The Beginning of the Story

I was born in 1990, at a time that seemed to carry its own quiet sense of hope and innocence.

My childhood was like a beautifully illustrated storybook, its pages turned by my parents with love in their eyes.

They never earned much, and there were many things they quietly sacrificed for themselves.

Yet I never felt that I was missing anything that truly mattered.

My sister and I were given everything our parents could possibly offer us—and something even more valuable than material things.

They gave us their time.

Their attention.

Their unconditional love.

I grew up in a family that may not have owned expensive toys, but it gave us something many people spend a lifetime searching for:

the warmth of a true home.

While I was still a little boy, my parents took me to the sea.

I remember standing before the endless waves, breathing in the scent of the salty wind as it brushed gently across my face.

We spent weekends in mountain cabins, traveled together, and discovered new countries.

They taught us to look at the world with open eyes and open hearts.

Even when money was scarce, my parents somehow found a way to open the world to us.

For that, I will remain grateful for the rest of my life.

I did not start kindergarten until the year before primary school.

Before then, I spent most of my days with my grandparents in the countryside.

Those were the brightest and most colorful years of my early childhood.

Whether it was Veľká Hradná or Trenčianske Jastrabie, those villages still awaken an avalanche of memories every time I hear their names.

Although I was born in a town and spent most of my life surrounded by concrete and asphalt, it was the countryside that truly shaped my childhood. It was there that I learned what summer truly smells like when freshly cut hay dries beneath the sun.

It was there that I discovered the taste of cold water drawn with my own hands from a village well.

There I came to know the silence of open fields, the sound of roosters greeting the dawn, the dignity of honest work, and the beauty of ordinary moments that so many people overlook today.

The countryside taught me humility.

Gratitude.

And the quiet truth that life's greatest joys rarely arrive wrapped as gifts.

More often, they are found in the simplest moments.

My childhood was beautiful.

It was filled with love, gratitude, and happiness.

For that, I owe an immeasurable debt to my parents and grandparents.

They gave me opportunities that many people might consider ordinary, yet to me they were extraordinary gifts.

My parents made it possible for me to attend school trips, nature camps, and excursions that broadened my horizons and filled my childhood with experiences I still treasure today.

Each of those moments became another layer upon which, knowingly or unknowingly, I would later build the person I became.

As I write these words and bring those memories back to life, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude that is difficult to put into words.

My parents could never have imagined that one day I would thank them like this...

within the pages of a book that would tell far more than the joyful chapters of my life.

They could never have imagined that the son they loved so deeply would one day betray them in a way that would almost break their hearts.

That he would steal from them.

Lie to them.

Throw their trust and unconditional love into the mud of deception and addiction.

And yet...

through it all, their love remained like deep roots holding me back from the edge of complete destruction. In primary school, I was an ordinary boy—just one among thousands.

I loved spending time with my friends, and my heart carried no great burdens.

I was a good student.

Learning came naturally to me whenever I applied myself, and back then, the world still seemed simple.

But everything began to change when I entered high school.

Slowly...

Almost imperceptibly...

I began to lose the solid ground beneath my feet.

Long before my own addiction took hold, another reality had already entered my life.

The reality of my father's addiction.

I cannot say exactly when it began.

I only remember watching him slowly drift away from us.

Quietly.

Almost unnoticed.

Before that, he had filled our childhood with hiking trips, family adventures, and weekends in the mountains.

I still remember him carrying us on his shoulders down snow-covered hills after long hikes.

I remember winter days when he would tirelessly pull us uphill on sleds through the Považský Inovec mountains, laughing as though he had become a little boy again.

He was our hero.

Our guide.

The one who showed us that love is often measured not by grand gestures, but by the simplest moments shared together.

Then something changed.

I cannot describe the exact moment.

I only know that, little by little, my father began to disappear before our eyes.

The light in his eyes faded.

His voice grew quieter.

His presence turned into a painful silence.

Where laughter had once filled our home, there remained only my mother's tears...

and a suffocating helplessness that, as a child, I could feel but could never understand. Perhaps that is why, while I was still just a boy, I began searching for certainty in the wrong places.

By the age of ten, I had already become fascinated by neo-Nazism and the dangerous illusion of superiority it promised.

It was a distorted attraction to power, discipline, and hatred—one that seemed, at the time, to offer answers to the emptiness I carried inside.

Those ideas planted seeds of anger, contempt, and the comforting illusion that, in a chaotic world, I had finally found something solid to hold on to.

As the years passed, that fascination only grew stronger.

During high school, it slowly and relentlessly evolved into genuine extremism.

Something dark had been taking root inside me for years.

It shaped the way I saw the world.

It changed the way I judged people.

And, without realizing it, it was changing the person I was becoming.

The full story—the events, the choices, and the madness that marked those years—is something I will reveal in the book itself.

Today, I am thirty-five years old.

I know there are things I will never completely erase from my soul or my memory.

I carry them like scars.

They may never disappear entirely, but I have learned to live with them instead of allowing them to control me.

Every day, I do everything I can to keep those darker parts of myself from taking over again, and to ensure that I never repeat the mistakes that defined my youth.

More than ever before, I understand that everything we experience in life is connected.

Every wound.

Every choice.

Every fall.

That is why I wrote this book.

To tell the truth.

To continue healing.

And perhaps to help someone else find their own way.

Because a fall does not have to be the end.

Sometimes, it is only the beginning of something deeper, more honest...

and, perhaps, something far more beautiful.

– JK –