Евгений Сергеевич Мешков
Simple Truths of Life
Chapter 4. A Glimpse of Hope
When I woke up, I had a very clear idea in my head to go to the computer and search in Yandex “how to get rid of stuttering”. I did that. The first website was that of Roman Alekseevich Snezhko. It was clearly written on that webpage that stuttering is not a disease, but just a habit. At that moment I knew that it was the truth!
In my mind, I immediately went back to my distant school days, when the teacher would ask me to read the book aloud several times in literature classes, and each time I would initially begin to stammer a lot, but then I focused on what was happening here and now, and speech became ideal right away, and I also felt in those moments like an ordinary and healthy person.
Then it was the end of 2006, and Roman Alekseevich published absolutely for free of charge the information on his website about what stuttering really is and how to get rid of it.[2]
The reason for stuttering is very simple – it is a stupor that occurs when a person, out of habit and without realizing it, tries to do several things at the same time. A person can only do one thing with one part of the body, or organ, per unit of time. For example, you cannot turn your head left and right at the same time. The same applies to our brain, and to the speech apparatus. From my own experience I can say that during stuttering a person does not think one hundred percent about what he is trying to say. For example, he may have thoughts about what others think about him, or recall something from the past, or maybe he does not have a clearly constructed thought at all, but at the same time he is still trying to say something. People who speak perfectly and easily form a clear thought in their head, and then, holding that thought in their minds, they pronounce it sequentially. If for some reason they lost their thought, for example, if they started thinking about something else, then people stop talking and start making sounds only when they again form a clear thought about what they want to say. Otherwise, they will just have a stupor. Stuttering people just need to develop the habit of being here and now during a conversation and speak only when there is a clearly formulated thought in their head.
That is why I would always start to speak perfectly, when I threw away all outside thoughts and anxieties from my head, and just started to live in the present.
And therefore, I could not utter a single word in the eleventh grade when, because of my constant fantasies, thoughts and various anxieties, I remained in myself all the time.
I recalled how long time ago I watched a TV show about the deletion of memory. While watching it, I was almost sure that if I did not remember anything about my past, then I would not have stutter. Perhaps, I somehow understood subconsciously back then that all unnecessary thoughts during speech were the cause of my stuttering.
It is possible that some people who almost never spoke normally will need to learn to speak again, getting used to speaking sequentially sound by sound, for example.
Thus, after 13 years, the “stuttering” was over.
I was very enthusiastic then, reading Roman Alekseevich’s entire page dedicated to dispelling myths about stuttering. I felt then that from that day I would begin a new life.
Unfortunately, my mother did not know what had happened. She did not understand, and without my knowledge and consent signed me up to undergo treatment for stuttering in the clinic from the military enlistment office. Since I already found the answer to my question and understood that it makes no sense to treat something that does not exist, I went to the clinic to say that I had already found a solution to my problem. Strange, but they did not even ask me to sign anything. I was just told that I am free to go. Then quite a few young people of my age came to the clinic, including girls. I did not tell them anything about the knowledge that I had just found, and which could really help them in their lives if they agreed to listen. Perhaps the presence of the doctor somehow influenced that decision of mine…
Mom and I quarreled again, because she thought that I did not want to be cured, and I could not convey to her the thought of what I had found out. Maybe the truth was too easy for her, or she just didn't believe me. Later, when my father, my mother, and I drove home from the hospital where my mother spent a couple of days due to poisoning, I told her that we would no longer quarrel. Since then, every time she started grumbling at me, I just kept silent, and she calmed down, not getting any reaction from me. In the end, we completely stopped quarreling, and I tried to start every new day saying “good morning!” to my mom.
While looking through the comments of people on the site of Roman Snezhko, I read a review of a guy who wanted to remove not only the habit of talking in a hurry and trying to think about something during a conversation, but also all the other bad habits in his life. I liked this idea, and I thought to follow suit.
