What would you do if you had a relationship with a time limit? If, on a predetermined date, all that was your love and your life would cease to exist? You’d never get the chance to feel quite that same way again.
No, I’m not talking about an actual relationship with a person (something, much to my chagrin, my life is currently devoid of) but one with a place. This silly little place I call my home: Oxford. This place that, in a year’s time from now, will no longer be my physical home.
And so begins my love in the rearview.
What got me mulling on Oxford, was, as is often the case, an evening walk and ponder. There are some moments in our lives that heighten our awareness of time passing, or turn us inward, asking us to reflect on our purpose, our smallness, and our place in something bigger. On a bright Tuesday evening I trekked the long, long route from my college, Trinity, to Somerville for a formal. The sun was setting in the distance, the air was cool and crisp, my heels were clip-clopping along the cobbles, and my headphones were blaring About You by The 1975.
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten about you?
Sometimes I find it difficult to articulate what it is about this place that I will never forget.
When I arrived, bags in hand, as a doe-eyed fresher, with not a clue that my Law degree would be the hardest yet most fulfilling endeavour of my life or that I would meet minds, and hearts, and souls that would touch and change me beyond recognition, you could never have told me that one city could come to mean so much to me. That every street and quad would become such a repository of memories and emotion. I like to call university one long, big sleepover, because in many ways it is. A trial run at adulthood that gives you the responsibility and independence you crave at sixteen but also the space to revel in joy, laughter, and all that is fleeting and sweet.
But, like all good things, it cannot last – not in the form it holds now.
I’m heading into my final year, banished to the depths of Summertown. Close friends are leaving for their year abroads, with the knowledge that so many people they know won’t be back upon their return. I was never sentimental about leaving school, but I can’t seem to talk about finishing university without a lump forming in my throat.
And so, dear reader, you’d hope I have some gem of inspiration to offer you – some way of reframing the end as just a new beginning. Well, in my desperate attempt to cling to optimism, I’ve found myself returning to a quote from the poetry/prose collection “I Wrote This For You.”
I hope that in the future they invent a small golden light that follows you everywhere and when something is about to end, it shines brightly so you know it’s about to end.
I think university is one of the rare times in life we get to see that golden light. Relationships can end without warning. People can pass away without notice. But when I arrived here, I knew the timer had three years. A countdown. It may be ominous, and it may make my impending graduation feel more like a guillotine than a celebration, but it is also a beam of light. A reminder that something good is going to end, and that I still have time to make the most of it.
To take that difficult module because it’s all I’ve ever wanted to study. To linger in doorways because I’ll have all the time in the world to sleep but not all the time in the world with these people right here. To confess secret crushes and harboured affections because I’ll never love quite the same way at 35 as I might at 19.
One of my favourite concepts has always been the question of whether water has memory. A quick Google tells me this is in fact a pseudoscientific concept, with little evidence or proof. But alas, I am not a scientist, but a mere humanities student, so I will indulge the metaphor. I’m enamoured by the idea that the elements remember where they’ve been and who they’ve touched, long after we are but bones in the ground.
If not water, maybe earth. Does the ground we stand on remember the many feet that have stood here before?
If so, the earth that comprises the floors of Oxford are awash with the lives and memories of the historical giants that came before us. It’s part of what gives this magnificent city its magic; it’s what gives the oldest and most prestigious university in the English-speaking world its distinct character and gravity. C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, Tony Blair, Stephen Hawking, Adam Smith. They, amongst so many others, are the shoulders of giants we all hope we will one day stand on.
And if the earth remembers them, I like to think the earth will remember us.
The hallowed halls I’ve run through, late to tutorials. The dimly-lit quads I’ve huddled in after formals. The lawns I’ve lazily lounged on in summer – I hope the earth in all these places will remember me. When new faces form life-long friends in the staircases I once did, fall in love in the wood-panelled rooms I did, cry in the bathrooms I have, and realise what makes living the best thing we ever get the privilege of doing in the parks I did, I hope the earth knows I stood there too.
Perhaps this is narcissistic and self-aggrandising. Perhaps I just want to believe that memories, which can fade, blur, and mutate with time and age, can be held by something greater than me. That something outside myself will remember what these years have meant.
I want this city to remember that I was here. That I loved it. That it changed me in ways I may never fully explain.
♦♦♦
At the end of every term, when I pack up my things and strip my pinboard of Freeprints and memories, I look at my empty room and it’s almost like I cease to exist. It’s almost like those eight weeks of love, life, loss, and the marriage of pain and joy never happened. I’m sure when I pack up for the last time, I will feel the same feeling more weightily.
University happens in the blink of an eye. The amount of questions and discussion of careers and internships makes you feel like, just as you’ve got one foot in the door of Oxford, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to get one foot out. In the span of three years, the majority of the undergraduate population will be completely replaced by a new wave of wide-eyed students. It’s so cyclical and speedy, you could almost blink and miss it.
You could almost miss it.
Perhaps this article is one part of my attempt not to. My attempt to document Oxford in all its testing, destructive, resplendent, soul-destroying, soul-forging, transcendent glory.
I’ve always pushed back against the idea that university has to be ‘the best years of your life.’ Life isn’t linear like that and I have many ‘best years’ ahead of me. But even so, here you find a love letter. My love letter to being young. To the University of Oxford.
Because regardless of whether, in the far future when we’re all old and grey, my friends remember, or the earth remembers, or history remembers, I know I want to remember.
I want to remember the way this city has made me feel. Even after it’s in the rearview.