Simple Truths of Life

While waiting for her, I glanced briefly at a couple of books in an open bookcase. Perhaps I was trying to distract myself in order to calm my nerves, as I was not comfortable.

Then the girl returned, I undressed, and we went to bed.

Of all three prostitutes with whom I was, she had the strongest compressive characteristics, something that some friends very much appreciated. Not even several seconds had passed before I lost my erection and said that I had come, because I felt very much that I did not want to be there.

I got dressed and left, being completely sure that this was the last time I went to prostitutes for sex, because I did not like the way my life began to go. I had already spent almost the entire monthly salary of the courier, and I could not afford to continue to make such mistakes. In addition, I did not feel very well in moral terms – all three girls were obviously engaged in prostitution not because of love for sex…

Due to negative feelings and thoughts, I tried to forget about my experience with prostitutes as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, life continued to move forward, and I continued to read regarding how to go to America. One of the obvious options was education. I considered inexpensive colleges, because I just wanted to go to the USA and only then think about how to stay there forever. But I needed money for studying, and so I started looking for work again. This time I was thinking of working as a sales assistant so that I could train my speech while working. This time I could not get a job right away, moreover, a lot of time passed and no one would hire me. Then I thought about looking for courier vacancies, but also unsuccessfully – due to the still present habit of partially living in my imagination, I began to stutter in my speech when I spoke with a girl from the human resources department, and she did not want to hire me because of this, even though I told her that I did not stutter. Naturally, she did not know about stuttering what I knew, and therefore she thought that people stutter constantly and cannot change.

Due to the fact that I would often forget self-taught lessons and continued to live in my head, which in turn led to a stupor when trying to speak, I decided to do something about this. On the website of Roman Snezhko I saw his photograph where he was meditating. I thought why not try to start meditating – if the person who discovered the truth about stuttering practices meditation, then maybe it can really help. With these thoughts, I read several articles about meditation and how to meditate properly. I remember exactly how in my first attempt to meditate I laughed at myself for believing that thinking about nothing could help in any way… but I was no longer laughing when I really felt the beneficial effect of simply concentrating on breathing – inhaling and exhaling – or on the surrounding sounds, listening to each sound for approximately the same time. If a couple of months ago I absorbed a lot of negativity, had thoughts about death and was generally quite angry and offended by almost everything and everyone, then, after the very first sessions of meditation, I began to be a very relaxed and happy person. Then I realized that for the first time in my life I really got out of myself, because I did not remember that I had ever experienced such feelings of joy from being in the present, regardless of what was happening around, or that I was so focused on the present moment of my life. Even in the best moments of my life, when I spoke without the stupor, I still did not live one hundred percent in the present – a small part of thoughts was always present in me – at least that is what I thought back then.

I needed to learn to carefully do simple things – from pushing the computer button to eating – but after several hours I was almost completely focused on reality, and all the actions were done almost automatically and without my thinking that I needed to be focused.

Calming down after meditation, along with my newfound knowledge regarding stuttering, reminded me of what my biology teacher said about nerve cells that do not regenerate. As it turned out, the reason for “stuttering” is quite different. And the nervousness itself disappears when you decide to live in peace and not worry about anything.

One of the worst episodes which my fantasies led me to occurred while I was descending to the subway. I touched the iron pipe in the passage and thought to myself what if all of this is not real. It was scary. But after meditations, the perception of reality returned to its place, and I perfectly distinguished reality and memories from fantasies.

On August 7, I was finally hired to work in a store near Oktyabrskoye Polye. Except I had to work as a loader…

It was a new store for children. There were no racks, shelves, or products inside. Therefore, our boss, a young woman, ordered absolutely everyone to carry boxes and assemble shelves: both me and the sellers with cashiers – which I am very pleased for.

Before I got hired in that particular store, I went for an interview in another store of that network of shops. Then their job as a sales assistant was already taken, but the manager of that store helped me by sending me to the store on Oktyabrskoye Polye. Then she said that her help was related to the fact that I, unlike many others, “looked with clever eyes”, and she thought to transfer me to her store in the future. Naturally, I did not just “look” then silently, but also spoke about something that she clearly considered to be an intellectual conversation. It may be worth saying thanks to meditation for that moment in my life.

Additionally, I needed to make a medical book in order to be able to work with food. I only remembered the part when I showed my veins of my arms at the physical examination, and the doctor was glad that I had no signs of needle injections. Based on her speech, it could be concluded that a considerable number of people use drugs…

Returning to my work as a loader, the boss once hinted to me about the opportunity to work as a seller, but she left before I could answer her anything.

