One Month In: Learning to Walk, Learning to Stay
The plan was three weeks.
It’s always three weeks at first — the safe amount of time. Long enough to say you tried, short enough to keep an exit strategy folded neatly in your pocket. But somewhere between morning chores and afternoon swims, my hosts ask the question gently, like it’s no big deal.
“Why don’t you stay longer?”
Three weeks becomes three months. Or at least the option of it. We’ll go from there, they say. And I realize I’m not looking for reasons to leave anymore.
A month into Costa Rica, life has stopped feeling like travel. It feels like living.
Which is how I end up walking a dog daily.
This matters more than it sounds. Dogs have never been my thing. Growing up in Trinidad, walking home alone meant navigating packs of stray dogs. I was bitten once. Another time, four dogs belonging to friends jumped me. Big dogs, loud dogs, unpredictable dogs. Fear set early and stayed long. I learned avoidance. Distance. Control.
And now there’s Dakka.
He’s strong. Bigger than me. Opinionated. Protective. And somehow, he’s mine to take care of. Twice a day, we walk the streets. He pulls hard toward other dogs barking through fences, muscles tense, ready to respond. My hands grip the leash tighter than necessary at first. My body remembers old fear before my mind catches up.
But I learned something in Lethbridge about dogs about presence, calm, trust. So I take it slow. I ease my way into Dakka’s heart, and to my surprise, he lets me in. We become buddies. Not dramatically. Just steadily.
When my hosts is away, he sleeps in my room. If this were a movie, this would be the subplot critics love the quiet metaphor you don’t notice until later. The thing that wasn’t about dogs at all.
The days simplify. My grand plans to read stacks of self-help books, to build a meditation app quietly dissolve. Not because I failed, but because life intervenes. Chores replace ambition. Pool cleaning. Leaf sweeping. Dog walking. Swimming. Kayaking the bay.
Yes kayaking.
I can’t swim.
Or rather, I couldn’t. With almost drowning incidents in my life, deep water have becomen my fear. Another fear dismantled without ceremony. I paddle out into the bay, water all around me, trusting the boat, trusting myself. I think of a line from Cast Away:
“I know what I have to do now. I’ve got to keep breathing. “
Sometimes that’s enough.
I play cards weekly now with local expats people who were strangers a month ago and somehow became friends. The kind of friendships that form without effort because no one is trying to impress anyone else. Just showing up.
Then my hosts leave.
Suddenly, it’s just me and Dakka. Daily visits from the housekeeper. The house feels larger, quieter. I learn its rhythms. Its sounds. I realize I’m trusted — not as a guest, but as family.
I also relearn how to drive manual.
A 1973 Land Rover. Manual transmission. Loose steering. Character for days. I haven’t driven manual in thirty years, and it shows. I stall. I lurch. I talk to the car like it can hear me. Slowly — painfully — I get the hang of it again.
Clutch.
Shift.
Gas.
Stall.
Repeat.
There’s a quote from Cars of all places that keeps echoing:
“I knew I made the right choice.”
Driving again feels like that. Awkward. Uncertain. Necessary.
I realize that’s what this month has been about. Relearning. How to walk without fear. How to trust responsibility. How to live without optimizing every hour. How to stay.
I came here thinking healing would be intentional –structured, purposeful, productive. Instead, it arrived disguised as routine. As care. As showing up for a dog twice a day. As meals without urgency. As learning old skills again, slowly, imperfectly.
I’m not fixed. I’m not finished. But I’m grounded.
And for the first time in a long time, staying doesn’t feel like getting stuck.
It feels like choosing life.