1 Prologue

This is a work of pure imagination. Any reference to: events, places or people is purely a figment of the author's imagination.

How many of us allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by our emotions, even though a moment before we said with the same impetus that it is not possible? We constantly tell ourselves, "Enough! I will never fall in love again!" or "I will never allow anyone else to enter my heart like that!".

How silly is that not true? Although they are statements given by a moment of frustration or anger, it must be said that it is a peculiarity of us children. Because yes, whether we want to or not, we always remain children.

In the wrong way, however.

A child doesn't hold grudges, and that's the one thing we should keep from being children.

I am not exempt from such stupidity. In fact, most of my sorrows are the consequence of abandoning that child, replaced by a person that sometimes I didn't even know or didn't want to know.

But life, as we know, always leads us to mysterious places.

It always makes us reconsider what we think we know; and the more stubborn you are in not wanting to see, the more the beatings hit you.

In the meantime you remain there, still and motionless, like a defenseless boxer who takes a barrage of punches from his opponent.

You believe that sooner or later this torment will end, you think about the end of everything, that life will end and you will be free from all this. But you don't realize that in doing so you throw away what little time you have in useless suffering.

Until one day you "wake up", open your eyes and suddenly in the silence of your room you think: "How stupid I've been".

My name is Tristano, this year I turned 31 years old. The year is 2020.

A year to forget for many of us, but not for me.

The story I am about to tell you will certainly be "absurd" or "far-fetched" for many of you. I certainly won't try to convince you otherwise, however if you have enough patience to read to the end, you will realize that there is a sense to it.

What I am about to tell you is a journey, a sort of spiritual adventure, which I am sure each of us has done at least once in our lives.

Where it leads us remains unknown, but we certainly know that we will never be the same once we leave...

Our life is a continuous change both in body and in spirit. This leads us irreparably to have contrasts with reality, since the experiences we have bring us [changes]; but the real problem is that most of the time we suffer as a result of these changes.

In order not to fall back into the same situation, we avoid any move, even the most imperceptible one.

We close ourselves in a shell that imprisons us until it is broken or until death itself breaks it once and for all.

At the same time, however, we damage ourselves, we blame ourselves, we denigrate ourselves by asking ourselves so many questions: "Why am I not like others?" "Why do I act this way?" or "Why does everything always have to go wrong? What is wrong with me?"

I believe that as with me, many others have asked themselves similar questions at least once in their lives. As for me, they have led me to enter into a sort of "exile of existence" away from any semblance of human relationship; setting aside my family members, I have purposely distanced myself from any form of social relationship: be it friendship, love or any kind of relationship.

Years and years of my existence flew by, but I didn't care.

Reading, studying, playing kept me busy in my solitary activities. Every now and then, between one online gaming session and another, I would make "outside" contacts.

I didn't have many and the more I was confronted with the surrounding reality, the more my diversity was a burden.

So I took refuge in the Internet, and extended those boundaries that I had decided I didn't want to cross. I discovered the first approach in a long-distance relationship, nowadays we could call it a "virtual relationship".

In these cases, you don't have to try so hard, you don't have to go out every day, you don't have to stress. But at the same time it's like shooting yourself in the foot, because you're no longer looking for real relationships within your experience.

On the contrary, you always go beyond what is not there. You can't fully know a person in person, let alone virtually.

But I was okay with that because I had taken on a form of conceit in life, where I didn't need any "real" person next to me. Although there was a voice inside of me that with less and less force was telling me, "You're doing it wrong! This is not the right path!"

Until one day that voice became smaller and smaller, until it disappeared. Growing up, I looked for less and less "normal" human relationships in favor of virtual ones, which despite showing their thorns were still easy to manage.

All it took was a simple click and the person you had been talking to for months was as if they never existed. No drama, no physical confrontation, no nothing.

I didn't realize, however, that what remained were deep scars that added up over time and that in the future would cause me excruciating pain by popping up all at once.

But one day this lifestyle came to a sudden stop.

There are events in a person's life that cannot be avoided in any way despite their best efforts, it is impossible.

The call to reality was a bolt of lightning that struck my "fictional" world with such power, it annihilated everything.

My father was dying.

Exactly four years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. As he was still a young person, the cancer had all the power to destroy his strong bones.

It was a grueling battle for my entire family. Especially the last two years. They were the most devastating as there was nowhere to retreat to. The only thing left to do was to get in the trenches and fight.

Like every battle, ours came to an end.

It was at that moment that my journey began. In the most unthinkable way of all, the most improbable, yet the most lived.