Shadow of my Soul. When Silence Set Me Free, #10

This book was born from days no one photographs. From evenings that look quiet from the outside and are loud within. From moments when you realize you have long since been living on, even though you have not yet dared to let go of the old life. Volume 10 is not glossy. It is truth in motion. I write as a gay man about love because, for me, love was never only romance. Love was often survival. It was closeness that was missing although someone was there.
It was enduring habit until you realize that habit does not create warmth. And it was the painful lesson that you are not rescued when you keep abandoning yourself. This book was not written to expose anyone. It was written so I would not keep losing myself. Between these pages lies the hinterland: summers that press down, rooms that grow too small, a basement that becomes a symbol. But there is also the movement that saved me: paths through the forest, wind on my face, a million steps leading out of stillness.
While walking, thoughts became sentences. While writing, sentences became doors. And sometimes literature was the only way not to resemble the life that was trying to discourage me. Volume 10 also carries a second love, one greater than any pose: Massimo. Nineteen years of loyalty, humor, stubbornness, warmth. A dog who knew me without me having to explain myself. In times when people left, he stayed.
In times when I did not like myself, he stayed too. His farewell is a cut through time, and yet it is also proof that love was possible in this life, truly and without conditions. If this book has a quiet core at all, then it is there. For a long time, I believed strength meant enduring everything. Today I know: strength means refusing to chain yourself to a life that makes you small. Strength also means taking your own dreams seriously, even when others smile at them.
A journey around the world in a van. Horses. Books that keep growing, even when you yourself are unsteady. Volume 10 is the chronicle of an upheaval that does not arrive polished. It is the moment when a façade falls, and behind it, emptiness is not waiting, but something uncomfortable and honest: the beginning. When you read this book, read it slowly. Not because it is difficult to understand, but because there are places within it that do not only want to be read, but felt.
Maybe you will recognize yourself in the way one calms oneself down in order not to break. Maybe you will recognize yourself in the longing for a place where you can breathe again. Maybe also in the realization that love does not automatically live where you stay. This Volume 10 is for everyone who has ever wondered whether they learned to feel love at all. For everyone who lost themselves out of habit.
For everyone lying awake at night, promising themselves they will get up again tomorrow. For everyone tired of merely functioning. And for Massimo, who taught me that loyalty does not have to be loud to change everything. I do not write this to please. I write it so that something true remains. Aiden.