Then I rested on the couch and our security guard sat down near me. We talked about something, and when he began to brag about how he had sex with a girl in a car, I felt uncomfortable and, possibly, envious because I never had normal sex by mutual sympathy, and not for money. This reminded me again that my life did not work out the way I wanted, and I was missing out on a lot of things in it. Before that, I had already had several similar moments, for example, when in high school one of my old school friends decided to tell me that in the summer he slept in the same bed with a girl, and then it turned out that my other friends were no longer virgins.

Then one day two young men who worked as electricians in that chain of shops entered the store. They were working with the electrical system until the end of the working day, and I walked with them to the bus stop, which was located a few meters from the shopping center. At that moment a slender girl walked past us. She worked as a merchandiser and placed cans of baby food on the shelves of our store. Then he openly turned his head to look at her butt – the act that I did not really like. It seemed to me not respectful. I think at that moment I forgot that I still almost every day watched porn videos on the Internet and did not consider this to be a disrespect towards girls. Of course, I watched porn mainly in order to get rid of constant thoughts about sex, which distracted me from my studies and life. I also understood that many of those “viewing sessions” took a lot of time, sometimes up to several hours spent searching for that another new unique video.

Speaking of free porn videos on the Internet that could be watched directly in the browser. They had just begun to appear on the web, and I had a clear thought at that time that if it wasn’t for these videos, I would most likely have stopped masturbating. Yes, I downloaded porn movies before, when the Internet speed was lower, but there is a difference between downloading a video and watching it directly.

Meanwhile, a new girl with blond hair began to work in the store. I often kept her company when she went outside to smoke. We talked about different things. Not sure if she told me that she had a boyfriend, or another guy working as a sales assistant pulled this information out of her. In order to remove all unnecessary things, I will go straight to the point and say that that seller came up behind that girl one day and made gestures as if he had sex with her. She did not see this, but for me from my point of view it again seemed immoral. Even though he knew that she had a boyfriend, he still made moves on her. I do not think that they really ever had sex, but then who knows…

Coming home after work, I still often watched movies, still in Russian translation, and not in the original. Once I started watching David Lynch's Mulholland Drive movie. When the final credits started to roll, I was completely sober from my fantasies and I was quite shocked by how close the main idea of this film reflected my life and I was shocked by what I realized then… I watched the film credits for the first time until the very end, still being shocked at the realization that all the previous months that I thought I had gotten rid of the habit of fantasizing, I was still in the grip of my out-of-control imagination. Droplet by droplet, fantasy by fantasy, and for many months I had been spending almost all my time in my imagination again and I did not see it! Then I realized that I needed to take it more seriously and this time actually “get out of myself”, and not think that I got out of myself while dreaming of this liberation.

Speaking of “getting out of myself”. I often recalled that dream, and I often wondered – is it prophetic? What if I would never actually manage to “get out of myself”? But then I reassured myself that in fact I already had a few moments when I was fully focused on reality, and this meant that the word “never”, uttered in that dream, had nothing to do with real facts, and , accordingly, that dream could not be prophetic. All I had to work on back then was to make the living in reality a habit and remember everything that I recently learned and realized…

On the next working day, they brought something huge. When I was carrying that heavy box upstairs to the second floor, my heart ached for a moment. This was the reason for quitting the job on the twenty-ninth of August. I worked as a loader for three weeks, and I was glad of such an experience which, among other things, also required me to carry empty boxes in the garbage. I was glad of it because I found out then what happens if you do what you do not want to do in your life.

Once at that time I also regretted having spent several years of my life reading articles about UFOs and other similar things. But then I remembered that distant event with the bright entity in the village that was the reason for my searches, and I calmed down a bit, realizing that perhaps something like this really existed in this world, but we just did not know about it. But despite this, I no longer had the desire to get involved with the subject of the unknown because I wanted to regain my life here on Earth.

In the fall of that year, I wanted to try to go to acting classes. I thought it could help me with my remaining lack of self-confidence. I was still afraid to speak with other people, which became clear during the first introductory lesson of those courses. There were a lot of people, and the teacher asked each one in the audience to come in front of the crowd and talk a little about themselves. Then a slight panic again began to seize me. I tried to relax, remembering what I knew about stuttering. I do not remember what I said when it was finally my turn to speak. I can only say that my speech was without stupors, which did not prevent some people from laughter. Most likely they were amused by my body movements and facial expressions – a logical manifestation of my insecurity and nervousness.

I must say that that evening, when I was just about to enter the building where the introductory acting classes were held, I could not help but hear the conversation of two women, one of whom loudly said something like this: “And then he suddenly started talking about sex and I felt so scared!”. This was another moment of my life, in which, at that time, I found another confirmation that I had to first go abroad, and only then look for a normal girlfriend.

