When I draw the curtains on our first day, it’s to a few cars waiting on the light in front of our hotel. Beyond is Buckingham Fountain and beyond that sprinting marathon runners. Beyond that Lake Michigan. And beyond that…well, a flat, azure nothingness. It’s the most expansive lake I’ve ever seen. The maps are wrong. The great city of Chicago’s cloud-scrapers rest their mighty shadows on the shores of an ocean.
Life is a balancing act. It’s no grand revelation. But the phrase has paraded the streets of my mind for the last couple of weeks, and this is me calling in the parade director to halt its march and get it kicked off the line once and for all.
This is the B-side… the so-called conquered travel addiction in remission.
Travel tugs at two conflicting parts of me. The sensible, responsible individual that fears the growing rate at which her debt grows – a remarkable amount for a 24-year-old girl (woman?) sans student loans or loans of any kind for that matter – and the person that gets that itching, can’t-take-the-monotony of the everyday, 24-year-old with no perceivable strings to hold her down. It’s the latter of course that always feels the urge to give in.
