There’s something in grief processing that always escaped me. Something I could never fully accept: the taste of defeat. Like a persistent aftertaste, a bitterness in the throat that no stage or phase of acceptance could ever truly dissolve.
But is this really the most we can expect from working through a loss?
There is a precise moment when pain takes shape—when it stops being an indistinct cloud and condenses into a single point in the heart. For me, that moment wasn’t a single one, but a long sequence of instants in which I understood that something that gave meaning to my life would never return as it was.
At first, it was a vortex. An apparently endless cycle fueled by three words chasing each other like a cruel mantra: pain, anger, sadness. I lived them in turns, sometimes all at once, sometimes one by one—but always with the same intensity, devouring me.
And yet, something happened. I don't know if it was a single moment or a slow unfolding, but a crack opened within that cycle. And through that crack, something else emerged. Not relief. Not easy consolation. But depth, true compassion (not pity), love.
Depth came when I stopped running from what I felt. When I let every emotion pass through me without resistance, like a river I couldn't dam. When I understood that I had lived in superficiality until then, and that those emotions gave meaning to my existence.
Compassion came when I looked at myself from the outside and saw a man who suffered not because he was weak, but because he had lost his way.
And then finally, love. Not as regret, but as a new presence. A love that demands nothing—not even presence—that doesn’t need a reply but exists anyway. A love that flows.
I don't know when the shift began. But what I do know for certain is that writing gave it form. Writing meant naming the pain, holding it without erasing it, allowing it to become something else. Every word written took power away from the shadow, gave light to truth. Writing was the way to make visible what lived within me, and to transform it into something that could last—without hurting.
I am not a psychologist, and this text, which might become the prologue of a book, does not stem from clinical theory but from a real, months-long journey through the darkest and deepest corners of the human soul. It is an emotional text, but also a logical one. Because without logic, pain risks becoming pure chaos.
In the beginning, I saw no option that didn’t involve my defeat—a kind of spiritual zugzwang. Then I understood something simple and revolutionary: when all the choices lead to loss, it’s time to change the board, change the rules of the game. And so I did. I stopped accepting the imposed game and created another space. Not to win against the other, but to avoid losing myself.
And then something even greater happened: pain transformed into love became untouchable. No longer just acceptance—fragile and revocable by a verdict or accusation—but a higher level, unreachable by destruction. This love can no longer be denied, twisted, or ridiculed: it has crossed the threshold. It lives in a space no longer tied to conflict, but to deep truth.
This text begins here. From the exact point where pain stopped being only destruction and began to turn into truth. Into another form of life.
To narrate this passage authentically, I decided to revisit even those early letters—written in the darkest hours, when the night’s weight crushed my breath and the only language I knew was that of anger, bitterness, and hunger for justice. Those words weren’t mistakes: they were the starting point. From there, the journey opened. Writing guided me, forced me to look inward without pretending. And, step by step, it made room for the emergence of an absolute love for my children—a love that asks for nothing, accuses no one, but simply exists and protects.
182 long sleepless nights, told with the impressions of the moment, collected now that I finally seem to have found the way back.