I had come to Costa Rica calling it a sabbatical.
A year away from work.
Time to rest. Time to think. Time to decide.
That’s what I told people.
What I didn’t say –not yet– was that the year was a kindness.
A door left slightly ajar, just in case fear needed an exit. Just in case I wanted to pretend I could still go back.
Somewhere between arriving and staying, I finally said the quiet part out loud:
I cannot go back.
Not because something there was broken. But because something in me had moved on.
It was in that honest space –after the decision but before the certainty– that love found me.
After living together for a few weeks, my new-found love’s ex decided to abandon their farm in Nicaragua.
Everything happened quickly after that. We packed what we could and relocated south, crossing borders with more faith than planning.
The farm was remote and when I say remote, I mean remote.
A small village. Two buses from the capital. Then a thirty-minute tuk-tuk ride. Then a twenty-minute hike. Then through a river –because there was no bridge.
No running water. Buckets filled twice a day from the well and pumped into the house.
The house itself perched on the tip of the hill, overlooking fields and valleys that opened wide beneath us.
It was beautiful. There were four hens and two roosters. Five cows. A pig. Wheat, corn, and beans in the fields. Fruit trees heavy with caimito, oranges, lemons, avocados, mangoes, plums, bananas, and plantains.
At first, the excitement consumed me. Carrying heavy sacks of wheat and corn across hills became my workout. Washing clothes in the river. Showering with a bucket of water. I installed a water tank and ran pipes into the house progress measured in fewer daily refills.
Later, she decided we would start a poultry business.
We built a coop for two hundred chickens. We built a small store along the main throughway to sell the meat. Suddenly, I was a chicken farmer.
But the days were long.
The sun relentless.
The land demanding.
I hadn’t come to Nicaragua for hard labour. I had followed someone I cared deeply for.
And while kindness lived easily between us, our ideas of life –shaped by different upbringings– did not. The work of the land began to mirror the work we were avoiding.
Leaving was the hardest part. Not because love wasn’t there. But because I finally understood this wasn’t where I was meant to heal.
Breaking up with someone so kind left a quiet ache –the kind that doesn’t shout, but lingers.
And yet, I knew staying would mean abandoning the path I had already admitted I needed to walk.
Love didn’t fail here. I
t simply showed me clearly where I could not remain.