people romanticize country living in a very specific way.
the quiet. the green. the slower pace. the roosters. the mango trees. the sense that life was better before everything was so fast.
i am not here to romanticize it.
there's a version of peace that only exists when you're not moving. and then there's the version i've been living, where the land is quiet and beautiful and completely honest, and getting to and from it costs me something every single time.
the countryside gave me exactly what it promised. air that doesn't smell like anything but itself. mornings that don't ask anything of me before i'm ready. room to hear my own thoughts without a car horn interrupting them. i wanted this. i chose this.
and it's still true that the road to get to us is an hour of potholes and prayer. the kind of road that makes you renegotiate your relationship with time. you cannot be in a hurry. the road does not care.
motion sickness both ways, every time! my body paying the price before i even arrive, and again on the way back. that's the part nobody puts in the brochure.
the internet is slow. not slow like "loading takes a second." slow like "i watched a video buffer for four minutes and then gave up and just sat with my thoughts." which is either torture or enlightenment depending on the day.
the power cuts without warning — especially when it rains. and it rains a lot.
nobody warns you about that part. they sell you the land, the view, the quiet, and they leave out the part where quiet has a price and sometimes the price is your afternoon, your energy, the last bit of patience you had left for the day.
the government shows up at election time. not to fix the road. to make promises about fixing the road.
rest isn't just where you land — it's what it costs you to get there.
this is the honest version of country life. not the instagram one.
The Forgotten District is the book underneath all of this — land, roots, belonging, and what it really costs to come home. Preorder is open!
Talk Soon,
Santana Chevel 🌹