Another reason that I postponed the search for the girlfriend until later was that due to the influence of television I had the impression that Russian girls would not want to communicate with me as soon as they learned that I dreamed of living in a country about which there had been spoken quite a lot of negativity at that time already.

That fall, I also went to English courses which were held twice a week in the evenings at one of the local schools.

I had no money to attend two training courses at the same time, and so I chose English, as knowledge of the language would open up more opportunities for me in the future.

I bought the required textbook and workbook. It was an intermediate English course for those who already knew little language.

How I liked being at the school desk again then, not having all the problems that prevented me from opening up in school. I gladly read in English and translated the text aloud, I myself volunteered to answer – in fact, I was one of the most active in our small class – and I really liked the learning process. Then I realized what I had lost due to stuttering in school. And I really was right when I was still in high school and I thought that it was because of the consequences of stuttering that I was getting good grades instead of excellent ones… well, or mostly excellent.

Sometimes I did have stupor during the lessons, and sometimes I stuttered in my speech very much, because I still was fantasizing. I remember that then my fantasies began to include our pretty English teacher, and sometimes some classmates. I also did little with the habit of speaking in my imagination. It is terrible that this habit grew into the habit of repeating the name of some girls in combination with a bad word…

Once I was very upset when I was returning home from the English courses in the late dark evening. That day I lost control of my thoughts and body again, and began to have stupor in classes. Approaching the entrance of my house, I realized one of the most important truths of life – losing something, we always find something, and this something is always experience and knowledge gained from it. Yes, there are sad moments in our lives, but they exist so that we can learn from our mistakes and not make them again… this understanding will be of great importance in the events that were destined to happen very soon in my life…

Why could not I just stop dreaming, given that I already had a successful experience of living in the present? Well, firstly, the insidiousness of being lost in the imagination lies in the fact that a person begins to get used to this state of mind that soon becomes the norm for him. Secondly, when I still managed to concentrate on reality, life became very boring and empty; and if I was able to overcome that boredom, for example, with the newfound power of meditation, then very soon I rediscovered the fact that I was a balding guy with an asymmetric lip. I often fell into a state of depression because of this, then I would start thinking about what could have happened if I had done this or not had done that in the past and I did not notice how my thoughts smoothly turned into fantasies and once again the feeling of reality was blurred. At other times, I consciously returned to fantasies, realizing how easy it was to stop fantasizing and live in reality – you just concentrate on what is happening around you and your consciousness very quickly becomes absolutely pure. I believed that at the necessary moments in my life I would just quickly return to a normal state of mind, but then I did not yet have a certain life experience that showed me my wrongness…

While attending English courses, I began to fall in love with one of the girls with blond hair. I constantly thought about her – the state of being that again interfered with my studies, and which very dimly showed the memory of Natasha somewhere in the back of my mind. I think that the expression “Carpe diem” from the movie “Dead Poets Society” with Robin Williams, as well as some of the plot moments of that film, helped me to overcome my fear and prompted me to look for a way to tell a girl that I loved her for the first time. I managed to get her mobile phone number – for this I had to disturb our teacher, who was then on exams. Having acquired the number of the girl, I went to Cherkizovsky Pond and sat on a bench. It took me a while to pack up my courage and then I called her. I explained to her the reason for my call, but she was already married. Entering the classroom, she smiled at me, and the teacher once quickly looked at me and her, but everything else was absolutely the same. I did not feel any discomfort and never regretted anything.

During my studies, I started looking for work. I remembered the girl who worked as a merchandiser when I was still working as a loader, and I liked that that work gave the freedom from bosses. A few months later, on February 5, 2008, I was finally hired to work as a merchandiser – in fact, I was hired a couple of weeks ago to work at another place, but I found out about this when I already said on the phone that I did not want to work there, thinking that it was another company calling me, and back then I could not just apologize and tell the truth about the fact that I mistakenly mixed up two firms.

The work consisted of visiting several shops a day in the north of Moscow and putting cans of jam on a store shelf if it ran out of cans. I also had to send a report to the supervisor every week.

My training day passed with a woman who, as it turned out, had also stuttered before. I do not know if she understood what I was trying to tell her about the real reason for stuttering. Some breathing techniques helped her with her speech, which, I suspect, really helped her to be focused on the “here and now”, which, in turn, actually helped her with the speech.

At home, the bank’s air conditioners continued to interfere with life even stronger, since to two already quite noisy air conditioners had been added two more, which were hung directly under our windows. The noise was unbearable, as was the vibration that was transmitting from those air conditioners to our floor. Of course, in such an environment it was also very difficult to concentrate on the irritating reality, and I was often getting absorbed in various thoughts, which often turned into fantasies.