That night I went to bed and for the first time I was able to completely remove all thoughts and fantasies from my mind. Each time a new thought or fantasy manifested itself, I immediately and calmly noted this and continued to be focused on reality. Then for the first time in a long time I fell asleep calmly, full of joy and optimism about the coming day – because I had everything to finally get out of myself.
That night I had a dream where I was in the bathroom, standing right in front of the mirror. The picture seemed to switch from my point of view to the point of view of my reflection. The difference was that in one case my face was completely normal, beautiful, and calm, and in the other, it was very distorted and tense. That distorted face told me: “Я никогда не дам тебе выйти из себя” (I will never let you get out of yourself).
I woke up. It was a sunny day. I then immediately got up instead of lying a little more in bed, fantasizing and, possibly, masturbating, as I did before for many months, maybe years. I was focused on reality and inspirited. My mind was absolutely clear.
Having come to the bathroom, I was stunned when I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I do not know how in the previous years I did not notice that I began to go bald. However, this is not at all surprising, since in those years I did not look in the mirror at all, and if I did it was just for a moment, and my fantasies, which I was having by that time already constantly, almost completely covered the data that came from my sensory organs. My reflection also reminded me of the lip asymmetry, which I forgot about too, because in my fantasies I was completely beautiful and healthy.
This incident could not leave me untouched, since from my point of view my appearance changed in an instant, but I still continued to change the course of my life. To begin with, I needed to find my passport, as I fantasized so much in the previous months that I forgot my last name. Yes, as it turned out, this can also happen. Then I found the phone number of the labor exchange and immediately called them. I was invited to come to the employment center tied to my place of residence.
It seemed interesting to me that the center is relatively close to 2nd Vladimirskaya Street, where we often went to visit the clinic, in which doctors tried to cure stuttering with some little spherical medicines. Still very often I underwent an EEG analysis (Electroencephalogram). They put a cap with electrodes on my head and did different measurements of brain activity. Sometimes I needed to sit relaxed, and sometimes I needed to breathe heavily, which sometimes made my head spin. I walked down that street on my way back, thinking how the doctors tried to treat with drugs for 13 years that which was dispelled in three seconds that I read the words “Stuttering is not a disease! Stuttering is just a habit…”
Even though it was the end of January, there was no snow on the street, and it was quite warm for the winter.
In the building of the employment center, they gave me a list of vacancies that I had to call in search of work. Surprisingly, I was hired for the first courier job. I called them because their office was a twenty minute walk from my house, next to the Moscow City Court.
But I did not start working right away. I think that there was a slight misunderstanding on my part, and I told one of the bosses that I could work in a couple of days, as my uncle Vitya had died.
I never went to my uncle’s funeral. I do not think that one case that slightly offended me in the village had anything to do with it. Then I was still a boy, and Uncle Vitya, as if for no reason, told me: “I do not understand, are you a fool or something?” There was another moment when he and my friend were discussing me in a clearly negative tone in the attic of our Big House. Unfortunately, this is not the only case when my relatives were not averse to amusing themselves and the company, expressing something negative about me. I remember how we met my cousin when we rode scooters around the countryside near our village. I then drove a bit forward, and looking in the rearview mirror I saw how they mocked me, looking and nodding their heads in my direction. In some families family ties do not mean much…
Becoming to pay more attention to what was happening in real life, I immediately noticed the presence of something that I had not noticed before due to the almost constant stay in my head – it was a pretty loud noise from the air conditioners of a branch of one of the Russian banks which in those years was right under our apartment. Mom had already written complaints about them because of the loud noise, and once the bank really rearranged its air conditioners in order to lower them, but their annoying noise still continued to go to the apartment.
