One night not long ago, the rain was pouring outside my window that I leave open as a rule and a gust of wind whipped, impressively, my heavy curtains into my room.
It is not lost on me that a similar scene took place while writing my last piece about being here in London. Maybe something about the rain here urges me to write when I otherwise cannot seem to. Maybe it was realizing that I have a mere month left in this flat, typing at my little kitchen table that has become such a familiar workspace now. (By the time I’m editing this, in typical fashion, I have only four days left of my time in this city!)
On my other two semesters abroad, the thought of leaving made me immediately sad and worried about what the future would look like, but not this time. I love it here, but I also feel fully ready to leave when its over. That doesn’t nullify the pangs of preemptive nostalgia that sometimes creep their way into me, they’re just different this time around.
I guess there is something to be said about finality, the way that we ‘don’t know what we don’t know’ until it is in our rearview mirror. I’m ready to leave now because this last year has been the strangest, and most difficult, of my whole life and it has taught me to accept the ebb and flow of this journey more than I was able to before. I’m ready because I have something new to look forward to, plans that I can feel drawing me toward them as the days pass. It’s as if this next stage of my life is coming exactly as it should, and I know so deeply that I am ready.
Until then, I’m here and I am grateful every day for the chance to live in this city for just a while longer. Nothing is really permanent, but I feel so fulfilled by this little piece of my life that had the highly improbable chance to happen.
There was a weekend a while back that seemed to bring me from the past into the future, in a way that collided so beautifully in the present moment. It’s funny how things can be tied together by moments that don’t seem to have much relation to one another.
On Friday, I went to Bath, England which had been my first stop, even before London, on the trip that my aunt and I took after my high school graduation four years ago. On Saturday, my college roommates from freshman and sophomore years graduated, and I watched live on my computer screen as they walked across the stage. Separated by time zones and an ocean, I still got to ‘be there’ for that moment. I couldn’t help thinking about how it feels like both yesterday and an eternity ago all at the same time that I felt like I was truly a student at UA.
Sunday, Jeremy (my resident director) surprised me with an impromptu graduation picnic after our morning trip to the Columbia Road Flower Market. These old memories of adventures past and celebrations of new beginnings felt tied together for me in such a complete way. I keep using this phrase, full circle, for lack of anything better.
It truly feels like the most authentic way to end this phase of life for me, somewhere in a version of ‘other’ that gets to teach me new lessons while I reflect on those I learned so long ago both here and around the world.
Jeremy had recommended that we go to a spa while we visited the city whose namesake comes from Roman times and the popularity of its natural thermal baths. The first time around, I saw those old spaces where people, thousands of years before any of us were even close to existing, would gather and utilize the natural resource of this warm water. This time, I got the chance to experience those same naturally heated waters, that have been recently reemployed by the spa, all while looking out at the beautiful World Heritage city from the rooftop pool.
So really, maybe that’s the thing about water, why I’m writing, why I felt inclined to reminisce at this moment. The way that water cycles through isn’t unlike our own cycles in life. We go somewhere new and then we either return or continue to move on. The only options really, given that we can’t ever go ‘back’ to a moment passed. We might be the same essentially, as we were years ago, but there will always be new memory, new channels we move through, and new places within the lives we create for ourselves day by day. We are always us, but the sense of self changes with every new journey and the lessons learned at every turn shape who we will become when it is all said and done.
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