Ever since happily stumbling into Bravo at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I’ve been more amenable to trying out the finer dining options at other museums. The Art Institute of Chicago, with its airy eating establishment in the modern wing, offered another opportunity for that, and I rested my museum-fatigued feet for an early Sunday lunch. Looking at art can tire a person quickly, and I say that only half-jokingly. Surely I wasn’t half as tired as this fine lady and her pooch – they’d been standing like this for hours, with no sign of a break anytime soon.

It was about noon, but rather than the traditional mimosa or Bloody Mary, I opted for a special cocktail – the Mantuano – sort of a tequila-based twist on the negroni. Whatever it was, it was wonderful, and the perfect appetite teaser for the main course of smoked salmon on an avocado spread and a 63 degree egg. Art museums seem to like the 63 degree egg, as I had a similarly-cooked concoction at Boston’s MFA.

This was similarly delicious, and a runny yolk will make any dish that much better. Only a few other tables were filled, leaving my dining experience a pleasantly quiet one. Maybe it was best that Chris wasn’t up yet.

I walked back to the museum entrance, passing at a few more paintings and pieces along the way. A series of polished marble statues guarded a rotunda of sorts. Out of reverence or awe, or both, I stop to stare.

Even the simplest objects gain a finer glean when housed with such finery. (Especially when arranged in the colors of the rainbow.)

Certain pieces called to me with their vibrant force of life, and I thought back on the previous night. Had I gone out and partied hard, I might not be able to be here now, and the here and the now was breathtakingly beautiful. Moving, too, and I felt a familiar tug at my heart.

Outside, the day was at its height.

The sun was warm.

This was spring.

How could I miss it?

After the darkness of my journey back in time, the lights of downtown Chicago were welcome. Even more of a comfort were the lights of my hotel room. They always feel so much brighter than home. (In fact, I’ve taken to turning on both bedside lamps in my bedroom at home to replicate the comfort and safety of a hotel room. Strange, I suppose, and not the wisest thing to do before bed, but I need that light, especially in the winter.)

On this night, I step off the train at Grand, back where I began earlier in the evening. By the time I got back to the room, it was only 11 or 11:30, and Chris was texting me to go out, but I didn’t want that. I was at a different place than I was even just a few years ago. A different place than Chris too, who, despite plans to accompany me to the Art Institute the next morning, would sleep in again and miss it all.

I was in bed by midnight. I wanted to greet the day early, and make the most of a Sunday in Chicago…

The sprawling expanse of it never ceased to impress me.

It was a “city of neighborhoods” everyone had said.

We only ever needed one.

The apartment was a ten-minute walk to the train – the Granville stop of the red line to Howard (14 stops from downtown Chicago). One of the last on the line, so far north was it. Near the lake too, though I only went there once or twice. It would not be warm enough – not during the limited months of fall and winter in which I’d be there. (I didn’t know that at the tail end of summer when we moved in, else I’d have gone a few more times.) We found the apartment earlier in the summer. It was one of the first we looked at, and, somewhat frightened we might not find another, we took it without exploring others. It was huge, but rather far from the downtown and other places of population. We’d forgotten the main tenet of any real estate interaction: location, location, location. Still, the space was immense and airy. A sunny living room with an expanse of windows (in which we draped silk saris and a bright accent of orange fabric) was where we set up my writing desk and the television. A dining room, which we used maybe once or twice, was luxuriously plopped in the middle of the layout. There was a cozy kitchen in the back corner of the apartment, in which I cut my cooking teeth, and two bedrooms. He would move into the smaller, second one right before we ended it.

I sat on the train, not reading a book or looking at my phone, but simply existing, inhabiting the moment. This was important to me, I don’t know why. I’d long since made peace with my ex-boyfriend. We were friends. The past was done. I was returning for something else.