The first of February 2007 I went to work for the first time. My first day at work was training. I just walked with another young employee to various offices in Moscow. As I understand it, without a foot courier, the bosses often ordered him to deliver parcels and correspondence. Everything seemed normal. But when I came to the office the next day, the first thing I heard when I opened the door was: “What do you think of our courier?” – coming from that guy’s lips while he was leaving the front door. One of the young female employees quickly appreciated me and said that I was a very normal guy, albeit a little balding. Most likely, she changed her mind after a couple of weeks later when I looked at her awkwardly, still being shy, about which she immediately told the secretaries.
I have no purpose to shame someone in this book, but for subsequent events in my life, it will be important to mention that it soon became clear that some employees of the small company had sex with each other, but two still formed normal a couple. Then one new girl calmly told the secretary that she slept with the guy with whom I was during my training day.
I never liked the theme of one-night-stands, or when people who barely knew each other had sexual intercourse. There was a case in, if I remember correctly, the eleventh grade, when a guy who deprived of virginity the same girl who asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend, boasted to two of my friends that he had sex with a “drop dead brunette” to whom he came to help with a computer, and then he asked them how things were in their “personal life”. Personal… It is funny and sad at the same time that that guy subsequently called the previously mentioned girl with a word starting with the letter “W”, since she slept with many guys during two years of study, and he did not want to be with her because of this… Of course, there is a chance that I was hurt that someone really has sex, because I envied them deep inside. But I think that an innate sense of morality also played a role in my sorrows.
Once I decided to end the habit of masturbating because I no longer needed it – after all, I initially started masturbating due to the inability to speak normally and get acquainted with girls, but now I did not have that problem with speech, and I thought about finding a girlfriend. Then I constantly thought about sex, which led me to porn sites and masturbation. It happened every day. Having a job, I was busy most of the time. Surprisingly, I managed to live five days without masturbation, and I felt good. But everything changed when I was in the metro. I just got into the subway car on Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad and felt that I started experiencing coronary symptoms. I had to get out of the car on Sokolniki to catch my breath and calm down. The terrifying symptoms did not go away, but I again got into another subway car and went to work. Returning to the office after a couple of hours, I still had a bad sensation in my heart. Then I for the first time poured myself cold water from a cooler in the office. Perhaps the water helped me a little. In the evening, when I was already at home, my health was good… So good that I could not feel my heart, the beating of which had already become so familiar for the long months that I continued to masturbate despite the fact that every new orgasm again forced my heart to beat harder than usual. Now, having at the disposal the knowledge that I have, it looks stupid, but that evening I decided to start masturbating in order to feel my heart again, because I believed that it could stop at all, and I would die if I continued refrain from masturbation…
Regarding death, I remember how during my work I walked to the subway, thinking about my life and my problems. Having stepped inside, I had a clear realization that if there is nothing after death, then there is no reason not to try to live this life, regardless of what you have to experience in it. After all, something is better than nothing.
In the courier office itself, one of the directors began giving me tasks to take out their garbage in the trash on the street. At first, I did not think anything about it, but as new such requests continued to be given to me, I began to think about how this becomes a kind of job that I do not have to do. It was not even my garbage, since I hardly spent time in the office and did not use office supplies. Soon, I decided to defend my rights and told the director about my unwillingness to take out the garbage. He understood everything, but I was a little embarrassed when they made another courier take out the garbage.
Working as a courier, I was able to visit different parts of Moscow. The salary was small, only 9000 rubles, but I had time to think about what I want in life, and at the same time I was doing something. I thought about going to University, but I did not know which one. I darted between computer science and economics, which I once told the CEO when he drove me to a street near the office after I did a personal job for him. He told me then that he would give me the job of assistant for their economist or programmer – depending on my choice. It was a great chance for a future career…
Once I had no tasks, and I sat on the couch, which stood near the secretaries. I was reading a self-teacher book then to teach myself English, which I decided to learn right after I learned about the real nature of stuttering. There was still an hour until the end of the working day, and I remember exactly how the red-haired secretary Natasha looked at the second hand of the clock hanging above the front door, as if trying to rush it. Our office had very few windows and natural light. Basically, all sections of the office were lit only with lamps, and system administrators even huddled in a tiny room with no windows, the door of which was constantly closed from the eyes of other employees. At that moment with the clock, I realized that I did not want to spend my whole life inside of four walls, I wanted something else, something bigger and more interesting. But I did not know what exactly I wanted…
I quit on May 7, having worked as a courier for several months.
