Never leave Chicago on your period.

Never leave Chicago on your period.

On your last day, you're gonna be tugging at your wedgie all the time. You will be worried about staining, puking or shitting your pants (maybe both. Or all at once). You will worry about stains. You will worry.

You will pay more attention to your aches and less to the windy city.

There will be little time left for tourist activities.

On your last day in Chicago on your period, your belly is gonna ache and your skin is gonna look terrible and your hair will be greasy. You will wonder if you smell bad. Are you that person? What a terrible predicament.

You will be irritated, doubting your every move because everything hurts and it's your last day. Should you go here or should you go there? Should you want to be suffering in a bed right now!? You will be in a museum, trying to take it all in, with your uterus pushing it all out, next to your Illinois current resident father.

You will feel tears, you will swallow them and feel bloated thanks to your guts and salt. Everything in you is leaving, even your blood. You are leaving Chicago soon.

In a car ride, between painful groans and lonely stretches, you fantasize about seeing your Second City friends walking down the street. In your imagination, you and your dad pick them up in that tiny Fiat blasting Madonna and ask "where should we drop you off?". In your mind, you share minutes of conversation you wish you had.

You get home after a spiral of emotions to pack your luggage. What a convenient situation! Menstruating and leaving a beautiful city.

You are feeling too sensitive right now. 

Your diplomat, expert-traveller dad helps you fill and weigh your 50 pound TSA limit bags full of gifts and presents that are in the bags and not in the bags. Everything is beautiful.

I am so thankful.

We both know what we are feeling and we are not saying it.

It's easier this way.

On your period, you usually don't talk  about it in a very detailed way with your dad. This is common.

You sit down for dinner. You still feel cramps and can't tell the difference between "I'm starving" and "If I eat I will barf". Your dad says you're not there. You're there, but he's right. You burst into sobs, because you can't pretend. You never did. You can't lie. You are not a bullshitter. "I'm going to miss you so much". Your North American baby sister starts crying. Your not-so-evil stepmother walks in, cradling her, saying how she will miss me too. Everyone laughs because two of dad's daughters are crying.

He tells me I should be happy about what I lived, not sad about leaving.

So, yes.

I am on my period.

I am leaving Chicago.

I fell in love.

With a person, with a place, with a body of water. It doesn't matter. I fell in love.

And I am saying goodbye.

And that makes me sad. For now.