The train ride went swifter than I recalled it going. Back when I lived here, I could not get to and fro quickly enough. Every time I sat on the train, I wanted only to get off it as soon as possible. On this night, I sat and breathed in the moment. As each stop ticked by – Addison, Sheridan, Wilson, Lawrence, Argyle – I remembered a little more. Frigid nights, waiting on the platform for the next train… The first flush of snow that fell so furiously in that first and only awful winter… The happy trips downtown in the beginning… The lonely trips near the end… And this trip… which would it be? Lost in thought, I looked up as we were pulling out of Thorndale. The next stop was mine.

It came too soon. I wasn’t ready.

I stepped off the train and walked down to the street. Vaguely, it began to come back to me. I sensed direction more than I recognized anything specifically. A bar I recalled was still there beside the station, and I ducked into it for a drink. A toast to the past. A glass of fortitude. A bit of warmth as the night grew ever colder.

Back on the street, I walked in the direction of my old apartment. It was more difficult to remember in the dark of night, but I still knew the general way I was headed. It was quiet here. I always liked that about this part of the city. Tonight, it was haunted.

Do you know the scene in the Harry Potter books when he returns to Godric’s Hollow? That’s how this night felt. There were ghosts here, phantoms of the past scurrying about, and each shadow held a promise and a warning. I hastened my pace, and realized I had overshot my turn. I asked the only soul I saw along the way where Thome was, and he directed me back to the street I had just crossed. When you’re 41, things are fuzzier than when you were 25, especially at night.

Back on track and righted for the instant, I approached my former apartment from the opposite end. It was fitting, I suppose, coming at things from a different angle. It also happened to be the first way we approached the place on the day we moved in.

An August day, summer in Chicago, at the last half of the end of the century. The year was 1999. Everything was about to end. It was hot, as expected, but there was a different kind of heat in my throat, which felt like it was closing up as a sickness hit me the moment we drew into the city. A bad omen, to be sure, but I was still hopeful. I’d go to the hospital a day or two later to figure out what was wrong, and then I would heal. An inauspicious beginning to an early end. Something wasn’t right.

We both knew it. I felt it in my heart, but was too afraid to admit it. On our first day moving in, I’d seen our mailbox, and we put both our names on it. It left me with such a feeling of promise, and a burden as well. In a changing world, we were a couple now. A gay couple, and certain eyes would focus on us as an example of what was to come. There would be shame and a victory for all the worst people if we were to break up. That’s no reason to have or end a relationship. But it was in the back of my mind the whole time. I’d be lying if I pretended it didn’t matter. I’d also be lying if I pretended it wasn’t unfair.

We settled in nonetheless. He took a job at a dinner theater place, the way most actors do. I sought freelance work and got a couple of articles published in the Windy City Times. It was my first encounter with an editor who cut me down to size, and it was the most embarrassing and helpful bit of guidance I would receive. (Thank you, Neda Ulaby.) Growing up means acknowledging what you don’t know, and having the courage to accept criticism and advice with grace, and with an eye toward improvement. Ms. Ulaby gave me some much-needed wisdom about leading with a striking sentence, and setting up the reader to want to read more. I had never thought about writing that way, and in so many ways I owe her more than I ever told her.

It was a small moment of personal advancement in a time when I settled into the homemaker role. My boyfriend was out and about at work and auditions. I cherished the role, and I started cooking for us – walking to the local market and coming up with dishes from a cookbook that my Mom had given us. It was an empty job, as most homemakers, male and female, ultimately realize. I shouldn’t say that. Some find fulfillment in it, and I will be the first to defend the difficulty and nobility in it. More accurately, it wasn’t for me, not then, not so soon. I’d kill to do it now, but back then it wasn’t me. I wanted it to be, but he didn’t want that. We would always be different.

He saw that first, and he had the prescience to end it then. I wanted that discipline and forethought and courage, but I didn’t have it. That’s why it broke me. Still, as much as I was heartbroken, on some level I knew he was right. Those are always the saddest break-ups. Because there had been good. There had been romance. There had been the beginnings of a life together. I was devastated when it ended. But I understood.

