I never knew that playing Piano Tiles, a nostalgic game I downloaded on a whim, could evoke such intense feelings of homesickness for a place I don’t live in. For the past year, I, like many Oxford students, have embarked on my year abroad. That experience will be something I treasure for years to come, and I’ll always look back on it as one of the fondest chapters of my life. And that’s why, when Piano Tiles threw River Flows in You at me, a song I associate only with sauna rituals from the freezing Baltics, I was drowned by a terrible wave of melancholy.
It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t have such a complicated relationship with a city. When I left, I was mentally ready to leave. I wanted to come home, to rest, to see family and loved ones, and to finally move onto the next chapter. So when I was asked in my last week if I was excited to come home (by a loved one who flew out to see me, might I add), I’m sure they were surprised when my answer was a flat ‘no’.
To watch your identity become so intertwined with a city is something that few people tangibly notice. Before last year, I had never visited that unique corner of Northern Europe. And yet, by the time I left that place, I genuinely knew every corner of my new home. I had lived in two addresses, visited a number of apartments, I knew the bus timetables, knew every inch of that world. But through one flight out of there, it was all gone.
The most terrifying part is that life continues there. Only today, I was shown photos on Facebook from someone who’s visiting my beloved city. Every street, every monument, every corner – I’ve stood on them all, and remember each and every one. My memories are woven into the walls of the city, and I fear they will never be undone. I could return in twenty years and still perfectly remember the route to school from my house, still remember the name of the beaches, and still recall the best supermarket for the cheapest deals.
Every now and again, I get reminders that transport me back. In fact, it’s far more frequent than that. Once a day, something triggers a memory that teleports me back six months. One day, it could be a conversation about how the weather in this country has turned Baltic (trust me, it hasn’t). Another day, it could be a government security alert (the last one I had was of drones flying overhead). On another occasion, it could be Piano Tiles.
Whilst I was ready to move on, there’s part of me that has signed my heart away to that city. At first, it was just a cute Instagram caption. Now I realise the truth that lies in it. My whole personality is that I’m the Girl Who Lived Abroad, that I’ve travelled to places far and wide. I’ve seen things others can only dream of, and had the life I’ve always craved.
And perhaps that’s the most difficult part. I spent the last year learning languages, exploring cultures, developing as a person. I’ve had all the opportunities that I worked so hard to create for myself, and whilst it wasn’t always easy, it was something I was always so grateful for. I recognised how lucky I was to be in that situation, walking through history, whilst also walking through six feet of snow.
That’s why, in the few weeks after my return, I struggled to settle into reality again. I remember working at a new part-time job, only two weeks later, with the news on the screen, with something about my host country in the news. And as I polished cutlery that day, watching the life I previously had meeting the one I had to have, I recognised that normal life had become mundane. The new job was dull, the routine was too ordinary, the bus journey to work too familiar.
I’m not above a part-time job, nor will I ever think that. In fact, I have always been an advocate for people getting a job throughout A Levels as a chance to develop your people skills. I have never had a chance to understand people as well as I have speaking to colleagues about the cost-of-living crisis.
But I also recognise that it’s not what I want to do with my life anymore. I understand it’s par for the course, but having had a taste of the extraordinary makes the everyday seem extra ordinary. The familiarity of a job I had never had before made me realise how much I craved to be exploring, travelling throughout Europe, discovering undiscovered lands, and chatting about places others have never heard of.
Again, I recognise this is extremely privileged to say. But, looking at that screen in the front lobby, seeing my foreign home in the news, compared to the two weeks earlier when those alerts had come straight through to my phone, I realised that a division between that city and I had been created. We had been on the same timeline, progressing at the same rate. But my return home meant that our parallel lives were now running in opposite directions.
Four months later, and it still hurts. The daily reminders are pleasant at first, but then become a commemoration of things I’ve lost. The familiar sound of music; the discovery of a foreign ibuprofen I bought when I was ill; the shampoo written in a strange language that I’ve discovered at the back of my room – all of them are traces of a life once lived, and a life now lost.
I may have said goodbye to that beautiful city, with tears creeping out of my eyes on the plane as I flew out, but I don’t think I’ll ever truly move away. When Eurovision was on, I knew who I was supporting. When there’s news about the war in Ukraine, I now know what it means to those former Soviet states. When people tell me it’s Baltic outside, I can say with certainty that it is NOT (as you can tell, this has become a bugbear of mine!).
So to leave on a positive note, perhaps it is impossible to say goodbye to somewhere where your identity was so entwined. But perhaps I never want to. One day, when I return, I’ll be flooded with those beautiful memories once again, and I’ll be so thankful to have experienced such a unique and interesting chapter in my life. Perhaps, those daily reminders can be simply bittersweet, blended with a mix of melancholy and bliss. And so when I play Piano Tiles in a few days’ time, maybe I’ll choose River Flows in You as a way to bring traces of such a loved life into my current routine, and for a few simple moments, make the ordinary extraordinary once again.