This post was updated June 25 at 1:48 p.m.

Like many graduated seniors, I spent my last weeks at UCLA with wide-open eyes. In a kind of preemptive mourning, I cling to each moment like time will stop if I tighten my grip enough.

Somehow, one strange feeling dominates among the chaos: nostalgia for a time before I had ever set foot on campus.

During the summer of 2020, my routines were well-oiled: wake up at a cool 10:45 a.m., earn some pre-college funds by putting in a few hours at my town’s smoothie shop and meet friends for a swim or a bike ride

These activities felt natural, but as September crept closer, they felt more like ritualistic attempts to preserve what I was about to lose.

Then, one midnight in August, I was driving home on a country road in the East Bay, when my headlights fell upon a car wreck.

I remember it in stages.

I pulled over, as did the driver ahead of me.

The other driver, a boy around my age, called the police as we assessed the scene. A black Chrysler had driven straight off a foliage-covered roadside cliff.

We half-slid, half-climbed down to the driver’s-side door as gravel tumbled down to the ravine’s rocky bottom. An older man sat inside, his white knuckles clenching the steering wheel. He stared dead ahead.

He was determined that he could reverse out. We told him he would die if he tried.

At our insistence, he relented. The boy and I positioned ourselves on either side of the man and lifted him, honeymoon-style, his arms wrapped around our shoulders.

With no hands for a flashlight, we tried our best to find traction against the loose dirt and bay leaves. The man was silent, his head ducked between us.

At one point, my knees buckled under the weight. I took all of us down with me as I kneeled against the cliff face.

The asphalt was a welcome sanctuary.

Almost four years later, the most inconsequential details remain the most vivid in my mind. I will never forget the warmth of the pavement as we sat, loose pebbles pressing into my palm.

I remember the complete darkness, save for the moon and the soft red glow of the Chrysler’s tail lights. I remember the hot stillness, like the hills held their breath for us, and the smell of dry grass that hung in the air — that warm but rare scent that only develops in the late summer.

I remember thinking it would be a beautiful night, if not for the misfortune at hand.

Over time the man found a steady voice, and we all sat and talked. Curiously, we never thought to exchange names.

We tried to talk about anything except what had just happened. The boy said he was a third-year at Tufts University, and I told them I would soon be leaving for UCLA.

The man told us he was on his way to meet his ex-wife to discuss their daughter’s recent passing.

My condolences — hollow words that would only fill the silence — died in my throat.

The police arrived, and suddenly everything was red and blue and yes or no. Somehow I only felt worse for the man as he faced the officers’ well-intentioned interrogation.

The next morning, the evidence had vanished without a trace. No tire marks or car debris survived, and I had no contact to confirm what I had experienced.

If not for the subtle interruption in the roadside foliage, I could have convinced myself it never happened at all.

I never saw the man or the boy again.

The world kept spinning. I rode my bike, experimented with new recipes and lazed around with friends as we mused about who our college selves would be. I drove that road every day.

And though everything else in life had returned to normal, that unnatural clearing in the trees caught my eye every time.

It bothered me how quickly my world picked up where it left off — I was convinced that if I did not keep the story alive, this man’s experience would never be known. And for some reason, I burned with the need for people to know what had happened there.

I think I was trying to fight that reality of the world: It forgets you. Not in a cruel way, but in a reliable, cyclical, soothing way. Eventually, even the trees grew back where they were shorn.

Others may crash in the very same spot, and they will never know they were not the first.

Initially, I rebelled against that. I was adamant that this ease of recovery was a disrespect to the man’s experience, and I thought that by spreading the story — by trying to prevent others from moving on — it would make things right in some way.

I soon came to realize this would not change anything. There were over 143,000 car crashes in California in 2020 that caused injuries. Yet for most, life seemed to be unaffected by vehicular danger.

The reality is life steadily and inevitably continues, irrespective of you and your personal catastrophes. While that might initially feel cold, it can also be comforting.

I had been dreading going to college all summer. I have never been someone to move on easily, and the idea of leaving my whole life behind made me nauseous, even if it meant finding a glamorous new one.

The urge to cling to a past life of mine disappeared that night in August. I finally understood that in an ever-moving world, crisis may be an inevitability, but healing is too. And somehow that gave me the confidence I needed to take on UCLA.

No matter my missteps — whether I made no friends or got rejected from every club or failed out of my major — the world would keep spinning, the trees would regrow and one day it would be okay.

So I kept my head high as September finally came around and I entered my new life. At first, I missed home and, at times, Los Angeles felt suffocating. All I wanted was the familiarity I used to take for granted — the dry grass in the air, the crickets chirping outside the windows, the winding roads.

But as I wrote this, sitting in my senior-year apartment while my ten lovely roommates blasted Taylor Swift and demanded that I put my work aside, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for my present life that I once fought to reject.

Here I am again at the end of an academic career, facing another foreign and daunting future. The bittersweetness of the spring, whether due to internships, a lack thereof or graduation is practically a tradition at UCLA.

It can feel like the safe and familiar will only take you as far as June. And yet, in these moments of uncertainty, my mind takes me back to that warm pavement four years ago.

I see the beauty that can persist even despite tragedy — how the good things do not simply evaporate when you face challenges. In reality, these memories are archived so we can focus on being present.

Life goes on. The crickets keep chirping; the world keeps turning. You find a way to carry on.

It is not always easy. But one day, you will look back and realize how far you have come.