A Tale of Two Cities...

High above the clouds the Windy City grows smaller in the distance. The snowflakes blew sideways against the plane as it struggled to take off this morning, angrily slapping the frigid metal as it labored down the runway. Old Man Winter had finally shown up.

The cursor blinks at me against the white backdrop of Microsoft’s virtual paper. It waits patiently for me to form sentences from thoughts, to find a way to turn my broken heart to words. But I stare and think and don’t type, cant type, wont type, because each sentence causes the lump in my throat to rise. Each letter brings tears closer to my eyes and I do not want to cry. I cannot afford to cry.

On March 1st I will leave Chicago.

I will leave Chicago. I will leave Chicago. I will leave Chicago. Four times I type it and it still seems so wrong. I live Chicago. I love Chicago. I bleed and breathe and bask in Chicago. I fell to my knees in the shadow of the kingly Chicago skyline and admitted how absolutely marred and broken I was.

I was comfortable in Chicago.

So today, on my two year anniversary of life without vodka, I fly and fight tears as I think about the upcoming change. I will leave the city I love with all my heart and head south, relocating to Atlanta, Georgia to take my career to the next level. I will leave all that I love, all those that I love, and start a new life completely alone.

And it hurts.

It hurts in my soul, in the marrow of my bones where the deepest hurt always resides. I think about my friends, about Rico and Wayne the Painter and Tommy and A and all the people that have made a profound impact on the man that I turned out to be. I think about the Chicago summer and Sundays at the beach. I think about all the days that I spent walking and thinking, working out my life one footstep at a time. I think about the vastness of the Lake Michigan, about the feeling I get when I ride down Lake Shore Drive on my motorcycle, and the day that I went to rehab.

I will do this though, regardless of the pain, and I will do it well. I will not falter. I will walk tall and achieve greatness. I will build a future for Haley and her sister upon a foundation of sacrifice and I will humbly strive for excellence. I will fight through adversity as I always have, dancing, bobbing and weaving as life throws jabs and left hooks. I will do what I have to do like a man, like a father, like a soldier.

Today I type for resolve, for strength, for the confidence to leave all I know pave the road less traveled. Today I type to find closure. But the more I type, the less I know, and the only closure I see is of the door that leads to Chicago.

Because when I was eighteen and I left for the first time, I left because of pain and problems and an eerie premonition. Four years later I returned, a prodigal son of sorts, beaten and broken from pushing the limits far too many times. I returned a tyrant and an unmanageable despot, a pit bull off his leash ready to maul whoever didn’t understand what I had been through. I raged. But as time wore on and I slowly began to heal, I shed my skin and became a new man. I learned discipline and perseverance, acceptance, humility, and honesty. For the first time in my life I was able to embrace my imperfections and flaws as critical parts of what I aspired to be and vowed to heed the words, “To thine own self be true” in all that I did and all that I do.

And I guess that’s what I’m doing. Being true. To myself, to Haley, to Kayla, to my parents, and to my friends. I was given a shot while working at a restaurant five years ago and I took it. This will be no different. I’m a criminal and a drug addict and a high school dropout and an alcoholic and my success is bittersweet. I’m a complete anomaly and not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.

I don’t deserve any of this but I will take it. God has walked with me some of my life, carried me for most of it, and now, I think, he stands back and guides me. I will miss my friends, on nights when the slow Georgia summer keeps me up. I will miss my lake, my city, my concrete jungle but I will not be sad. Pain breed character, character breeds success and success, well, success secures futures. My boy said it best though...

“Here we go it’s my shot, feet fail me not, this may be the only opportunity I got.”
-Eminem