In the lee of a quiet valley, amid roaming hills peaked with a quiet mist, rushing streams splashing with salmon, and the silent majesty of thrushes fluttering through rows of forest, lies my home. I live a half life, migrating hundreds of miles every eight or so weeks from the central belt of Scotland to Cambridge. My friends were different, my life turned chaotic, and my thoughts lingered on home. What else could come to mind when thinking of pleasant lands than Byron’s farewell poem ‘Farewell To a Lady’? I mourn it when I leave, and dream of going back: “I cannot view my Paradise, without the wish of dwelling there.”

In Cambridge, my mind lingers on the people, the vistas, and the bashful sun sleeking over the hills in the early morning, amidst the tranquillity of the treacherously porous roads beset with streaking foxes. It is a wylie land, that is charming in the bleakness of winter, the snell of spring, the resplendent august of golden summers, and the drizzle of autumn’s dying days. It is far from a perfect place, but the lively people, old friends, and memories still enchant me, and I long to go back whenever I am away. As essays mount and weeks follow weeks, my longing worsens. I think again of Byron: “But, wandering on through distant climes, He learnt to bear his load of grief; Just gave a sigh to other times, And found in busier scenes relief.” The feeling of being away weighs like a burden, but something is hidden under layers of frantic work.

“Yet the person I am in Cambridge is far from the one at home. I am split in two places”

As I retreat from a term misspent, I am bundled onto a train once again to leave for Scotland. As soon as I board, I wish for nothing more than to stay. It, too, has charmed me. It is a distant clime, so different from my own, captured in a very English spirit. Yet the person I am in Cambridge is far from the one at home. I am split in two places, my mind crossed over miles and borders, aching to be in two places at once.

I consider it lucky that I have two places that mean so much to me, and each provides a hulking bubble of security in which to live. But I cannot help feel that it has divided me. Where am I? And what do I want to be? With old friends or new? I present different acts to each of my spheres, leaving a gulf between. A void yet to be filled. Just plastered by train tickets, and academic dress.

“I present different acts to each of my spheres, leaving a gulf between. A void yet to be filled”

In gown, I am devoted and tested, my life spent pouring over books and looking for niches in writings I cannot fully comprehend. Chained to decorous places as time flitters by, weather passing as being rushed between storied courts. In the country, I am free and able to be just me. Freer to think and to breathe. Just to exist unencumbered by tomes and treatises – a leisurely life.

As ease gives way to work in the miles that separate, I change, my thoughts grow fonder, my actions equally intentioned, but equally different. But in between, who am I? This split has not made me less of myself, but rather has made me lose touch with myself. As the histories of where I stand change, from that of Scotti to the chapels of Henry VIII, something is lost. Some sense of self, some sense of being. No matter where I am, I long to be somewhere else. I am not where I need to be.

And yet, there are no other places I would rather be, while my life shuttles between these two places, I feel at home in either. While my heart might linger on the other, and a chasm might have formed, it just means that there is more room to grow. Yet Byron’s poem still resonates more with leaving home, when each time feels like a farewell, but now that farewell is not just a weight on leaving home, but also leaving Cambridge, when each time feels like a farewell and a last glimpse of a place I love. Until next time, farewell, my lady.