June 4
HI Chicago
Upon awakening Sunday morning, my body was tired and my heart was happy, until I checked my Facebook feed around 10 or 11am. At that time, I saw a video posted that showed Bono walking out yesterday evening to Marcela, in the spot I had left 90 minutes previously, upon her suggestion that if he hadn't come out by 4pm, he wouldn't be coming out at all. Still, there she remained, at 5:30pm, waiting in that very place and insistently calling to him "HI Bono!" repeatedly, as he walked right up to the spot where I had been and began to chat with the line of fans. It seemed that she quieted only when he took her hand.
I felt like someone I thought of as a friend had tricked me and stolen my stash. If I had been a cartoon, steam would have been coming out of my ears.
In the midst of that rage, I got it. This was the response of a frustrated addict, seeing someone else get what they had wanted. Or maybe a toddler, seeing a girl steal her favorite toy. I zinged a few sharp, pointed comments at her through Facebook once I stopped seeing completely red.
Blessedly, at my current age of 40, I had come to understand that the things that bother me the most about other people show me the unhealed,weakened aspects of myself. I remembered hearing in the rooms of recovery, and even prior to my entrance to those rooms, the saying "you spot it, you got it!". Was the Universe winking at me, being that my new acquaintance Marcela not only had the same name as me, but that she was also serving as my mirror today!? If I was going to be angry with her, wasn't I really only being angry with myself? Surely, to be honest, in past decades, I had at some point behaved selfishly in relation to other fans in order to advance my own purpose of contact with Bono. I felt, in this experience, and those ego driven moments in my past, where I had been the offending party, the dark side of U2 fandom: wherein we turn against each other, reaching and pushing against each other, because we really can't get enough "of that lovey dovey stuff" that we can feel welling up from within whenever the members of U2 come into our immediate view.
So there I was, exactly 18 months free of my substances of abuse, and ironically, still caught up in the frequency of addiction.
I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I didn't want to go back and sit against the barricade again today. There was a lovely lakeside right next to the venue where I knew I might spend a beautiful day soaking up the sun and the wind. That's where I could go, I told myself as I got dressed to head back out into the city.
Before I had spotted the offending video in my Facebook feed, I had spoken with Elsha about what had happened the day before, and shared that I wasn't sure about sitting around waiting for the band today; that I wouldn't be willing to stay there long if it were to turn into a pressure cooker as it had the day before. Elsha and I agreed that it would be okay to write a note for the singer, to give to one of the bodyguards or techs, to let Bono know that she was available through my phone today if he would like to video chat with her. I penned a message to the star on the back of a picture I had of Bono and me meeting in years past. Then I went out and found an Uber to take me back down toward the lake and the loading dock.
When the uber pulled up near near stadium, I was again dressed up (like a car crash?) in my velvet skater skirt, my silver high tops, blue galaxy leggings, and one of the Dream Out Loud Film crew t-shirts that Dave the filmmaker had given me the day before. I figured some people I might know might be hanging around the loading dock already, and I didn't want to be seen. I hopped out of the car a block away, crossed the street to get within eyeshot, and peeked to see who was there, as I crouched under the canopy of a giant pine tree.
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