I choked back tears as the glass doors to Heathrow Airport slid open in front of me, an invisible barrier about to split my life down the center. Four months had flown by in the blink of an eye, and, somehow, my long-dreaded departure from London had finally arrived.
After navigating past blockades of suitcases and souvenir shops adorned with Big Ben memorabilia, I arrived at my gate and sank into a row of black plastic seats. As I scrolled through my camera roll in search of proof that the past four months weren’t just some elaborate dream, a far-too-familiar chorus rose above the hum of conversation.
In what felt like an act of divine intervention, Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger” echoed through the terminal. It was the last song I heard before stepping aboard the transatlantic flight that would drop me back into a world that, though I had left it behind just a few months ago, felt a lifetime away.
To most, hearing one of England’s unofficial anthems while I was in England probably seems the furthest possible thing from divine. To be honest, my recollection of the song at that particular moment likely would’ve slipped into the back of my mind, had it not been for an airport pharmacy and a jet-lagged Thursday morning just four months prior.
Mere minutes after I touched down in London on an early morning in January, I walked into a Boots pharmacy, intent on hunting for an overpriced bottle of water to calm my jitters. As my mind was running a million miles a minute, a wave of comfort washed over me as I heard the familiar opening notes of a song echoing throughout the store.
At that moment, it struck me that I had finally made it to the home of Britpop and afternoon tea. Little did I know that this song would become my tie to the city, even when I was hundreds of miles away.
The longer I spent in the city, the more Oasis seemed to follow me—playing in every bar I walked into, appearing on advertisements plastered to the walls of the underground, and even inspiring a pilgrimage to Berwick Street, the now-iconic cover of the band’s sophomore album.
Flash forward to my final night out in London. As I took one final glance at the bar that had seen my friends and me on one too many Tuesdays, the opening piano riff played, and the past four months came flooding back.
I stepped outside of the bar into the electric emptiness of Piccadilly Circus and, despite a half-hearted attempt to preserve my dignity, broke down. I cried preemptive tears, nostalgia for moments not yet memory. I cried because this chapter, beautiful and fleeting, had reached its end. I knew I would never be here, with these people, in this city, again. And I let a few tears fall because the odds of hearing Sam Fender, The Stone Roses, and Oasis back-to-back in Boston were slim to none.
Sparing the full dramatics, the whole scene felt as cinematic as a moment in real life could—streets echoing with drunken chatter, the neckline of my white shirt stained with mascara-dyed tears, and the closing of a chapter in my life that I’d longed for since childhood. I wanted to look back down the street, but my vision was too blurry to make out anything more than the emptiness that surrounded me.
A familiar pit-in-your-stomach feeling that only crept up on me when I knew I had just experienced something that could never be recreated. Something I would look back on for years to come, wishing I could step back in time, even if for one brief moment.
I can only consciously recall experiencing this feeling a few times in my life. The first time was the last day of eighth grade—the day I accepted that the naive irresponsibility of childhood had slipped out of my grasp. The next four years of my life would be devoted to making decisions much more important than what flavor of Chapstick I’d stuff into the top pocket of my backpack each morning.
The other time, so recent that it still feels palpable, was on the day I moved out of my freshman year dorm. I sat in silence on the drive home, still in disbelief that my fresh start was no longer shiny and new. I longed for the halo of possibility that had loomed over me during my first month on campus, still hopeful that college would be as perfect as I’d always dreamed.
In each of these instances, I found myself trapped in a haze of reminiscence—reminiscence over something that had recently come to a close. In doing so, I was inadvertently preventing myself from living in the present. My dwelling on the past turned to lamenting tinged with anger.
It was an anger without any obvious recipient, an anger directed more broadly at the act of growing up. Wrapped up in my longings for the past, I continually came back to my frustrations that these perfect periods in my life always came with an expiration date. Here I was, yet again, wishing to turn back time at only 21 years old.
As I stood outside of that airport Starbucks and listened to the song I’d heard hundreds of times before, I realized that I’d never truly listened. I was blatantly ignoring the mantra that had carried me across country borders and, eventually, back home. I was looking back in anger.
Each of the moments of bliss I longed to relive felt like a metaphorical oasis, a period of flourishing in my life. Our oases, those rare, glimmering stretches of joy aren’t meant to last forever, and their transience only makes them even more special.
For now, I’m caught between two oases: one a very real but distant vision of the life I’ve already lived; the other, a mirage of the life I hope will one day be mine. It might not have fully taken shape yet, but all I can do now is keep moving forward.
After all, 16 years stood between Oasis’ presumed final show in 2009 and their comeback tour this summer. That hiatus didn’t become a void of silence, but rather the birth of two solo careers and countless collaborations that have taken up residence in too many of my playlists to count.
Our oases of nostalgia for the past and dreams for the future might be metaphorical, but it doesn’t mean we should let the journey in between go unappreciated. Let your gratitude for those perfect moments in your life push you forward, but don’t look back in anger. Your next oasis is out there somewhere, waiting for you to find it.
