Loss

It's a grey day today.  The sky is monochrome and the weather is decidedly dreary.  Which is a bit of a blessing.  It wouldn't have seemed fitting to put down my beloved cat on a bright, sunny day.

Feeling a little bit bleugh right now.  It's not just losing Ernie.  I can't quite shake the sense of loss I have about leaving Chicago.  It's not really leaving the city, or America.  I have been lucky to live here - and there have been many fun times and great experiences - but it's always been a bit of a hit or miss relationship and I have never truly felt like I have belonged.  However, the thought of leaving my dear friends does leave me feeling bereft.  Strange how I haven't gone anywhere yet, but I already miss them.

People seem to think I should be excited about moving home.  And after all this time of fighting for the right to move home with the boys, I should feel excited about moving back, of course I should, for so many reasons.  But I don't quite yet.  In fact, at times I feel quite the opposite.  It's not a sense of dread or regret, but it is a sense of deep sadness.  I don't think I will miss Chicago itself to a large degree, but the loss of my friends here is a different matter entirely.

But then again, the underlying tone of my 10 years in Chicago is tinged with loss.

First the loss of my independence.  Boy, I wasn't expecting that.  I had been so gung-ho about living in another country, so it was strange to arrive on the back of my husband's working visa and to immediately be persona-non-grata.  I couldn't get a job, couldn't co-sign the lease on our apartment, couldn't get a mobile phone, couldn't jointly be on any of the utilities.  It seemed to take me forever to get a social security card.  It was a shock to the system, after being independent from 18 years of age, to suddenly be totally co-dependent, verging on invisible.  I even had to start using my married name, which I had never done in the UK, because sticking to my maiden name was causing so much confusion and hassle.   I don't think my husband ever understood why this made me so angry and feel so belittled, but I have always resented the bureaucratic push I was given which seemed to change my whole identity to 'wife'.

Then there's the loss of my career.  Before arriving in Chicago I had worked for 15 years in Advertising and Marketing and was proud of my achievements.  I don't think I had really appreciated how significantly my job had defined my sense of self.  I did work for an advertising agency in Chicago, but unexpectedly felt like a square peg in a round hole.  The working culture was so undeniably different.  After 6 months I settled in, but options for continuing my career once I had children were extremely limited.  My choice was to go back to work full-time after 12 weeks of maternity leave (with only 2 weeks holiday) or to not work at all.  There was no happy medium.  And I guess when it came down to it, my career meant a lot to me...but being a hands-on, present mum meant more.

I did try to return to work but was incredibly frustrated that there were seemingly no flexible alternatives.  I interviewed at a few places and spoke to several recruitment agencies, but repeatedly came up against a brick wall.  Eventually I re-trained as a personal trainer and did work part-time, but it was never a professionally satisfying alternative.  And the pay was crap. Yet again, my self-esteem took a good kicking and I felt all the more like a second class citizen.

Of course, prior to the disintegration of my career we lost our first son.  Along with the devastating grief and the introduction of a black hole in my heart, I experienced a loss of my own physical confidence.  Suddenly I was no longer a strapping, healthy lass, forever at the gym and taking on new fitness challenges.  My body had failed me.  I no longer trusted it.  It was no longer an ally I could rely on, but a reviled enemy who had let me down in the most unforgivable way.  Its failure at the most important time of my life contributed to the death of our son.  There was no-one else to hold accountable except for my own, previously undiscovered, physical flaws.

So in a way, it was no wonder that ultimately, after losing so much of what I recognised as being irrefutably me, I would lose my marriage too.  I was no longer the person that had stood at the alter on that sunny day in June.  I had changed beyond recognition.  Become the antithesis of the values and principles I had once lived my life by.  I hadn't yet had the time, or energy, to replace all these critical components of me that I felt I had lost since coming to America, when my husband decided he was Done.

At the time, it felt like I had truly lost everything.  For a while Chicago represented the toughest of times, where my life took a series of turns that I had never anticipated and prepared myself for.  It was hardly the carefree, exciting 2 year adventure that I naively set out on over 10 years ago.

Yet I know I would not have the strength and optimism I have today about my future, without the love and support of my friends in Chicago over the years.

God, I'm going to miss them.