Another installment of brains are weird

Yesterday L. needed to be at Northwestern by 9:00 am for a class so we were out the door early. I had plans as to how I was going to spend my three hours in Evanston. The first was, of course, to head to Vogue Fabrics for a bit. Boy, I miss living close to it, though my checkbook is healthier as a result.

My next stop was to stop and see a friend who lives next door to the Big Ugly House, so that was where I headed next. Having lived in Evanston for so many years, there seems to be a part of my brain that has those mental maps stored because I still don't need to really think about where I'm going. The old habits just take over.

This is where it gets a little weird. I'm at a stop light sitting under the El tracks when my brain says, "I'm heading home now" as if the past eight and a half years never happened. There is a moment of agreement with my brain that that's the case, and then there comes the realization that I don't actually live in Evanston. At that moment my whole body was flooded with grief for a fraction of a second. Sanity then took back over. Things like this feel as though they take forever, but really it was just in the time it took for the light to turn. Adding to my sense of surrealism was the fact that my friends lives in the condo building where I lived in the rented basement apartment for three years after college. It was as if multiple past lives were all converging at the same time. 

It was oddly disconcerting and it's been lingering with me ever since. Because truth be told, if we were suddenly transported back to our Evanston life, there are a great many things and people who we would also miss desperately. I think that's why that moment of intense grief threw me. I'm not unhappy here; just the opposite in fact. I actually go days without thinking about Evanston. 

Brains are weird. 

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