Chapter: This Almost Never Happened

Introducing the Book Remíza – The Bet on Life
Chapter: This Almost Never Happened

I woke up to silence.

But it was not the kind of silence I had longed for.

Not the silence that calms your mind or makes you feel safe.

It was only the disguise that chaos wears whenever it needs a brief moment to rest from its own noise—from the relentless screaming that slowly eats away at a person's soul long before they are willing to admit it.

There was no comfort in that silence.

No answers.

It felt more like the pause between two collisions.

The brief space between two blows, knowing that another one was already on its way.

Perhaps that was why it felt so uncertain.

So deceptive.

As if it were promising peace while both of us already knew it had never intended to stay.

Within that silence I could hear the wind, even though the treetops remained perfectly still.

I could hear my own heartbeat, even though, in that moment, I could have sworn it had long since lost any reason to continue its exhausting rhythm.

It kept beating—not because it still believed in life, but almost as if it had forgotten how to stop.
At first, I had no idea where I was.

Consciousness returned to me in fragments—slowly, cautiously—as if it were afraid to come back all at once, afraid of what it might find waiting for it. It was almost as though even my own mind was unsure whether there was still anything left worth returning to.

I had the strange feeling that I had awakened somewhere outside myself, suspended in the space between decisions, where the body continues to function out of habit, carrying out its most basic tasks without asking questions, while the soul has collapsed at the edge of reality, refusing to step back in, refusing to carry another burden, another day, another explanation.

A strange, unrecognisable noise echoed inside my head.

It was nothing like drunkenness.

Nothing like ordinary exhaustion.

It was the sound of shame.

A sticky, persistent hum capable of drowning out everything else.

Memories.

Reason.

Hope.

Even that primitive instinct that keeps a human being alive long after they themselves have stopped wanting to be.

When I finally moved, pain answered.

Not physical pain.

Not the aching exhaustion of a worn-out body.

It was something far more ordinary—and therefore far more unbearable.

A deeply human kind of pain that almost offended me because it reminded me that my body was still alive.

Still demanding to be heard.

I found myself wondering how my body could continue functioning when my entire world had already fallen apart.

How could it still ask for warmth, movement, and care when I no longer believed I deserved any of those things?

At that moment, I felt that if relief were ever going to come, it would arrive from the opposite direction—through coldness, through silence, through a slow fading away.

A gust of wind brushed across my face.

Only then did I fully realise that I was outside.

In the forest near Mníchova Lehota.

A place where you can be surrounded by towering trees and still feel as though you are standing alone in the middle of an empty parking lot, without landmarks, without direction, without a reason to remain.

The cold crept beneath my skin quietly and patiently, almost as though it were testing me, waiting to see whether I would allow it to go any deeper.

I offered no resistance.

Resistance requires strength.

And I felt I had already spent every last piece of mine on mistakes, on running away, and on trying to carry everything by myself.

The trees stood in silence.

The birds offered no explanations.

The forest simply continued to exist according to its own rhythm, completely indifferent to the catastrophe unfolding inside me.

And perhaps that was exactly why it affected me so deeply.

It forced me to remain there.

To stay present in a moment I wanted nothing more than to escape.
Slowly, cautiously, I pushed myself to my feet, testing whether my body would still obey me, whether it would still respond to the simplest commands.

Everything around me felt cold, hard, and indifferent.

Yet the physical cold was not the worst thing I felt.

Far worse was the fact that I no longer cared.

There was no fear.

No panic.

No inner voice pulling me back, telling me this was wrong, telling me to go home.

The emptiness inside me had begun writing its own rules, and in that moment I was far too exhausted to question them.

I felt that if I stayed there long enough, if I allowed the cold to become part of my breathing, my thoughts, my very existence, then perhaps everything else would finally grow quiet.

Perhaps the thoughts would stop pressing forward.

Perhaps the exhaustion would become something simpler.

Quieter.

Less painful.

It was not a longing for a dramatic ending.

It was weariness from an endless continuation.

Weariness from constantly having to explain—to myself and to everyone else—why I was still standing, why I was still walking, why I was still trying to carry a weight that felt far heavier than I was ever meant to bear.

And it was precisely then, somewhere between the cold, the silence, and resignation, that I realised what was happening inside me.

It was not determination.

It was exhaustion.

Not a conscious decision, but a quiet surrender.

A slow abandonment of resistance.

And that, too, is a form of escape.

Only quieter.

Less obvious.

Wrapped in the illusion that there is simply nothing left to lose.

My thoughts drifted back over the previous days, memories breaking apart into countless sharp fragments, like sheets of paper torn apart in a fit of rage, each piece carrying its own memory, its own bitterness, its own question I desperately wanted to avoid answering.

Those nights had been filled with aimless wandering.

Endless walks from one place to another.

Steps that led nowhere because they were never meant to lead anywhere.

Escapes without direction.

But I was not running from people.

Not from familiar faces or particular situations.

I was running from myself.

From the voice inside my head that relentlessly reminded me of everything I had destroyed, everything I had lost, and everything that might never be repaired.

When a person's life falls apart, the last thing they want is to stand in the middle of the shattered pieces and admit that they belong to them.

That they scattered them with their own hands.

That every decision, every escape, every silence chosen instead of truth had played its part.

Instead, they long to become someone else.

Someone who never broke anything.

Someone who could look at the ruins from a distance without feeling the pain.

But that is impossible.

Because your own name remains inside your chest like a heavy stone, even when you hate it, even when you wish you could tear it out of yourself forever.

I remember spending those nights searching for words I could say to my family.

Sentences that might somehow soften the pain I had caused.

Words that might explain how I had ended up where I was.

But every attempt crashed into the very same wall.

Cold.