Suzie had come on that last day and we drove a rented truck away from my first true love. I remembered that now. In the dark of night, I approached the walkway to that apartment. No one else was around.

Tonight, I pause at the open gate and remember my first day and last day at that apartment. I walk by the privet hedge and the yellow brick of the building, and approach the entry-way. This was it. How strange that it felt like the end of the world at the time, and yet I feel so little right now.

At the end of the walkway, near the door, I see the buzzer box listening the current inhabitants. I remember when our names were next to each other there. I peer inside at the row of mailboxes, and to the right, where the stairs led up to our old apartment. There was darkness there now. Darkness of night, and darkness of memory. It wasn’t my home now. It never was.

Turning around, I go back into the night. Walking to the train station, the route I had taken so many times, so many years ago, I found myself crying. It caught me by surprise. The church that once inspired a short story stood before me. A monolith of gray stone, it rose into the sky. I always felt dizzy as I followed it higher with my eyes.

The street was empty. I was grateful for that.

I cried for how young we were, how much we knew but didn’t know, and how much we had once loved each other. I cried for the way life did this to us, how we grew past it, how we forgot and moved on and all that we shared here seemed like nothing. I cried for the young man I left behind in this city, for how much he once cared.

I cried for the beauty of this night, for the dark solitude in which I found myself seventeen years later, for the way I walked past the block the first time because I had forgotten so much, for the gentleman who turned me in the right direction, and for the couple suddenly walking their dog behind me. I don’t know why, but I cried for it all.

I slowed my pace as I neared the intersection near the train station. It was brighter here.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

Back in the street lights of the main road, I wipe away my tears, almost laughing at them. Maybe this was the delayed weeping from having seen ‘Hamilton’ and forcing myself not to bawl in front of anyone.

…The moments when you’re in so deep/ It feels easier to just swim down…

And maybe they’re just the tears of the past that I never cried.

My friend LeeMichael had been in Chicago a few weeks before my visit and had advised me to try to get day-of ‘Hamilton’ tickets. To be honest, I’d never been enthralled with the idea of a hip-hopera lesson in history, but the hype and hoopla of the musical had largely been reported as justified, so I was open to giving it a shot. Tickets are notoriously difficult to get, and even when available they sometimes begin at the $800 mark. I won’t even pay that for Madonna, so I wasn’t counting on much. Yet there was a small line of four people at the ticket counter, and I hopped in to see if any cancellations for the lottery had taken place. Twenty minutes later, I had two second-row tickets at face value, and was frantically trying to reach Chris who still had not woken from the night before.

The show was due to start in a couple of hours, so I made my way to the nearby Palmer House Hilton, where I stayed on my very first visit to Chicago in 1995. Another memory, back to that summer visit over two decades ago. After a tumultuous train ride, my friend Kerry and I arrived to a heatwave in the height of August. The cool, dim opulence of the Palmer House was a balm on my overheated agitation, and I settled into the sumptuous lobby with relief, then and now. The memories were overlapping, but it was good. Despite the overbearing heat of that first trip, it had been a happy one. Now, we were about to see ‘Hamilton’ from the second row (I had to get the hotel to call Chris directly since he had his phone off and there was only an hour and a half to performance time) and I bellied up to the Palmer House bar for a quick lunch before the show.

For some reason, I had never ventured here when I lived in Chicago. I’m not sure why – hotel lobbies are my comfort zone, and this one was especially gorgeous. Maybe on some level I knew not to soil such magnificence with my frame of mind at the time. I was glad for that now. My memories were only happy ones, and I was making a new one with the American Revolution about to happen a few doors down.

