Gaining My Bearings

Chicago is very well laid-out, but I get lost constantly. Actually, I’m starting to get better about finding my way, and have far fewer instances of driving (or walking) around fruitlessly searching for a road I’ve missed despite my best efforts to follow the directions provided by friends, mapquest, or people on the street. I have the worst sense of direction, a characteristic that has caused me great embarrassment. I sometimes wonder if directional sense is directly related to self-confidence. When I’m somewhere different, or if I have someone in my car that makes me nervous, I feel somewhat defenseless, and very unsure of myself. And then I get lost. But when I first arrived here, I even got lost going back to places I’d already been to. It worsened after my break-up at the end of September. During the past two weeks, however, despite being very ill with strep throat part of that time, I noticed my thoughts decreasingly focused on that old relationship, and my confidence increasing. I’ve only gotten turned around twice since then. I even drove myself to my new doctor’s office with a 102 degree temperature, feeling like crap, into busy downtown and back home again without a hitch. This may sound like a small feat, but it was a pretty big deal to me.

Let me also add that when I drove into Chicago for my interview in August, it was the worst traffic I’d ever driven in in my life. It was a Sunday evening, and I got caught in Cubs traffic, mixed with people driving to the beach, and, in my neighborhood, going to one of the many theatres for Sunday evening shows. On I-90, on the way in, traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and I had to learn, immediately, how to be aggressive in switching lanes. I was tense and nervous and, go figure, I got lost. To be fair, Yahoo! Maps gave me the wrong directions (again) and after I’d missed my exit, I got off at Wacker, recognizing the street name from my brief glances at the Chicago map online. I managed to maneuver us to Lake Shore Drive (which was insane with traffic) and then, my mom called the hotel to get directions and they gave us the wrong directions, because they thought we were heading north, when we were headed south. When I saw that we were about to merge back onto I-90 (and pay more tolls!!) I swerved over and got off at the last exit, spitting out a few expletives in the process. Finally, the hotel gave us the proper directions, and I got back on Lake Shore going north and we made our way to the hotel.

Once we were there, we didn’t want to leave. I felt as though my pores were emanating stress. But, we had to go check out some apartments I’d found on Craigslist, because I didn’t want to have to come back to Chicago just to do that if I got the job. So, after calling my now roommate for directions, we ended up back on Lake Shore drive, and got completely trapped in Cubs traffic. It took us about 45 minutes to get to where I now live (it should have taken about 20.) Anyway, to make a long story short, I have never again seen traffic in the city as bad as I experienced that day. But it made me extremely nervous about driving in Chicago at all, and I’m still getting over it. I fully expected Chicago traffic to be that way all the time; thank God it’s not.

The diagonal streets do not help me out when I miss a street and try to turn around by making three right turns. I want to make a box to get back to the street I was on and go back the way I came, but then a diagonal street pops up and suddenly I’m on some street I’ve never heard of. And there are some places where three streets intersect all at once (like Halstead, Lincoln and Fullerton) where you don’t know what the hell to do because the street signs are impossible to read and you have four possible ways to turn (if you don’t want to go straight.) So, it’s not entirely my fault that I get lost, and sometimes end up on a completely different street than the one I thought I was on. I really need to invest in a compass. I understand north, south, east and west better in this city than I ever had in my life. As long as I know which way I’m headed, I can usually figure out how to get where I’m going. But I don’t have an innate sense of where the lake is (my east reference, of course), so I sometimes don’t know which direction I’m going. And I always forget which way the street numbers are supposed to go if you’re traveling west.

Luckily, I generally only drive on the weekends. I rely on public transportation the great majority of the time. I do get confused, however, when I get off at a new stop and have to head, say, west on a street. I often don’t know if right is west, or left.

It’s embarrassing to get lost, especially when you’re trying to fit in. But I, at least, should give myself a break. After all, I’ve only been living here for two months. I’m still feeling out the situation, like baby roots just creeping out into the soil, looking for the best route to water. I am still uncertain about my future in this city, my place here, and which people I should get close to. I have times when I feel lost—literally and figuratively. But those moments force me to search, until I find my way back home. And I learn something each time. So, I may get lost a dozen more times in the next couple of months, but eventually I’ll have gotten lost so many times I’ll know my way around the whole city! And then, maybe, I’ll have my bearings.