Didn’t mean to come here. That’s the first thing. Not in a grand, “oh, fate led me here” kind of way, just—didn’t think it through. Saw some pictures, liked the way the mountains looked, needed out of London, and… well. That was that. Could’ve been anywhere, really. Booked the flight before I could talk myself out of it.
It was weird at first. Like, too quiet. Proper, hear-your-own-breathing quiet. Couldn’t sleep, not because of noise but because of the lack of it. You don’t realise how much background sound you live with until it’s gone. No sirens. No humming traffic. Just the occasional dog barking somewhere, a bird that sounded like it was laughing at me every morning. I filled the silence with walking, because what else was there to do? Walked up hills that felt like they had no top, wandered into villages where people looked at me like they knew I didn’t belong (but not in a bad way, just in a “we know everyone here and you’re new” way).
Somewhere along the line, the silence stopped being a thing I noticed. Not sure when. It just… shifted. Like my brain adjusted. Like it learned how to breathe differently.
Then came the house.
Not some romantic dream project. Wasn’t planning on settling in, wasn’t looking for a fixer-upper. Just walked past it one day, saw the cracked walls, the sagging roof, the door barely hanging on, and… I don’t know. Thought about leaving, kept walking, stopped, turned back. Looked again. Something about it. Like it was waiting for someone to bother giving a damn. Maybe that was me. Maybe it wasn’t.
Didn’t rush. Didn’t make big plans. Just started fixing things as they needed fixing. A window here, a leak there. No deadlines, no pressure, just—work, for the sake of work. Some days it felt like progress, some days it felt like I’d made the dumbest decision of my life.
But then, one morning, I woke up and it smelled like coffee and wood dust instead of damp. And it felt… right.
Still don’t know if I’ll stay. Still don’t have a grand plan. But for now, I wake up, look out at mountains that still don’t feel real, drink coffee on a terrace that used to be a pile of rubble, and… yeah. That’s enough.
That’s enough for now.