Solid.

Unmovable.

There is no sentence capable of repairing shame.

No paragraph that can erase the damage.

No sincere "I'm sorry" that suddenly makes debts disappear or heals the look in the eyes of the people who love you while desperately trying to understand why you hurt them.

Why you placed burdens on their shoulders that they were never meant to carry.

Every word I rehearsed inside my head felt empty before I even had the courage to speak it.

And sometimes, that silence left by all the words I never said hurt far more than any argument ever could.

That was the hardest part of it all.

I was not simply sad.

It was more than disappointment.

More than grief over everything that had gone wrong.

I felt guilty.

And guilt is an entirely different kind of pain.

Sadness lays you down on a bed and whispers that you are tired, that you need rest, that it is all right to hide from the world for a little while.

Guilt stands you in front of a mirror and convinces you that you are dangerous.

That you are the kind of person who destroys good things, even when destroying them was never your intention.

That everything you touch will eventually fall apart.

And after hearing that voice for long enough, you slowly begin to believe it.
Once you begin believing that voice, you slowly begin to believe something even more dangerous—that the world might be calmer, simpler, and safer without you in it. That perhaps everyone would be better off if you simply stopped burdening them with your presence and with the consequences of your mistakes.

Standing there in that forest, I felt like an erased version of myself.

A body without an identity.

Without work.

Without a future.

Without even a name that felt worth speaking.

I was just a man who had stared at his own failures for so long that hope itself had gone blind, leaving everything else distant, unreal, and beyond reach.

I felt as though I had arrived at a place where nothing was expected of me anymore.

A place where I no longer had to explain myself, defend myself, or carry expectations I no longer had the strength to fulfil.

And then something happened.

I do not want to call it a miracle, because miracles sound effortless, immediate, almost fairy-tale-like.

This was nothing like that.

It was ordinary.

Raw.

A reluctant awakening.

Something inside me shifted only because it had nowhere left to retreat.

It was not a sudden burst of hope.

Nor a moment of perfect clarity.

It was simply the quiet realization that I was still breathing.

Still standing.

And even though there was nothing inside me that resembled strength, there was still a small space where change could begin—if I was willing to let it.

It was my body that woke me.

Not because it suddenly wanted to live.

But because the human body is designed to endure.

To keep breathing even when the mind wishes it would stop.

To keep existing even against its owner's will.

Sometimes the body is more stubborn than despair itself.

As I lay there, one thought crossed my mind.

It was not beautiful.

It was not inspirational.

It certainly was not something you would post on social media.

But it was brutally honest.

If I ended my story here...

They would be forced to finish it for me.

That thought struck me harder than every accusation I had ever heard.

Not because I suddenly began to love myself.

But because I pictured the faces of the people who would be left standing where I had chosen to run away.

My family.

The people who would have to pick up everything I had scattered.

Who would have to explain.

Repair.

Answer questions that should never have become theirs to answer.

The thought of leaving them not only with my debts, my mistakes, and my lies, but also with a silence that could never again be filled, became unbearable.

That was the moment I realised something important.

Even if I could no longer feel kindness toward myself, I was still capable of feeling responsibility.

And responsibility is a strange form of love.

Not the kind that comforts you.

Not the kind that whispers reassuring words.

It is the kind that grabs you by the collar and forces you back onto your feet when all you want to do is stay on the ground.

I remember thinking that walking away and leaving them to clean up after me would have been the most selfish thing I could possibly do.

Then another thought followed immediately after.

Sharper.

More honest.

I was not a hero.

I was simply a man who had to stop running.

For the first time in a very long while, I felt no pressure to find grand answers.

No need to make impossible promises.

I did not suddenly believe everything would be all right.

I did not feel brave.

I did not feel victorious.

I felt only one small, quiet movement somewhere deep inside me.

A whisper telling me that I had to keep going.

Because I owed life at least one honest attempt to live it properly.

When I finally stood up, nothing around me had changed.

The forest was still the forest.

The wind was still the wind.

My problems had not disappeared.

The debts were still waiting.

The shame had not gone anywhere.

Everything remained exactly where it had been.

And that was precisely what made it real.

The journey back was nothing like the movies.

It was ordinary.

Dirty.

Quiet.

It was simply one step forward without any certainty of where it would lead.

Not another escape.

Just the first hint of a direction.

I remember walking through the forest while quietly making a list in my head.

Not a plan for a new life.

Just a list of the things that had to happen if I was not going to completely fall apart.

I knew I had to reach out.

I had to stop lying.

I had to accept the pain.

Take responsibility for what I had done.

And stop searching for shortcuts.

Then one final thought settled inside me more deeply than anything else.

If I ever wanted to be forgiven...

I first had to stay alive.

That day, I did not win.

I simply did not lose completely.

And sometimes, that is the greatest victory a person is capable of.

Much later, as life slowly found something resembling an ordinary rhythm again, I finally understood what those nights had really been.

They were never a romantic longing for death.

They were an attempt to switch off the pain.

To silence my mind.

To escape the shame.

To avoid the moment when I would finally have to admit aloud that I had destroyed everything.

Perhaps that is the cruelest truth about the moments that almost break us.

Very often, we are not searching for death.

We are searching for relief.

And once you understand that, you also begin to understand that relief can be found another way.

Not through one dramatic full stop.

But through time.

Through help.

Through humility.

Through relentless work.

Through a thousand tiny commas that quietly say:

You are still here.

This chapter is not meant to be about how deeply I fell.

It is about the fact that there was a moment when everything almost ended...

and yet it didn't.

Because if it had, there would have been no "after."

No second chance.

No opportunity to tell the truth.

To repair at least some of the damage.

Or one day look my family in the eyes without falling apart.

— JK —