If I remember correctly, it was in May that I wanted to try myself in the modeling business, still having the memories that I used to be considered a handsome guy. I think I wanted to find confirmation that I still was.
I sent my photos to several agencies. I received only one answer, and it just invited me to be an extra in some show called “Sex with Anfisa Chekhova.” It was said in the message that the meeting would be in the VDNH metro, if I remember correctly. I decided to go there.
Coming out of the subway car, I saw a large crowd of young people about my age at the meeting place. Some of them had fun talking with each other. I remember that there were girls. I started having very intense anxiety at the thought of starting to speak with stuttering among the crowd, and in the end I just walked past those people and went outside to walk a bit and then go back home.
I must say that while stuttering was over, my habit of dreaming and thinking about something did not go away completely. Because of this, from time to time I had stupor in my speech or even returned to the old methods of being silent and inactive, as in my previous episode at VDNKh. At that time, I no longer had friends with whom I could learn to speak. Therefore, having a lot of free time, I decided to travel to Moscow shopping centers to talk with different merchants on different topics – depending on what they were selling.
At first, my old fears reminded me of themselves, and I did not immediately dare to open my mouth. But with each new seller that I approached, I became more self-confident and soon became an ordinary person with normal speech. At the same time, I learned about the fact that some sellers will get out of their way trying to sell goods. It is good that I did not take with me money then and I did not have a credit card, because who knows, maybe I would have bought that camera with a huge touch screen…
I also realized during my aspirations to be focused on reality that it is impossible to be stuttering if you are here and now, since your body is under your complete control.
From time to time, I often recalled my decision to begin to fantasize purposefully at the age of 14, and I was depressed by the thought that I had lost as many as 4 years in my imagination. But then I told myself that with an average life of 60 years, I still have about 42 years to enjoy life – in fact, I lived less than one third of my life, just having entered adulthood, and the whole life was still was ahead of me. My experience has given me a chance to learn something unique about human mind.
I also had no desire to play video games anymore. And I regretted spending a lot of time on UFO related websites too for a while… but then my feelings cooled down and I remembered that I had a good reason for doing that – my experience with the bright entity in the village prompted me to start looking for answers to my questions about the unknown side of life and its meaning.
It is a pity that these joyful attempts at self-inspiration were met with a bitter understanding that I would also have to live all these long years with an asymmetry on my lip and with hair falling out.
Then the summer came, and I went to the village. I naively believed that I could regain my old relations with my village friends, but upon arrival it became clear that time was gone. Over the past years, that I was lost in my imagination, I moved away from my friends too much and could not reduce the gap that had formed.
One day it rained, and I was sitting by the window in the Little House, learning English. It suddenly dawned on me that now that stuttering was no longer a barrier in my life, I could achieve many things that I could only dream of before. Then I started to have a burning desire to leave Russian and live in the USA, since from early childhood I was partial to that country, which so often shined on me from the TV screen. I always liked their way of life and values, and I thought back then that the United States was almost a paradise on Earth.
I quickly left for Moscow and started searching on the Internet about the possibilities of emigration. It quickly became clear that it is not that simple, especially for a person without a higher education. But I did not allow this bad news to stop me – I no longer wanted to hide from problems and give up halfway.
I was also bothered by the fact that after three years they could again call me to check the speech at the military registration and enlistment office, and I wanted to leave the country by then.
The main reason for the move, I think, was that I wanted to start my life over with a clean slate in the USA, I wanted to forget about everything bad that reminded me of the past. I did not want to see either my father or my mother – my father because of stuttering, and my mother because of quarrels at school. I wanted to burn all the bridges.
