I wasn’t looking for a new life. I was looking for a way to go on living.

For almost thirty years I shared my life with Celina.

Shared mornings. Shared memories. Shared plans.

The future was a given. There was no need to think about it.

Until the diagnosis came.

Shock and disbelief.

Time that kept shrinking

We fought for five years.

Five years of tests, results and waiting outside doctors’ doors. Five years of hope that came and went like a wave.

For most of that time, she was the one leading the fight. She decided about her treatment herself, about the next steps, about how she wanted to live with the illness. She was stronger than anyone imagined. Stronger than me.

I was beside her.

In the fourth year things began to fall apart. She still decided for herself, but more and more often she looked for my eyes before she answered the doctor. More and more often, at night, she asked: “And now what?” And I had to have an answer.

The illness took her strength piece by piece. First the kind you can’t see. Then the kind that could no longer be hidden. Stairs. A walk. A mug of tea that suddenly became too heavy.

I stopped thinking in years. Then in months. In the end I stopped thinking about the future at all.

Time stopped flowing forward.

It began to flow inward - straight into the heart.

Since there was no future any more, all that was left was now. And in that “now” I loved her more and more. Every day more than the day before. As if I wanted to fit into those months all the years we would no longer have.

And then came the day she looked at me and I understood that from now on, I was the one deciding.

For the last three and a half months, everything was on my side. Every “yes”. Every “no”. Every “not yet”.

I kept watch. Days and nights blurred into one. Time was measured only in moments.

A second. A minute. A moment of respite. Another breath.

Her breath.

I listened for it even in my sleep.

I saw ever more clearly how little depended on me. And yet there was always something that had to be done.

Inside, I was bursting at the seams.

But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t fall apart. I had to be there.

I did what I could.

18 December 2025

The evening before, her breathing changed.

It became heavy. Rasping. Different from all the breaths before.

I could still hear it when I lay down to sleep.

It was the silence that tore me out of my watchful sleep.

So loud it screamed.

My heart was pounding in my chest. I was afraid to move. Afraid to check.

I listened.

One. Two. Three.

Any moment now. It will come any moment.

Four. Five.

It always came.

Six.

My heart was already hammering in my throat. The rush of blood in my ears drowned out everything.

Seven.

I held my own breath so as not to miss hers.

Eight.

Nine.

Nothing.

Silence.

Piercing silence.

I got up. I went over.

I knew before I touched her hand.

There was no next breath.

Celina was gone.

Despair came.

Emptiness came.

And relief came.

That she was no longer suffering. That the fight was over - the one in which, for five years, I watched her fade.

Relief after the death of someone you have loved for thirty years. It is hard to say out loud.

But it isn’t a contradiction. It is love that could finally stop being afraid.

Her suffering was over.

My task was only beginning.

I had to learn to live without her.

I didn’t know how.

My note from the day before the funeral →

Silence

After the funeral it went quiet.

Family and friends tried to help. I am grateful to them for it. But even the closest people can’t take away someone else’s pain.

You can stand among kind people and be completely alone.

There was the gym. Walks. Team games. Group classes. The library.

But those were only hours.

And there was an awful lot of time left over, because I couldn’t sleep.

I had to do something.

So as not to lose my mind.

A scream dressed in sound

I started creating.

I wrote down emotions, moments - everything that hurt and everything that helped. I shaped it all into lyrics, which then, with the help of artificial intelligence, became songs and videos.

At first only to keep my head busy. Another lyric. Another sound. Another image.

When my thoughts went back to what I couldn’t change, I turned them towards something I finally had some control over.

It didn’t change reality.

But for a moment it let me slip out from under it.

Catch my breath.

Then I understood that it was more than an escape.

I began to lock into songs and films what I couldn’t say directly.

Grief. Longing. Anger. Fear. Helplessness. Loneliness.

I hid them in words, symbols, moods. Sometimes so deep that no one but me could read them.

But I knew.

To others, these were just more experiments with AI.

To me, every track was a record of a particular day. A particular night. A particular pain.

I could scream without explaining to anyone why I was screaming.

AI didn’t live through anything for me. It didn’t create my memories. It only gave me the tools to give them sound and image.

The pain didn’t go away. Nor did the longing.

But not everything had to stay inside me any more.

Some of it I could lock into a song.

And release into the world.

Technically, these pieces probably have their flaws.

That’s not the point.

The emotions are one hundred per cent mine.

The story really happened.

Warownia Serca

That is how Warownia Serca - the Fortress of the Heart - was born.

This is not a story of victory over pain. There is no moment in it when everything suddenly becomes easy.

There is an attempt to survive the next day.

And creating, which became part of that attempt.

Artificial intelligence won’t heal a broken heart. It won’t turn back time. It won’t bring Celina back.

For me, it was a tool. It let me focus my thoughts, express what I couldn’t express any other way, and get through the worst.

It wasn’t a prescription.

It was my way.

Why a knight

All those years, I fought.

Against the illness. Against fear. Against helplessness.

I loved more and more.

And more and more I had to pretend everything was fine.

I couldn’t fall apart in front of her. So I grew a hard skin - layer by layer, like armour.

It protected me when I had to be strong.

But when the fight was over, the armour stayed.

It began to weigh me down.

It cut me off from the world. From people. From myself.

My heart became a fortress - walls no one was allowed behind. Not even me.

That is why there is a knight in this story.

A symbol of endurance. Of someone who stands guard to the end, even knowing this battle can’t be won.

The road through grief was the road on which I took that armour off. Piece by piece.

To feel again. To be myself again.

The knight has ended his journey.

The walls have fallen.

Does it ever end?

Has the grief ended?

I don’t know if it ever ends. It walks with me, but it doesn’t take control.

Do the memories come back? Of course.

Sometimes with a song on the radio, sometimes with a date on the calendar.

But they no longer knock me down. They come like a good friend - for a while. Sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a lump in the throat. And they leave.

Because grief doesn’t last for ever. It transforms.

At first it is the whole world. Then it becomes a memory. And in the end - gratitude.

There is no single calendar that says how long it should last.

But a day comes when you notice you are looking ahead again, not back.

Today I am hungry for life.

Because in my chest the heart still beats - like a bell.

Love does not die. It only changes its form. So does grief.

For you

I leave this story to others.

Maybe someone will hear in these songs something they couldn’t name themselves.

Maybe they will see in the images a piece of their own road.

Or maybe they will simply feel they are not the only one.

You don’t have to go through this the way I did. You don’t have to make music or turn to AI.

I have no ready answers.

I know only one thing.

At first it is impossible to think about the future.

You have to survive the next hour.

Then the next night.

Then the next day.

And not demand of yourself to know what comes next.

It was as it was meant to be.

I wasn’t looking for a new life. I was looking for a way to go on living.