As if we got to escape for a moment — only to be pulled back in, even deeper

We didn’t leave with a plan.
It wasn’t a holiday.
We left because we had to.
Because every part of us was screaming to be anywhere but here.

We had just enough money.
Just enough courage.
Not quite enough energy —
but the quiet belief
that nature would return
what life had taken.

An old home on wheels.
Far from perfect. But ours.
And three nights away.
That’s all.

But those three nights felt like something bigger.
Like something inside us cracked open — something that had been locked away for too long.
We walked. We waited for nothing.
There was no schedule. No pressure.
We slept between red deer and Highland cows,
with nothing but birdsong and wind in our ears.

It wasn’t a vacation.
It was an escape.
A return to ourselves.

And then…
the engine gave out.

We couldn’t keep going.
We couldn’t take the highway home.
We could barely move forward at all.
And in the end: we returned.
To the house that hasn’t felt like home for a long time.
To the bed that’s also our kitchen.
To the life with no space in it.

But this time, it felt even smaller.
Even tighter.
Like the walls had moved in closer while we were gone.
Because now we remembered how different it can feel.

And that’s what makes it unbearable:
that it actually worked — for a moment.
That things were quiet in our minds.
That we lived outside of every system, every pressure, every plan.

And now we’re stuck again.
Waiting for a garage.
Waiting for money.
Waiting for time.
Waiting for permission to be ourselves again.

Everything has stopped.
Except the longing to leave.

We’re doing everything we can to get back out there.
Not because it’s fun, or easy —
but because staying here is slowly breaking us.

This isn’t a luxury.
It’s not a trip.
It’s not a dream on pause.

It’s necessity.

And those three nights?
They weren’t a beginning.
They weren’t an ending.

They were proof.

Proof that we don’t belong here.
That it has to be different.
That we need life —
not this.