I've made it to the other side.

6 years, all gone in a flash. I remember the first time I walked to the clock tower, squinted into the sharp sunlight and ran my fingers over the sandstone, and thought how this day was so far away. But that's how time is, isn't it? It plods when you're waiting for it, and then suddenly you're living it, and it's over. And when you look back, nostalgia colours everything rose and speeds it up like fast-forwarding through film. It seems like last week. But no, what was it? Time was ... is a sunk cost. I paid it to get here.

God I was young. I mean, I'm aware that this is just the beginning of the rest of my life. But when you're sixteen and seventeen you don't know, you never realise, what it all means. All these options stretch out in front of you like lines in some sort of intricate abstract painting. Joan Didion wrote something about that - being young. I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count.

Twenty two is not the time to become jaded and cynical. Twenty two is when you have your entire life in front of you, when the world is full of possibilities and wonder, and sight and smell and sensation crystallise to form moments that you will remember for the rest of your life. It's falling in love and the smell of the city after it's just rained. It's first kisses, still, and meeting on street corners and peering in shop windows and a jumble of skin and sighs. It's the feeling of brick under your hands, and warm wood and windowsills. It's tapping your foot on cobblestones and watching the world sweep past and the smell of coffee in the morning.

And now I'm done. And it is so close that I can taste it.

Now, to face the rest of my life. Pending not receiving the phone call of doom come next Tuesday, anyway. There are ... prospective costs to be paid.