Day 6597 | Day 6750

I went on a trip to Chicago this weekend with a bunch of people I mostly didn't know. I'm deathly terrified of not knowing what I'm doing and this was no exception. While on the highway going there, I was nauseous to the point of being unable to do anything but grimace and wish for the bus to roll over. My girlfriend was the one who had put both of us on the list to go on the trip and she knew far more people than I did. The way I saw it, it was a chance for me to face my fears and grow and all that crap etc.

We arrived at the city and got off the bus right outside the Museum of Contemporary Art. We walked around the museum which was free and yet still not worth the price of admission for an hour and a half or so. That's when the hell began. Our group wasn't anything official--people kept drifting in an out-- but in general there were about 5 guys and 4 girls. Unfortunately, majority rule apparently doesn't apply to shopping.

It's physically impossible for a man to walk into a Victoria's Secret and not die a little inside. It was entertaining to look around the store and see all the other men who had been dragged to the store by their wives and girlfriends doing exactly the same thing we were: standing around at the edges of the store attempting to avoid looking at anyone or anything for too long and making awkward laughing noises. It made me wonder why there isn't a separate 'comfort room' in the store just for men to wait out the worst of it. Leather armchairs and a big screen TV with ESPN on 24/7.

Next we went to H&M, the Nike store, the Apple store, Urban Outfitters, Borders, and ended at the shopping mall in Water Tower Place. I'm pretty sure the entire experience slowly drove me Communist. I asked one of the girls what she was going to wear her dress for and she said "I don't know, I'll find something". *Insert jaw dropping sound*. NO. That's backwards. You develop a need for something first, then you buy it, not the other way around. I managed to go the entire time buying only one item which was something I'd been wanting for a while--A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson at Borders. I just don't buy in to the consumerist culture (no pun intended) that seems to be pervading America and frankly it scares me how invested into it people my age are. That's the reason why the average American credit card debt is $10,000 and why millions of Americans are defaulting on their loan payments whether they be for cars or college or housing mortgages.

All of that on my soapbox being said, Chicago is a truly beautiful city. They say that almost no buildings are much more than a hundred years old because of the Chicago Fire so Chicago is one of the most modern cities you will find. I'm not one for art or sculpture much but architecture is the wonderful blend of function and artistic form. The Sears Tower and John Hancock Center are hulking black mountains of steel and glass, hideous in design and yet beautiful in their scale. Other buildings like the diamond shaped Smurfit-Stone Building can be dwarfed by their neighbors and yet stand out on their own by virtue of their aesthetics.

The best part of Chicago though is the riverfront, especially at night. Being late in the year and close to the edge of the time zone, it gets dark rather early in the city. Around 6 at night we walked down Michigan Ave. looking for the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe which no one actually knew the location of. After walking a mile or so we decided that it was far too cold so we went inside a Starbucks and all got drinks. There wasn't anywhere to sit so we ended up going out to the riverfront directly across from the Trump International Hotel and Tower. The sun sets even earlier in the urban canyons sending crepuscular rays shooting down the avenues and the sodium lamps were coming on along the river making the surface glow with orange warmth. I could spend an entire day along the river, simply watching the city and watching the people.

My anxieties had gotten the better of me, especially on the shopping excursions, and I felt that I had been neglecting my girlfriend. I apologized to her for not being much fun to be around and she gave me a non-committal "You were fine". She remained distant though and pulled back from me whenever I tried any form of contact. I knew something was up so I decided that I'd give her space and try talking to her the next day. We left the city around 1 AM CST and got back around 5 AM EST after crossing the time zone. I went immediately to sleep but didn't sleep too well, waking up at about 8:30.

Everyone knows how it goes, you wake up early in the morning and the first thing that you do is get on the computer to check how much various things have changed in your hours of absence. I logged on to FaceBook to find a message waiting in my inbox: "so i feell this isn't going to surprise you". She didn't even tell me face to face that she wanted to be "just friends". I went to talk to her later but it was clear that she was hiding her true thoughts and feelings from me. She let me talk the entire time and I swear she said fewer than 20 words during the entire 'conversation'. She said it just 'didn't feel right'. I'm feeling led on: she was calling me her boyfriend long before I had even thought of us as a couple and she kissed me first. But when I asked her why she'd even gone out with me in the first place if it didn't feel right she said "It just happened". Bullshit. You don't initiate things and then say that it 'just happened'.

She came by yesterday and dropped off the sweatshirt I'd lent her. It still smells like her.