The show was phenomenal (review to come) and after it was done I wanted to walk leisurely back to the hotel. Chris was in a rush for some reason, wanting to order a car to get us there quicker, but I was adamant. The afternoon was beautiful, and it was a manageable distance. We got back to the hotel and after suggesting a dozen restaurants, and having him turn them all down, we settled on a couple of options nearby. I’ve done this sort of dance with Chris before, and I wasn’t about to do it again. Without a plan, he would wander and waffle and in the end we’d have to settle for something neither of us wanted. But I was too tired to argue, and agreed to the first place we found, then suggested we go our own way for the evening. I had one more place I wanted to go, and he was agitating me with his FOMO. (More on that later too.)

I wrapped my scarf around my neck. The night had turned cooler, and the light had drained from the sky. It was only 8:30 or so, but my journey was a long one. I thought I could find my way, but I wasn’t sure. With a small sense of hesitancy, I hopped on the red line train and headed north. To the apartment where I’d lived with my first serious boyfriend…

The last time I saw the beluga whales at the John Shedd Aquarium I had tears in my eyes.

They were beautiful. Elegant and white, with deceptive “smiles” that hid any sorrow at their imprisonment. Such majesty should never be confined, and some souls were not meant to be tethered. My boyfriend was breaking up with me, and we stood beneath the blue water lost in our own thoughts, no longer together, no longer a partnership.

Maybe it was the magnificence of the whales, but I’ve always remembered that moment at the aquarium, when we were right at the end, quite vividly. Maybe it was the pain that was searing my heart – the burning scar being rendered upon my soul as the calming belugas swam in the blue.

They were still here, seventeen years later.

I’d gotten up early to beat the crowds. Chris slept in, so I was on my own in Chicago again. The day was sunny but cool – the perfect embodiment of spring. Arriving a few minutes prior to the opening hour, there was already a little line. I joined it, surrounded by families and couples, and soon they let us in. Nothing about the entrance was familiar. Had I even been here? I started to wonder.

Wandering through the exhibits near the front, I took my time and peered at the rainforest creatures behind their panes of glass. The fish swam languidly before us. Some kids squealed with delight, others, too young to know what was going on, cried with disinterest. I hurried away from that, and walked deeper into the building, seeking out the blue viewing room of the beluga whales, if it was even there, if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

I thought I would remember more. I thought I would feel an instant return to those days in Chicago, to that winter when it all fell apart. I thought I’d be overcome by emotion, and be able to turn it into a redemptive moment of empowerment. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be completely devoid of feeling. At most, there was just a faded ache, though it may have simply been the weariness of having walked so much in the last day. I was almost two decades older than when I last climbed all the steps to the aquarium. Perhaps that was all.

At the end of a faux-wooded path, I came upon the beluga pool. I did not recall being able to view it from above, but there they were, surfacing and spewing air and water. Like quickly-moving icebergs, their white bodies broke through the water as if it was a visit from other-worldly ghosts. Still, nothing here was familiar. I didn’t remember watching them from above, I only remembered being immersed in the blue, as though we were underwater too. That’s how the end of some relationships feel. Like a drowning. Not in the sense of suffocation, though I suppose that sometimes plays a part, but more like a heaviness from which you can’t escape. The only way out was to go deeper into the darkness, to dive down and wrestle with the specter of loneliness.

I walked along the edge of the pool and found the stairs that led to the underwater viewing room. I had remembered correctly after all. This, then, was the room where we once stood. In the mottled blue light, we had awkwardly balanced on the precipice of past and future, beside each other for one of the last times, watching the beluga whales glide through their only home. This, then, was the moment I remembered.

I couldn’t get enough air as I stood next to him and realized that it was over. I don’t know why it hit me then. We’d broken up a couple days before that, but I guess I still held out hope that it wasn’t over. I remember riding the train deeper into the city with him next to me, and seeking out any sense of reconciliation. The hardest part of the whole thing was that there wasn’t any awful reason for it – no infidelities or abuse or distinctive breaking point – we simply weren’t right for one another. Somehow, we ended up at the aquarium together. We would still be friends, we just wouldn’t be boyfriends.

