us who wander with our feet firmly placed on the ground, for those of us who frequently dream, for those of us who occasionally seethe in anger - is a test in masochism. It can be a reminder of alternatives you've never imagined or lives you've only fantasized about. The feeling is overwhelming, not necessarily heady, but certainly unnerving.

A girl I went to high school with is gallivanting around the world with a plan and a trust fund, two things that are not within my grasp. The photos feature was thankfully down, allowing me some respite from envy.

The men who love me are men I can not trust because I can not trust myself. I know myself too well to believe in someone who sees my flaws and finds them desirable, even cute! What I'm saying is that my insecurities get the best of me.

"Look. See what I'm doing. Measure what it's worth. Is it worth my assuming a tarnished reputation in order to nourish in secret, mouth to mouth, the prey that people think I am myself absorbing? Is it worth my turning away from those dawns that you and I love, to give myself to eyelids that I dazzle and their promises of stardom? Judge, better than I can, my hesitant work that I've gazed at too much. Trim your hard gardener's nail!"

- Colette