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…
There were times when I cried during difficult moments. I am not ashamed of this, because such moments helped me to understand that I was still a human being with feelings. Awareness of this helped me to gather my courage and gave me an impulse to move on through life.
But I was not an angel either. After Yulia, another girl wrote to me. She was a basketball player. We did not talk with her as actively as with Yulia. I remember one stupid thing that I wrote to her, answering her question about why I did not look for a girl in Russia, and I wrote then: “What for? To fuck her and then dump her?” – it was absolutely wrong thinking at many levels. I understood the contradiction of these words to my moral principles many years later… That basketball player wrote me another message, asking me if I was afraid of women. Now, when I am not afraid to know and remember the truth about myself, I understand that my answer should have been positive.
We met every Wednesday at McDonald"s near Tverskaya metro station with other merchandisers and superiors in order to receive salaries and do other merchandiser things.
I would not be myself if I did not start liking a young girl who recently began working as a merchandiser in that company again. I do not know if she noticed this somehow, but once, after one of the guys in our company did not go to work and was waiting for the other merchandiser girl, that pretty girl playfully asked me: “And you’re waiting for me?” – unfortunately, having finished my business, I just got up smiling at her, said goodbye to everyone and went to work. I do not think I thought much about the crowd of people then, but I was definitely embarrassed by our supervisor woman, as I thought it would not be very professional to spend working hours right in front of the boss. Alas, I did not try to find out the phone of that pretty girl who was interested in me even though I had no hair then…
If you carefully read this book, you can recognize at this moment the repetition of history… I will come back to this topic later.
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