Chicago’s Union Station

Every year, my family catches the 6:32 a.m. train and we ride it up to Chicago's Union Station. In Union Station, I am home. I have been there so many times through the years that every trip back is another knot coming undone, another reminder of how much I've survived and how long I've been on this planet. But every time I'm there, seeing the groups of people and the workers and the yelling and the smell of human sweat and looks from the homeless and all the rich businessmen that try to pass me in line for the bathroom, I can't help but feel isolated. I am surrounded by humanity in all of its forms. Pickpocketers and mothers are looking for their children, kids are running around making noise and there are men who have just missed their train and are giving the rest of us a show. When I am in a large crowd of people, like the ones I see in Union Station, I remember that I am in no way unique or standout-ish. I am the general public. I am a member of society judging, regulating, becoming annoyed, staring. I am the traffic, a jam made of flesh, and there are people in front and behind me who wish I could vanish in a poof of smoke so they could simply walk through where my body had been. I'm an entity that has no business existing in anyone else's world. I'm a kid, no, a teenager, no, it actually doesn't matter.

I am in the way, that's what I am, and I really thought I could be happy in such a memorable place.