In the aftermath of difficult times in my life I have always been able to find some peace on the road, just letting all the hard stuff drop away from me, leaving it behind on the road dwindling away behind me. In my twenties I sometimes felt that going for a long drive alone was the only way to process, but in recent years I haven’t turned to it in the same way. I guess I’ve been consumed by work and by my marriage. And it has finally been quieter inside my head. Until now.

I listen to the weather report: heavy snow this afternoon. Hopefully I’ll have time to head back to the city before it sets in. I switch to a channel playing old hits and this makes me feel young again, like I might yet discover new things about myself or make decisions that would set my life onto a different path. This is of course true for everybody, but not many people live like that once the central pillars in life are in place; life partner, career, home. And yet. I could, technically speaking, retrain to do something else, just like I did once before, and live somewhere else, with another man. None of the things that feel fixed and set in stone truly are. This is something I try to convey to my clients in the therapy room, too – that, for better or worse, change is the one constant, and even if life feels unmanageable and impossibly dark in the present moment, it will change, if you can find a way to hang in there.

I pull into a picnic area by the roadside a few miles past Kongsberg. There is nobody here and the sky is an oppressive slate gray. Patches of dirty snow line the roadside. I feel profoundly troubled by Leah’s words. I get out of the car to stretch my legs for a moment. Dark pines tower over the little parking lot, veils of mist twisting between their crowns, rising toward the low-hanging clouds. A bitter wind sweeps across the road, tearing at me. I can feel more snow in the air, and it occurs to me that I still have summer tires on the car.