I had once spent the night at my father’s apartment in the small room; I bought bedding at that time, which was left in the apartment. On one Friday I decided that I would live with my father, since the noise of the air conditioners drove me crazy, and I could not study normally.

I went to his house right after the English courses – it is good that I just needed to catch a trolleybus or a regular bus and drive a couple of stops.

Upon arrival at the apartment I was met by a slightly drunk father and some woman. My presence in the small room did not finish the drinking party, and I could clearly hear my father's loud voice in the large room. He said something about the fact that he never had problems with women. At that time, I still had a deep grudge against dad for drinking and beating my mother back in those early years of my life – which I considered then the main reason for my ruined life due to stuttering. Then I made one of the most serious decisions in my life – I chose to suffer physically instead of suffering psychologically near my father, who could get drunk at any moment and bring his drinking buddies home. Having made that decision, I got dressed, took my things and returned to my mother in her one-room apartment where together we had to overcome huge difficulties in the fight against one of the injustices that flourish on this planet…

There is no need to say that the noise from the air conditioners, which were turned on at seven in the morning and often worked until night, and sometimes the bank employees would not turn them off at all at the end of their day, prevented me from completely “getting out of myself”. My mother and I could have a normal rest only on Sunday, unless, of course, the employees of that bank did not forget to turn off their appliances on Saturday. I was getting very tired then and I remember clearly how I thought that if it was not for this noise, I probably would not have tried so desperately to go living somewhere abroad, but would have tried to live here in Russia…

One day I decided to shave my head. I remembered then that a village friend had done so to get rid of dandruff. I had dandruff as well, and I thought that it could be the cause of hair loss. Britney Spears added confidence to me also, as the whole world was talking about her shaving her head bald at that time. I thought that if she can shave off her hair, then it certainly would not be difficult for me. I came to the hairdresser and asked to completely shave my head, refuting the question of whether I had lost a bet. Aside from dandruff my decision bore another task – I wanted to find peace of mind regarding my baldness. As it turned out I was not Bruce Willis, and the lump on my head that I inherited from my father did not please me also, although in general I liked my new look, but I decided that I would be with the hair for as long as I have it.

For many months I had been actively reading books and articles on the Internet in English. I memorized new words, and if I met some unknown grammatical structure, I checked with my English grammar book, or searched the Internet to learn about still unlearned rules of English grammar in order to know the language as well as I could.

At the same time, I trained my memory, trying to repeat the whole sentence that I just read. At first it was not easy, but over time I began to see the result and soon I could remember all the words in the sentence.

When the next time came to pay for English classes, I realized that with my own education program I greatly overtook the curriculum, and it could no longer teach me anything new. I stopped attending English courses.

Working days went well. I liked to walk around Moscow, from time to time going to the shops in order to place cans of the company on the store’s shelves. All in all, I was very happy then. It is only a pity that I had to spend about forty minutes to get to the northern part of the gray metro line, but I never dared to ask the supervisor if it was possible to give me a closer district.

I also began to notice how time seemed to slow down when I was focused on reality, walking around an unfamiliar area during my walks from one store to another.

Speaking of time, correspondence with one girl named Yulia helped me to shorten it. She once wrote me via ICQ, looking for someone to talk to. As it turned out, she “lived” in a boarding school due to poor vision, and was a little younger than me. We spoke with her on completely different topics with absolute honesty. After a couple of months of such correspondence, which, as it turned out, she did not conduct with me alone, we exchanged our photos and decided to meet somewhere. Then suddenly her mother called, who was a salesperson in a food store as I recall, and began to ask questions about my education. She hung up when I said that I was not studying anywhere yet. Yulia said that she was ashamed of the call of her mother, and our communication soon went to naught.

While we were still texting one another, there was one funny case when Yulia did not put a question mark at the end of the sentence which looked to me like a negative statement. We almost started to quarrel over this, but then we realized that it was just a missed punctuation mark. We laughed, and everything returned to normal.

A little time ago, another incident happened in my life when people refused to understand me. I was putting cans up on the shelve in one of the stores, and a woman who worked there as a supervisor began to talk with me. It was a pleasant conversation until she asked me about my education. Upon learning that I was not studying anywhere, she immediately said something negative and condemning, then turned around and walked away. Like Yulia’s mother, she did not give me a chance to explain the reason why I did not officially study anywhere – that I wanted to study, but since I was interested in a lot of things in life, I simply did not know where to go; that studies required money that I earned by arranging products in her store; that I was studying English every day and finished what I missed in the last grades of the school…