They framed me as someone I wasn’t.
An addict.
Unreliable.
A danger.
And still… I couldn’t truly blame her.
Everyone has their own version of the truth.
And in her eyes,
maybe that’s what she saw.
Or needed to see,
to make her story make sense.
But it cut deep.
Not because she attacked me,
but because I had done everything I could to protect her.
Even in court.
During the second family court hearing,
something unexpected happened.
Something small.
But it moved me.
She —
the woman who had called me a junkie,
unstable, unsafe —
suddenly defended me.
She told the judge:
“I don’t want you to see Wim as a junkie.
Because he’s not.”
And I felt hope.
Just for a moment.
Not because it fixed everything.
But because I thought: she knows.
She knows that image isn’t true.
And maybe —
maybe she also knows
she helped create it.
The judge surprised me, too.
She said:
“Maybe I’ve been too black-and-white.
I see so much misery caused by drug use,
that I sometimes forget there are stories behind it.”
And I felt… seen.
Not completely.
Not fully.
But enough
to not be just a caricature anymore.
My daughter spoke as well.
She told her story.
That there was more behind the image.
More behind the conflict.
And maybe…
that was the first time my truth
was no longer just mine.
Things moved forward.
We did a mediation session.
It led nowhere.
No depth.
No respect.
Only control.
Only a fight for being right.
To her, it felt like negotiation.
To me, it felt like sacrifice —
one that would never be acknowledged.
I kept searching.
Not for revenge.
Not to win.
But to find a way
to do this honestly.
Respectfully.
Independently.
Without throwing mud.
I found a law firm that understood that.
Specialized in mediation.
No strategy.
No games.
They wanted to follow my tone.
My vision.
But that meant I had to give them everything.
Every document. Every detail. Everything I knew.
Not to attack.
But to respond.
To not lose myself.
And I did it.
With a trembling heart.
In trust.
Not to win.
But to be able to look myself in the eye
when all of this would be over.
I read my lawyer’s conclusions.
For the labor court.
And for the first time, I felt:
this is my voice.
Soft.
Clear.
Without hate.
Without lies.
Exactly as I had hoped.
But every time I tried to rebuild something,
she was there to control it.
Or undo it.
And I understood.
I truly did.
She needed control
to feel safe.
But I…
I needed space
to not lose myself.
One day, my lawyer asked:
“Why don’t you just liquidate?
Sell everything. Split the profits. Be done with it.”
And I knew…
that’s the easy way.
But not the right one.
Not for me.
I’m now having the business valued.
The future assessed.
What’s still worth saving.
Maybe I’ll be able to buy her out.
Maybe not.
Maybe I’ll lose something personally.
Maybe everything.
But if I don’t try…
I’ll lose something far greater:
myself.
Because I know:
I can only live with myself
if I can say:
“I tried everything. Truly everything.”
And that’s where I am now.
Not in battle.
Not in surrender.
But in the choice to keep on trying —
even if it’s the hardest path.
Reflection
Being alone wasn’t a failure.
It wasn’t abandonment.
It was a conscious choice.
A commitment to something in me
I could no longer betray.
I didn’t want to run.
I didn’t want to fill the emptiness with noise,
or distract myself just to survive.
I wanted to stay.
Simply stay.
Right in the middle of it all —
the silence, the absence, the nothingness.
And not collapse.
I felt that emptiness.
Not as defeat.
But as space.
A space between who I had been
and who I was becoming.
I wasn’t falling.
I was landing.
In myself.
Existential Insight
What I went through wasn’t depression.
It was a shedding.
I had stopped begging for recognition
from people who couldn’t see me.
I had let go of the need for reciprocity.
I had chosen to stop waiting
for someone else to validate my worth.
It wasn’t pride.
It was inner survival.
I crossed a desert.
A place with no answers.
No light.
No signals.
But in that void,
something began to realign.
Not a revelation.
Not sudden peace.
But a quiet truth:
I am alive.
Even here.
Especially here.
I had to let go of the idea
that peace would come from the outside.
I had to learn how to pray without words,
to hope without expectations,
to breathe without understanding.
It wasn’t an ascent.
It was a descent.
Into what was most bare and real in me.
And what I found there…
wasn’t light.
Wasn’t meaning.
But it was real.
And it was mine.
There was a price.
But for the first time,
it didn’t cost me my skin.
It didn’t ask me to twist,
to please, to hide, or to perform.
It only asked me
to live who I am.
And that…
I will never trade again.
You can believe what you want.
You can tell your story.
That’s yours.
But me —
I’m no longer waiting for permission
to live mine.