My final loveletter to London

Yes, the title of this post probably has an unsettling and slightly morbid finality to it, and yes, I don’t technically leave London until Wednesday morning. But I’m writing my last post now, on Saturday night, because I think that if I put it off any longer, my final night will become the collapse of nostalgia and tears that may be inevitable but I’m still hoping to avoid. It’s already come close to that: it’s been pretty hard for my abroad friends and me to not have full blown discussions about our departures and how much we’ll miss each other, but mostly how much we’ll miss London, and what our lives have been like since we’ve been here. It has been a whirlwind five months of mostly fun and games. But even more than that, it’s the feeling summed up perfectly in this Azar Nafisi quote that I copped from Lisa:

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”

It’s a feeling that I knew was going to come, and was afraid would come, and now has come. It’s the feeling that going home will make us feel like we’re back at square one, like we’ve forgotten how much we’ve grown or that it will all seem like it was a dream. We have to face the realization that, contrary to our feelings otherwise, the American hometown we normally live in has continued on without us and will be pretty much the same as we left it, even though we feel like it should’ve stood still to wait, or maybe that it should have changed with us. My abroad friends from London and I will have to face the fact that our lives here—lives in which we’ve been free to do what we want, and go out on a Tuesday because we feel like it, or hang out at Hyde Park for four hours or meet for a pint because we want to and because we’re young and these are the things young people do—have to end, and that now we have to go back to our old lives which, although are great and fulfilling, just aren’t as magical as London has been for us.

Maybe that’s good: I keep telling my mom (or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself) that this dream-life can’t have continued much longer without losing some of its luster. And I would certainly much rather leave the party at its peak and wish I could’ve stayed than staying long enough to see the champagne run out. But the thought of returning to real life makes me a little afraid: London, and studying abroad, is one of the last things in my life that I was really sure would happen (although I didn’t know what to expect.) Other than graduation next year, I have no idea what course my life will take, and I already know there will be countless days in my future where I’ll call Lisa and Spain and my American study abroaders, or Facebook Ashley or my other British friends, and lament about how great and sparkling and magical our lives here were. I’m pretty sure I’ll sound like an Army vet, recounting his glory days.

I’m not complaining: I’m absolutely grateful. London (and my wonderful, amazing, hugely generous parents) has been good to me, and I wouldn’t want these five months to end any other way: with a sense of loss at leaving, but also with the realization that we’re wildly lucky to have even experienced it. So tomorrow I’ll get up and sit in St Paul’s churchyard and enjoy a morning coffee, and then I’ll go to The Church (a daytime club) with my friends, and, over the next three days, say my goodbyes to London. I know it won’t ever be quite the same again, but I’ll be back, and I know this city won’t disappoint. See ya soon, London.