I began in Strasbourg.

Not as a tourist.

But as someone who still believed a body would simply cooperate.

A city of cathedrals and clocks.

Where centuries do not tick but breathe.

There I took my first steps of 2025,

unaware that this same year would later break my legs.

In the Black Forest I learned to listen to silence again.

Not the silence of rest,

but the silence of endurance.

In the Eifel something cracked open.

No wound. No fracture.

Only that strange realization:

my body has been silent for too long.

Berlin cut sharper than sound.

A city that always wants to move forward,

while I felt my own legs

falling behind in time.

And then Spain.

Estepona. Marbella. Seville. Málaga. Nerja. Córdoba. Mallorca.

Sun on my skin, but no healing in my cells.

Every step a negotiation.

Every morning the same question to my muscles:

will you join me today, or will you let me fall again?

December 13, 2025 – Sliedrecht

That date is not on the photographs.

But it burns behind every image.

I stepped out of the car

and my legs did nothing anymore.

No warning.

No farewell.

Only that moment when you realize

your body is no longer your home

but an unreliable housemate.

I still thought: it will pass.

But it did not pass.

It went deeper.

The Flu That Was Not the Flu

Two weeks sick.

Not simply sick.

Drained.

As if every strength I had ever known

resigned all at once.

And yet you do not see a victim.

You see me deciding:

If my body gives no answers,

then I will become the professor of my own survival.

I force my legs.

Not with violence,

but with stubbornness.

With tenderness.

With anger.

With a love that sometimes feels like battle.

Closing

These are not memories.

This is evidence.

My legs fell silent.

I did not.

They may slow me down.

They may hurt me.

But they will not break me.

I move.

Even against gravity.

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