Chapter: Second Time in Treatment

Introducing the Book REMÍZA – The Bet on Life

Chapter: Second Time in Treatment

And yet, our story kept turning in the same circle, moving to the same rhythm of meetings, hope, and the silence that always followed, leaving me emptier each time than I had been before.

When I look back on that period today, I see a man who was emotionally shattered, torn apart between what he longed for and what he was actually receiving, between the desire for certainty and a life trapped in constant ambiguity.

During that time, there were other relationships.

Other women.

Other attempts at living a normal life.

Other attempts at a fresh start.

Other roads I tried to take in the hope of leaving the old one behind.

None of them lasted.

Today, I know exactly why.

I was never truly present.

Perhaps I was physically.

Perhaps my words were.

Perhaps, to everyone around me, it looked as though I had moved on.

But my mind...

...and above all, my heart...

remained tied to a place where certainty had ceased to exist long ago, where only waiting remained.

Back then, I would never have admitted that.

I was still pretending—even to myself—that I had everything under control.

That I was capable of moving forward.

Today I see it with almost painful clarity.

That is also why I so often use words like perhaps or maybe whenever I speak about that time.

Because even now, I cannot say with complete certainty what it really was.

Was it love—real, deep love that simply remained unreturned?

Or was it an illusion I kept alive for years with hope, memories, and the longing for something that was never meant to happen?

People often say that friendship between a man and a woman survives only until one of them crosses the emotional line.

Today I know...

I crossed that line a very long time ago.

The tragedy was that I genuinely believed I wasn't standing on the other side alone.

I believed she felt it too.

That those glances...

those conversations...

those quiet moments we shared...

carried something deeper than simple friendship.

Today I know I was wrong.

And it wasn't the kind of mistake a person laughs about years later before casually waving it away.

Perhaps, to someone looking from the outside, it might sound like a tragicomic story.

Just another familiar tale—

she never wanted more...

he kept hoping.

But what happens inside a human soul over the course of years cannot be reduced to a single sentence.

Nor can it be mocked with an easy conclusion.

Those years...

that endless waiting...

the constant presence of someone inside your mind and your heart, even while nothing appears to be happening on the outside...

all of it shaped me.

It shaped me in ways that were both painful...

and defining.

I don't want to dismiss it as foolishness.

Because for me...

it wasn't foolishness.

It became something that, in its own strange way, raised me.

Something that broke me.

Something that taught me.

And at the very same time...

something that took a part of me away forever.

Eventually, the moment arrived that divided everything into a clear before and after.

But before that happened...

there was another chapter.

A chapter in which I was fighting battles of my own.

I was struggling with myself.

With life.

With addiction.

With the slow collapse of everything I believed I was.

There simply wasn't enough strength left inside me to keep carrying it all.

What came wasn't the opposite of love.

It wasn't hatred.

It was exhaustion.

The kind of exhaustion that leaves a person with nothing left to hope for.

Nothing left to be disappointed by.

Nothing left from which to rebuild themselves.

Ironically, my own downfall had begun with the dream of proving that I could become everything she would ever need.

In the end...

I was left with nothing.

I lied to her.

And yet, even then...

around this very time a year ago...

she came to see me.

Not to judge me.

But to remind me that genuine friendship is always something greater than pride.

These days I often find myself returning to those memories, as though some part of me still needs to discover exactly where everything went wrong.

Could I have done something differently?

Did I spend all those years believing in something that existed only inside my own imagination?

Or is the greatest problem simply that I still haven't managed to draw a final line beneath that chapter of my life?

Or perhaps...

this is the ending.

Perhaps the only thing left for me is to begin again.

On my own.

Maybe some stories don't truly end when they appear to end on the outside.

Maybe they end only when we have finally lived them to their very last sentence within ourselves.

For a while, I stopped writing altogether.

I simply stared at the pages lying in front of me.

A strange feeling came over me.

It was as though I wasn't writing about myself anymore.

As though I were observing the fate of someone else from a distance.

And yet I knew perfectly well...

that man was me.

With all my naivety.

My stubbornness.

My hope.

My weakness.

The therapist had written that he wished me the best in my relationships.

That perhaps, one day, true love would find me...

and with it...

lasting recovery.

It surprised me how deeply such a simple sentence affected me.

At first glance it seemed almost ordinary.

Brief.

Almost too simple for everything I had been carrying inside myself.

But the longer I thought about it...

the more I realized that perhaps its simplicity was exactly what gave it such power.

Maybe this time I didn't need another psychological analysis.

Another explanation.

Another attempt to name wounds I already knew by heart.

Perhaps I simply needed someone to quietly accept that certain chapters had ended...

and that I didn't have to keep rescuing them inside my memories simply because they had once meant everything to me.

Perhaps I only needed to admit that this belonged to the past now.

And that somewhere beyond all of it...

something else might one day exist.

Something real.

Not something uncertain.

Not something caught in between.

Not something where one person waits while the other remains unsure.

But something where both people know.

Both people choose.

Both people stay.

As for recovery...

those words touched me even more deeply.

Because hidden inside them was a quiet but unmistakable truth.

Before I can build something healthy with another person...

I first have to rebuild myself.

My inner world.

My broken places.

My falls.

My emptiness.

My escapes.

Only then can I hope to create something real with someone else.

Today I know he was right.

Perhaps that is exactly why those words struck me so deeply.

The truth rarely needs many words.

It simply knows exactly where to hurt.

Eventually, I closed the notebook.

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes for a brief moment while all the memories, questions, and unfinished sentences I had poured onto those pages continued to echo inside me.

Perhaps this story will never have a beautiful ending.

Perhaps there is nothing romantic about it.

Nothing triumphant.

Perhaps it contains far too much pain.

Far too many mistakes.

Far too many years that can never be returned.

And yet...

today I understand something I never understood before.

Even a story without a final full stop can still have meaning.

Because sometimes it is not what ends well that changes us...

...but what hurts us for so long that, in the end, it finally forces us to look at ourselves honestly.

— JK —