The Letting Go

“I came here to let you know, the letting go, has taken place.”—Melissa Etheridge

It’s been years in the making. Ever since I began teaching my humanities classes at Roosevelt University on Zoom from my South Loop apartment in March of 2020. Remote teaching ultimately didn’t suit me and I felt adrift and unsettled, as though I was slightly floating above solid ground. Nearly unrecognizable to myself during those lonely, corrosive pandemic days, I have discovered years later, I am no longer completely, emotionally present in my city of origin.

It’s still hard to admit, but I have broken up with the city of Chicago, my beloved hometown.

There isn’t much that I remember from those last months leading up to the pandemic:? persistent demonstrations in Grant Park, violent police riots, frequent protest marches alongside my apartment building on Michigan Avenue, calling for social justice, calling for equity, the rise of daily carjackings, petty street crimes, parallel to the large-scale vandalisms of the State Street Macy’s and other local Loop stores—all important factors contributing to the dissolution of my bond with Chicago.

Perhaps it was the untiring demand for isolating that began in earnest in the spring of 2020, coupled with government demands for masked social distancing, that forced my spirit to diminish.? Add in the steadily rising global death count and the subsequent confusion on how to quell the spread of the virus, and it was a toxic cocktail to sip daily.

Then came the endless winter hibernation in my apartment, with its confining grey-blue walls, a calendar of dates devoid of touch or in-person visits from family and friends. When my sleep pattern suddenly splintered after the holidays, I entered an unsteady somnambulism, with a long, persistent stream of dreamless days.

By April of 2021, I was finally broken.? I no longer felt wholly connected to the urban center I had once declared as my true home.

I encountered a strange year of basically sleepwalking and by the spring of 2022, I found that my past relationships with friends, some that I had trusted for nearly thirty years, had begun to unravel.? How could it be that the familiarity and foundational memories we had built up had begun to wither?? The past history we took for granted with one another had somehow become a source of trivial fights with ensuing silences that would staunchly persist.

I also deeply missed my circle of beloved university colleagues and the students who always greeted me with a familial tenderness.? And where I once stood in my full capacity as a quirky and outspoken university professor—I found myself in a kind of muted indecisiveness, free falling in a soured limbo, and drifting like an aimless satellite above the boarded-up ruins of the metropolis that had once relentlessly called out to me.

To say that Chicago had shaped my character and disposition would be an understatement. “We Chicagoans,” was always a defining personality statement that came easily to me, one filled with pride and an overwhelming sense of belonging—a palpable, unquestionable touchstone to my identity in the world.

Tenacious, friendly, curious, down-to-earth, grounded in compassion and the desire to connect authentically, I saw my core values mirrored back to me in the zeitgeist of this legendary Midwestern city for my entire academic career. My Jesuit-informed education at Loyola University and then later at DePaul, both urban-centered campuses, grounded me in a tradition of enthusiastic service to others—training that would strengthen me in my pursuit to both teach and write.

As a dedicated city dweller, to endure the annual ice storms and lake effect snow blasts, speaks to embracing hard challenges and encompassing the soul of resilience. Chicagoans by nature are generally stoic and infinitely patient when it comes to the bitter winter months.

But then came a January wallop in 2023 that provoked a significant change of heart in me. Entrenched in a knee-deep drift of stubborn ice encapsulated by snow, I began to weep uncontrollably over the steering wheel of my Mini Cooper.

“It’s over,” I declared to the kind Samaritan who volunteered to dig me out of the snowbank. “I can’t stay stuck like this anymore.”

I’m certain my stifled sobs were bewildering to the composed stranger, but signaled to me an important change of course in my life. That evening, with my hands still reddened and chafed from pushing myself out of the parking lot drift, I began to plan my final exit from the city.

Stained furniture of a dozen past lives, dusty ephemera that no longer held any charm, I found myself wandering unfamiliar rooms in my apartment like a muffled ghost.? A quick survey of my space confirmed the need to unbury myself from random souvenirs:? a keychain from the legendary Dugan’s Bistro, the first gay discotheque in the city I had ever entered with a made-up driver’s card, the blackened stone fragment saved from the time a lightning bolt struck the side of the Madonna Della Strada chapel where I was held suspended by a first kiss, the Navy Pier summer program from 1983, signed by pop star Laura Branigan, utterly faded in its impermanence.

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As I began gathering and taping together storage boxes, I realized soon enough that I had entered a state of utter detachment, a near catatonia.? I found myself filling each carton with the intention of saving items, only to eventually surrender them to the rear loading dock of my building for any stranger to rummage through and claim.

“What does my next life need with this unwieldy number of books,” I asked myself. “Who needs a thousand vinyl albums and cds?” I would shake my head, imagining walking an endless coastline in Ireland, devoid of? baggage, and with no costly storage bin to maintain.

A dear friend of mine called it my “Swedish death purge stage”—a moment when I needed to consider who would take care of all that I had acquired in my life, when I was no longer around to look after it.? In Swedish, the exercise is d?st?dning — a combination of the word “d?” (which means death) and “standing” (which means cleaning), and it is ultimately about permanently settling the clutter in one’s midlife so that everything runs a bit more smoothly. It's an opportunity for clarity and to acknowledge that one's life won't go on forever.

Eventually I completed what I could of this tedious process and sold my apartment.? And while to the outside world everything seemed fairly normal, (I took care of my elder cat, screened my poetry videos, released a small press book of poems, regularly posted photos to my Instagram from various road trips to New Mexico and Michigan), I was in the end, living a half-life in the gap known as the “in-between”—sleeping on my former partner’s caved-in sofa or lodging for long weekends at my brother’s suburban home.

Rootless, ungrounded, scattered, all that kept me going was the earnest intention to eventually enter a new life as an ex-pat living abroad. I filled out visa papers at the Spanish Consulate and waited for my number to come up.

And that’s how I wound up in my current residence in Barcelona, Spain.

Oftentimes the people I meet here in Catalonia will ask me, “Where are you from,” and I’ll smile to answer “Chicago.”

Well everyone knows Chicago, or at least some past remnant of the city: the legendary lakefront, the iconic Marina towers, the gruesome shooting of John Dillinger behind the Biograph Theater, shopping for Frango mints at Marshall Fields on State Street.? You’d be surprised at how many Spanish people know the words to the Frank Sinatra classic,? “Chicago” and then ask me, “Can you tell me, what exactly does ‘toddling town’ mean?"

The truth is, I'm not sure I know, or even care to know.? These are the final vestiges of a messy break-up—a mournful separation that continues to linger, even though I no longer have an address there in what was once, "my city" or feel secure enough to call myself a Chicagoan.

Coda:

For the past year I’ve lived in the Gràcia district in Barcelona, a village within a village, known for its bohemian spirit and walkable streets.? I still load in travel photos to my Instagram, mostly from my European excursions, and I’ve recently started a personal travelogue on Substack, documenting my approach to the art of setting forth on a journey.? I’d love if you’d follow me and subscribe for free to my postings.? Thank you all so kindly for all your generous support and well wishes.? LinkedIn is a valuable resource for me and a way of keeping updated and united with all my dear friends and colleagues, past and present.

Subscribe to "Spontaneous Me: A Travelogue With Gerard Wozek" at Substack.

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(all photographs in this essay are taken by Gerard Wozek unless otherwise indicated)