As we walked through
the marble stone gate, we were presented by a small pathway for runners and,
next to it, a wall that went to about our chest. We quickly climbed over the
wall and, revealed to us, were large concrete steps that led down to the
lakefront.
We made our way down briskly (or jumped our way down
rather, since the steps were more built for giants) and stood right over the
water. It swayed with a calmness that was almost silent and the waves were
nowhere near menacing. Out in the distance, you saw the sky, almost absent of
all sunlight, meet the water. It was a perfect meeting of the abyss and the
unknown, as both seemed to continue on forever in peaceful coexistence.
We turned around to an equally pleasant scene. On the
right side of the steps we had just made
our way down, there were three kids, all dressed in black, and one of them
playing an acoustic guitar. You couldn’t make out exactly what he was playing,
but they seemed content and the notes went well with the surprisingly warm
breeze that haunted the moment. In front of us, on top of the wall, the couple
that was making out were cuddled together in each other’s arms, watching the
same silent water that we had come to notice. Their hands were locked together
and they smiled with the content of each other’s company. To the left, a few
friends were just hanging out, talking, and enjoying the warm night.
There weren’t too many people around besides them and us,
except for a few people that still walked the path behind the wall, their upper
body bobbing up and down like puppets on an oversized stage, their lower half
cut off from view by concrete. It had just reached the end of any sunlight that
shined on the day, and would be totally dark in just a few minutes.
Watching…no…feeling the scene around me, I took a few
deep breaths and realized that I had no worries at that moment. I had no fears,
I didn’t feel anything bad, I felt content, I felt like nothing could hurt me.
I had good company in a peaceful home-away-from-home setting.
I turned to T.J., one of my best friends, and we talked
about life after college and the future ahead. Unlike me, he is graduating on
time and hoping to go off to Northern Ireland for a year for a service project.
As for me, I have an extra semester here, which I can’t complain about, and
walk next year. It’s going to be nice staying in Chicago though and see where
life takes me. But, at the moment, life took me to the lake after a crazy
weekend, and every ounce of me was happy with that.
You see, T.J. and I spent the whole weekend on close to no
sleep. It was maybe a total of seven hours of sleep in 72 hours. Thanks to a bout of insomnia, I didn’t sleep
at all Friday night and instead, went to my favorite café when they opened at
5:30 am and had breakfast, then went home, took a little 3 hour nap, and went
off for another day of adventures with T.J. The next night, I feel sleep around
3:00am (which was really 4:00am because of daylight savings time…damn it) and
woke up about 5 hours later to start the busy day. T.J. stayed up until about
5:00 a.m. Friday night, but still didn’t get much sleep. The next night, though
I didn’t ask him, we were still out pretty late together so I’m sure he was up
awhile.
I’m not sure if this was the contributing factor to the
peace that surrounded me at that moment on the lake, but there was also another
feeling. In addition to the calm night that surrounded me, there was also a
looming air of something beginning or even ending. It felt like being home but,
at the same time, being lost. Lost in something unfamiliar yet unthreatening.
I climbed the small ladder that lead down to the water to
see how cold it was and as I hung off the yellow metallic ladder and stuck my hand in the water, the sensation of the softest fabric you could ever touch warmed my
skin, silently and motherly. It held my hand and greeted me with confidence. I
slowly took my hand out, climbed up the ladder slowly, and told T.J. that it
wasn’t too cold.
We talked and joked for a few minutes as a few stars
appeared in the darkness above us like very distant headlights, and as we
watched them, I listened to my breath and let that same unknown feeling of
happiness, content, and unknown flow through my mind and my body. It did feel like a beginning or an end. It’s silence was the loudest
poem to echo in my ears. I turned to T.J.
“Doesn’t this kind of feel like the ending of something.
Like a movie, or something.”
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