Fullerton Avenue

Clark to Fullerton to Halsted looks nothing like it used to back when I had a neon pink knapsack from Urban Outfitters. But, Belden to Sheffield to Wrightwood is the same and I hate it.

People ask about DePaul a lot, why I left, what I didn’t like about it. I give different levels of the same answer but rarely the truth. DePaul University is a place that I once crossed paths with so many people that are in my life now that I didn’t know then. And,I’m so grateful I didn’t know them then. It’s not that I was a different version of myself at DePaul it’s that I was different person entirely. Now that campus is nearby, now that I’m ordering Tequila Sprites for people that I never got to buy drinks for when we were at school together, now that I’m me, I’ve driven myself to look back.

I re-read Facebook messages from September 2013 and I genuinely don’t even recognize the brain of someone who would send them. I walked past Arts and Letters on the way to an appointment and tried to remember the absolute mess I made storming out of that lecture. I squint one eye closed and try to remember if that guy from that band was, in fact, in my creative writing class and if I met him again today would he remember how shitty my writing used to be or how I incessantly talked without saying anything. Then, I get angry.

There were really good parts at DePaul. There was Dance Company, there was the acting I got to do, there was laughter, and there was my burgeoning passion for academics. I can’t act as if it was all shit. But, I wish I could go back and act differently; honest and vulnerable and as mature as I am now. I’m jealous of the people that were mature back then. I hid during my time at DePaul and that’s what made that place so miserable.

I was really excited to go to college there. I loved the city and I was going to be able to hang out with other weird little artsy folks who wanted to dress like stupid hipsters. We were going to go to shows, and museums, and parties, and heavily wing out our eyeliner to sneak in to bars. I was really stoked for all of that. I knew my anxiety may get in the way a bit, I still hated being away from home, but it was really under control when I made my decision. I led with excitement.

I’ve avoided admitting this next part for a long time because I thought ‘who am I to say this impacted me when it impacted other people more?’ but in my older years I think of it all differently. My friend died two months before I left for college and that sent me into a spiral, a big shift in everything I thought and felt. We still to this day do not know exactly what happened, just a general idea. One day she was alive and happy and incredible and loving and then another day she was gone. I was terrified from that day forward that that could happen to me as well, especially in the circumstances of college. Suddenly all the things I wanted to do scared me. I searched out comfort and relief by hiding myself away from what I once loved and kissing boys that I had no real interest in.

If I could have lunch with my freshman roommate we’d giggle and gush over the same things we talked about giggling and gushing over in all our Facebook messages before I got to school, before I cried my little eyes out in our dorm. I wish we could have done all the things we planned to do and that I didn’t push her away because she wasn’t afraid of what I was. I will always and forever regret losing her as a friend.  

When my anxiety peaks I try to desperately cling to the socially acceptable parts of myself; facets of me that are more easily digestible. So, I rushed sororities. I donned chevron and statement necklaces and wrote ‘BIG’ and ‘LITTLE’ in puffy paint. It wasn’t enough for me to hide away in though. Girls can be mean, and while a lot of the women I know now that wore the same sparkly colors as me were not and are not, there were a few that were vile. I don’t think those women would be vile now, I actually think they are great people doing great things. I was terrified of drugs and drinking so much so that I didn’t even want to be around it, and while it wasn’t a prerequisite to being included, it also felt like it was and may have been why those girls were so cruel.

I found the group of people that weren’t doing that and pretended to be happy with them. They judged me hard for being myself, for listening to the music I liked, for not judging people, even for swearing (I actually had to put money in a swear jar once on a road trip and I’m still mad about it). In the embrace of this community that felt didn’t even like me, I wanted to run back to the people I was originally so happy to be at college with but the door to them seemed closed and I was also too afraid to knock; unable to face what was on the other side.

I couldn’t hide myself completely, that’s just not something a person can do. So, little bits of me, parts I hated, came out. If I had just said, “I’m scared I’m going to die but I want to enjoy this and do this and be this”, and “I’m so scared I’m coping by developing intense silly crushes to validate that I’m a person that’s worthwhile to exist”, and also perhaps “there’s something else happening here that needs to be addressed because sometimes I feel like a different human being altogether that doesn’t have limits and then other times I feel an intense capability to enter the depths of hell”. If I had just said those things, scenes of my life would have turned out differently. Probably not better, maybe in the short term better but only different in the long-term. But, I didn’t.

Here’s what did happen, I dropped out in February 2015 and immediately started working part-time and interning for a Children’s publishing company. I was remarkably depressed during that time of my life, like looking to the sky for answers sad I switched medicines and then switched them again. I went to a small Liberal Arts school about an hour north of Chicago called Lake Forest College. I switched medicine again, and finally the caffeinated feeling in my bones quieted. I graduated with high honors and a B.A. in English. I gave a speech at graduation, not solely on merit but because people I went to school wanted me to. They chose me and not a version of myself I hid behind. I got a job as a journalist reporting on the biopharmaceutical industry, got a creative writing certificate from Yale, left my job as a journalist, COVID occurred, got a job in Marketing, then another job in Marketing that was a step up, then another job in Marketing that was an even bigger step up, then another step up into a job in Communications. Somewhere in there I wrote a novel, was cast in a movie, cast in a play, fell in love, fell out of love, moved back to Chicago and then moved again into a different part of the city, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.

If you knew me at DePaul, you really didn’t know me at all, maybe little bits of me, but I was more of a well-decorated shell of Maggie than actually Maggie. I wasn’t really me until I was like 22.

I’m so proud of who I am. I love who I am. You would probably love me actually, I’m very fun and relatively chill. But, I do feel bad that I left all of the people, the good parts of DePaul behind and never really looked back for them. A few of them wouldn’t let me just run and I’m grateful. For those that I simply ghosted, please know I haunt you on Instagram with so much love. I wish things would have been different there so I don’t hate walking down Belden and Racine and Sheffield and Webster, but it is also a beautiful view from the vantage point I have now.