Welcoming the darkness, I let the tears well up in my eyes. Before us, the belugas played. It looked like they were smiling. We smiled along with them.

There was so much unhappiness in that room and in that water.

Seventeen years later, I stand there again, in that same spot, amid the rising noise of excited children and scolding parents, and I remember. Vague echoes of all that pain invisibly travel over the space like waves of sonar. Yet it’s a sadness I can’t fully access, and for that I’m grateful. I take my leave of the whales. It’s unlikely that I will see them again in our lifetimes.

In the next tank over, a group of dolphins flies through the blue. They seem to smile too.

Soon after this, I take my leave of the aquarium. I need more light, and the day is sunny. The Chicago skyline, so clearly delineated along the lake, beckons me to other memories and new adventures. I do not know it then, but Chris and I are about to take part in a revolution…

My friend Chris had floated the idea of a Chicago stop when we were discussing possible tour plans. I’d suggested a weekend in Detroit to see his new city of residence, but when he proposed Chicago that sung with greater resonance. I’d lived there long ago, and had always intended to visit again. Somehow, it never happened in seventeen years. With Chris, however, I felt emboldened to confront any ghosts that might appear. Not that I expected anything of the sort. So much time had passed I wasn’t even sure I’d remember anything of the city, much less be moved by places I could barely recall.

The first thing I recalled was the immensity of the city, and how it sprawled in every direction from the Great Lake it ran along. And then I remembered how far O’Hare actually was from the city (literally 32 train stops). I didn’t mind. Check-in at the Palomar Chicago wasn’t for a few hours, and I enjoyed a lengthy commute when it wasn’t a regular occurrence. It gave me a chance to go back all those years. I don’t like to go back, but sometimes it’s good for you. I hoped that was the case. There was nothing left to lay to rest. Instead, I wanted to honor what I once had, and to alter those memories of sadness with the realization that everything had happened for a reason, and it had been good. Now I’m getting ahead of the story. Back to the train…

After a transfer to the red line, I finally hopped off at Grand in the middle of the loop. I remembered it vaguely. My room wasn’t quite ready, so I walked around a bit and did some shopping. I didn’t remember this section of town, but certain things felt familiar. Seventeen years is a long time. Maybe too much time to have anything mean something again. Maybe I waited too long.

The architecture. The skyscrapers. The vertical life.

I was astounded and impressed all over again.

The last time I lived here, it was in a remote location almost to the northern end of the red line, far from the heart of the downtown area (yet still somehow considered Chicago). Immersed in it is a different story entirely. Maybe that’s what had been so wrong. Maybe that would have made all the difference.

After checking in, I walked toward the Magnificent Mile, where my happiest memories of the city resided. (Shopping is always a happy recollection.) The day was bright and sunny, but brisk and breezy. A long, colorful scarf fluttered around my neck, and I squinted into the sun and wind. Spring was seen in the daffodils already in bloom – much further along than those at home. The Water Tower rose majestically in front of me, and the first of many memories washed over me.

It wasn’t a memory of my ex-boyfriend.

It wasn’t a memory of heartache.

It was a memory of loneliness.

I walked this street by myself.

Always alone.

For the first time, I felt sorrow in that.

Chicago.

I used to live there.

Briefly.

At the turn of the millennium.

It was another world away, another lifetime ago.

And on the seventeenth year that I left, to the month, I made a return visit there.

As the plane approached Lake Michigan, I felt a thrill and a worry.

You can never go back…

The scope of the city presented itself slowly, then expanded, and expanded some more, and I was reminded of how sprawling Chicago was. There was so much to see. There were so many memories. As we touched down, I didn’t know if I was ready. I was afraid of what I might find. More than that, I was afraid of what I might not find.

There is nothing more terrifying than the emptiness of a heart, even if it has been broken.