I am trying to hide from myself.
That's my excuse.
Good days and bad days this winter; lately, the days have been bad. I have no desire for anything. I still do things, but writing is difficult. It requires looking straight at the wall of gray outside and trying to describe it into significance. It requires repetition of the same old facts: I still don't have a car, we still live far from civilization, the cold blocks us from even exploring nature. It requires complaining, an unjust thing considering the overall goodness of my life (but still the depression, the feeling of being trapped).
It doesn't matter.
Georg and I booked flights to Italy for the end of March. He warned it would be more of a hassle than I could imagine to get him a Schengen visa, and he was right. We realized there was no way he would get a visa in time, even though I started searching for visa appointments months in advance (I had to log in every day at 3pm, to see if there would be a cancellation, and there never was). The next day, Italy was a hotbed of coronavirus cases. So when I called to change our flights to Costa Rica instead, they happily waived the change fee.
In a month, we will be flying to San Jose.
The month of cold will end in the rainforest, and that I can handle. I have never been to a rainforest, although I clipped images of mossy trees and monkeys and poisonous frogs and pasted them all over the walls of my room as a little girl.
Warmth is a month away, but look at me writing, whether it means something or not (the power of hope).