Chapter: The Battle of Angels

Introducing the Book Remíza – The Bet on Life

Chapter: The Battle of Angels

I stood just outside the city—my back turned to the car, my face toward the endless horizon.

A gentle breeze brushed against my face, while the sun rested low above the horizon like an old observer of life who had long since stopped being surprised by human downfalls.

The Spanish landscape—dry, unforgiving, yet strangely compassionate—stretched out before me like a blank sheet of paper upon which I could, perhaps for the last time, write down who I really was.

I stopped there because something deep inside me forced me to stop running—not from people, not from my problems, but from myself.

I was far away—and not only in terms of distance.

At the same time, I had never been so close.

Close to whatever lay beneath everything I had lived through.

Somewhere in that desert of silence and sunlight, I found myself standing in the presence of my own soul.

And it was exhausted.

At that time, I was going through what could only be described as the reconstruction of my life.

The breakup that had torn me apart had seemed inevitable—perhaps even the right thing to do—but it left behind a silence that wasn't peaceful.

It was painfully empty.

Something had ended.

Something I had believed in, even if I hadn't known how to carry it properly.

And that loss became the final push toward change.

By then, I had already completed two addiction treatment programs.

The first was a cry for help.

The second was an attempt to rebuild.

Gambling hadn't destroyed me overnight.

It had been a slow erosion of my identity, millimeter by millimeter, until one day I looked into the mirror and no longer recognized the man staring back at me.

And now I was standing here, in a foreign country where nobody knew me.

Although I no longer felt completely lost, I was beginning to believe that perhaps this was the place where I could find another missing piece of myself.

Maybe even the one I had never seen before.

I looked out across the endless landscape without boundaries.

At the same time, for the first time in a very long while, I looked inward.

Not at the part of me that pretended everything was fine.

Not at the part that smiled in front of other people while panic roared inside my head.

I looked deeper.

All the way down to the place where fragments of childhood met the shame of my past, guilt, and the desperate need for hope.

And it was there, in the complete silence of the Spanish countryside, that I made another decision.

I decided to fight.

Not against my past.

Not against my idea of success.

But against the merciless question that had echoed inside me for so long:

Does any of this still matter?

Is it still worth getting up every morning when everything hurts?

I had stood in a similar place once before—not on a map, but within my soul.

It was when my debts were exposed.

When the whole truth came to light.

When I stared into emptiness, wondering whether it might simply be easier to leave this world behind.

But I didn't.

Not because I was afraid of death.

But because I knew I couldn't leave behind unfinished business.

Unpaid debts.

Unspoken words.

I felt there was still something I had to make right.

Not everything.

But at least something.

Somewhere deep inside me, a quiet voice awakened and reminded me that I still had a chance to leave something behind.

Not as an excuse.

But as a legacy.

And while I was writing Remíza, I tried to pour every layer of my pain into its pages—pain that could never have been expressed in an ordinary conversation.

The words in that book became my therapy.

My relief.

My scream.

And my silence.

All at once.

And there, in Valladolid, I realized that I had a responsibility—not to the world, but to myself—to finish that book.

To tell the whole story.

To write the ending.

To explain it.

To transform it into a bridge between myself and someone else who might one day find themselves standing in the same emptiness I once stood in.

Spain became something extraordinary to me.

Because it was there that I found peace.

A silence that didn't break me.

It healed me.

And today I am convinced that throughout my entire life—through every country I visited, every moment I lived, every situation I faced—I was gathering fragments.

Pieces of myself.

Scattered parts of my identity that had remained strangers to me for so long.

And there, in that barren landscape beneath the merciless Spanish sun, I found another piece of the puzzle.

A sharp one.

A painful one.

But one I desperately needed.

A piece that belonged to my heart.

I stood there on the threshold between my past...

...and possibility.

And although I had no idea what awaited me next, I knew I had to go home.

Not only physically.

But home to myself.

Home to the truth.

Home to a life that would never be easy...

...but would finally be mine.

Today, when I look back on that moment, I know one thing with absolute certainty:

That was the day I chose to live again.

Not for anyone else.

For myself.

And to live in such a way that I would never again have to run from my own reflection in the rear-view mirror. At the same time, I felt a deep need to understand what had actually happened to me.

I didn't want it to happen again.

I didn't want to fall back into something I had barely managed to survive.

So I immersed myself in books on psychology.

I became fascinated by the way the human mind works—how thoughts are formed, how emotions are born, and why we behave the way we do.

The more I learned, the more I realized that many of the things I had once considered weaknesses or personal failures actually had roots of their own, explanations of their own, patterns of their own.

It felt as though I was slowly piecing together a map of my inner world.

I was learning to recognize the warning signs before they could grow into something far more dangerous.

I was learning to see stress not as an enemy, but as something that needed to be understood and processed, so it wouldn't quietly creep back into my life the way it had before.

And alongside all of this, almost without my noticing, something else began to change.

It was something I had carried inside me for a long time like an open wound.

My memories of Ivka.

Where there had once been sadness, anxiety, and anger, something entirely different slowly began to emerge.

At first, they were only brief moments.

Passing thoughts that no longer hurt the way they once had.

Then came memories I could revisit without being dragged back into darkness.

Eventually, those memories became something I would once have believed impossible.

I found myself remembering her with a smile.

With peace.

With gratitude.

Gratitude that she had been part of my life.

That she had taught me something.

That she had helped shape the person I was becoming.

And whenever I met her—or simply saw her—there was nothing left of the weight I had once carried.

No pain.

No need to prove anything.

No desire to go back.

Only the quiet understanding that some things have both a beginning and an end.

And just because they end doesn't mean they were bad.

Sometimes they leave behind something that makes us better people.

That was the moment I truly understood that the path I had walked—even though it had been painful, even though it had broken me and forced me to question everything—had meaning.

Because it taught me not only how to stand up again...

...but also how to look at life differently.

More calmly.

More consciously.

With greater respect for myself and for everything a human being is capable of carrying—if only they allow themselves to understand instead of running away.

As I gradually came to terms with my past—with everything that had happened and everything that had ended—something inside me began to open.

A space I hadn't even been able to name before.

For months it had been filled with pain, guilt, regret, and questions that had no answers.

Then, as all of that slowly began to fade...

As gratitude replaced anger...

As peace replaced restlessness...

Doors opened within me that I hadn't even known still existed.

It wasn't planned.

It wasn't something I consciously created or deliberately pursued.

It happened naturally.

Quietly.

As if life itself had decided that after everything I had lived through, after everything I had finally understood and accepted, it was time to move forward.

Toward something new.

Toward something I had once dreamed about but had never dared to give a real shape.

That was how I found myself spending a weekend away with my closest female friends.

The atmosphere was relaxed.

There was no pressure.

No expectations.

I didn't have to prove anything.

I could simply be myself.

Yet there, among ordinary conversations, shared laughter, quiet moments, and glances that lingered just a second longer than they should have, something began to happen.

Something I couldn't yet fully understand.

One of them was the girl who had once been my childhood love—the one I had mentioned long before.

An unfulfilled love that had lived quietly inside me for years.

Something I had imagined countless times but had never allowed myself to pursue.

Perhaps because I lacked the courage.

Perhaps because the time had never been right.

But now, after all those years, there we stood.

Different people.

Older.

Marked by our own stories.

And between us...

...something completely new had begun to be written.

— JK —