Valladolid

"I gathered the scattered pieces of myself across the world. In Valladolid, I found the one I had been missing the most."

There I stood—with my back against the car and my face turned toward the horizon.

A gentle breeze brushed against my skin, while the sun rested low above the landscape like an old observer of life, one who had long since stopped being surprised by the ways people fall.

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

This photograph was taken by chance.

It captured a moment when I stepped out of my car and simply stood still.

Not because I wanted to admire the view.

Not because I was tired.

I stopped because something deep inside me finally refused to keep running—not from people, not from problems, but from myself.

It was October 2018.

I was on a work trip, spending the weekend completely alone—far from home, far from everyone I knew, and far from all the familiar patterns that had shaped my life.

Perhaps that is why something inside me finally broke.

Not violently.

Quietly.

Painfully.

Almost unnoticed.

For the first time in my life, I was farther from home than I had ever been—and not only in terms of distance.

I was far from my failures.

Far from the people I had hurt.

Far from the names I had disappointed.

Far from the debts I had not yet repaid.

And yet, at the very same time, I had never been closer to what lay beneath it all.

Somewhere within that vast silence, beneath the relentless Spanish sun, I found myself standing in the presence of my own soul.

And it was exhausted.

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

A breakup had torn me apart.

Although it seemed inevitable—perhaps even the right thing to happen—it left behind a silence that was anything but peaceful.

It was an emptiness that hurt.

Something had come to an end.

Something I had truly believed in, even if I had not known how to hold on to it.

And, in many ways, that loss became the final push I needed to change.

By then, I had already been through treatment twice.

The first time was a cry for help.

The second was an attempt to rebuild.

Gambling had not destroyed me overnight.

It was a slow erosion of my identity, wearing away at me 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 my name.

For the first time in years, I felt completely lost...

yet, strangely enough, I also began to believe that this was the very place where I might finally find a missing part of myself.

Perhaps a part I had never truly known before.

I looked out across the endless landscape, a horizon without borders.

And, for the first time in a long while, I also looked inward.

Not at the version of myself that pretended everything was fine.

Not at the one who smiled in front of other people while panic echoed inside his mind.

I looked deeper.

Down to the place where fragments of childhood met the shame of the past, where guilt collided with the desperate need for hope.
And there, in the profound silence of the Spanish countryside, I made a decision once again.

I chose to fight.

Not against the wind.

Not against my past.

Not against the idea of success.

I chose to fight the one relentless question that had echoed inside me for so long:

Is it still worth it?

Is it worth getting out of bed when everything hurts?

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

It was the day my debts came to light.

The day the whole truth could no longer be hidden.

I remember staring into the emptiness, believing that perhaps it would be easier to leave this world behind.

But I didn't.

Not because I wasn't afraid of death.

But because I knew I couldn't leave with so much left unfinished.

Debts unpaid.

Words unspoken.

Wrongs I still hoped to make right.

I felt there was something I still had to repair.

Not everything.

But at least something.

I speak about that time in another story, yet the truth remains the same.

Somewhere deep within me, a quiet voice awakened.

A voice that reminded me I still had the chance to leave something behind.

Not as an excuse.

But as a legacy.

While I was writing REMÍZA – A Bet on Life, every sentence and every paragraph became an attempt to give voice to the layers of pain that could never be expressed in an ordinary conversation.

The words on those pages became my therapy.

My relief.

My cry.

And, at the same time, my silence.

It was here, in Valladolid, that I realized I had a responsibility.

Not to the world.

But to myself.

I had to finish this book.

I had to tell the whole story.

To write the final words.

To explain.

To transform it into a bridge between my own life and someone else who might one day find themselves standing in the same emptiness.

Spain became something deeply personal to me.

Not because anything extraordinary happened there.

But because I found peace.

A kind of silence that did not break me—

it healed me.

Looking back now, I believe that throughout my life, in every country I visited, every road I traveled, and every moment I lived, I was gathering scattered pieces of myself.

Fragments of an identity that had been missing for far too long.

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

Sharp.

Painful.

Necessary.

A piece of my heart.

That is why I can never look at that photograph without feeling my voice tremble.

Not because it is beautiful.

But because it is true.

It captures a moment when I was no longer standing on a road.

I was standing on a threshold—

between my past and the possibility of a different future.

And although I had no idea what awaited me next, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

I had to go home.

Not just physically.

I had to find my way back to myself.

Back to the truth.

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

but would finally be mine.

Today, when I look back on that moment, I know this without the slightest doubt:

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 the reflection staring back at me in the rear-view mirror.

– JK –