Another important reason for my strong desire to leave Russia was the cold northern climate. Many months of the sky being covered with gray thick clouds often led me into the blues. I wanted to live in a warm climate and see palm trees, sun, and sky all year round. For this reason, I also considered Australia as a possible destination for immigration.
As you know, I have been thinking and dreaming about sex for most of my life. After I found out that such disease as stuttering does not exist, I thought that now I can find a girlfriend. But after my desire to emigrate, I could no longer look for a girl in Russia, as due to my moral qualities and decency, I did not want to look for a girl in order to have sex with her, and then dump her and leave. But there was something else that tormented me in those years. My childhood homosexual experience haunted me, as it was my only sexual experience. Perhaps I wanted to prove to myself that I was normal and of the traditional orientation. I knew that it would not be possible to leave to live in the USA quickly, it could take years, and I understood that these thoughts would not leave me alone. I also thought that if I lose my virginity with a girl, it will help me stop thinking about sex every day.
While working as a courier, I began to get acquainted with girls on a dating site. But I did not find anyone. I remember how at that time one girl started communicating with me, but I did not know what to talk about – a completely logical consequence of many years of loneliness and living in my inner world. After that moment, I decided to start learning different things and expand my circle of knowledge. But, unfortunately, I mostly read only scientific articles about nature and the Universe, but I learned almost nothing about sex relations.
I’ve never looked for girls with a “for sex only” checkmark, and that day became the exception. Soon, one of my messages was answered. I understood perfectly well that it was from a prostitute.
I do not remember if this happened immediately, or some time had passed, but I decided that in my situation it was logical to use their services. I considered myself already spoiled and “dirty” because of my early childhood homosexual experience, and did not think that having sex with a prostitute would be too immoral for me. In addition, I just wanted to finally feel what sex is, so that I can continue to study and work hard to achieve my ambitious goals. I called on the phone and they told me where to go.
When I came outside at Avtozavodskaya, uncertainty visited me. Maybe I was afraid of something new, or maybe a tiny piece of common sense was trying to break through. Whatever it was, I took out my expensive phone with a built-in camera, which for some reason I decided to buy while working as a courier, and called the recorded phone number. I was given the following instructions where to go. My path lay to the corner house on Velozavodskaya street. On the third floor of a Stalinist house, I rang the door of the apartment I was told to come to and a pretty young girl let me in. After I took off my shoes, she told me to wait in one of the rooms with little furniture. I did not have to look at the courtyard from the window for a long time when several women and girls entered the room. They said to choose, and then my gaze fell on a girl with a darkened skin. She immediately turned her head slightly to the side and down so that her black hair covered her face. She interested me, and I chose her.
All the girls left, and the dark-skinned one took two thousand rubles from me and then also left the room. She returned already undressed. I let her know that I had not had sex before, to which she said that there was nothing wrong with that.
Natasha, as she called herself, had to tinker with me for a while to arouse me – one of the negative effects of masturbation. I think you understand what happened next.
During the break before the second time, she started smoking and offered me tea. I do not remember what I answered, but she then went to the kitchen, from where the crash of falling glass utensils was soon heard, and shouts: “Bitch!” – I felt sorry for her at that moment. She returned with a cup of tea. In a conversation with her, I found out that she recently had a birthday and she was one year older than me. She studied at the Faculty of Economics and worked as a prostitute for six months. Also, speaking of depriving me of virginity, she mentioned that she once had another client, a virgin who was twenty-five years old.
After the second time, I said goodbye to her and left. She was very sweet all the time that we were together.
Soon I had the thought that now I would need to tell a girl when meeting with her not only about childhood sexual experiences with a boy, but also about my experience with a prostitute. I realized that finding a girl who wanted to be with me became a little more difficult, as I myself became even more “dirty”.
That experience gave me the answer to another question that I had – will I have health problems after orgasm from having sex. As it turned out, I did not have absolutely any symptoms that I had every time after masturbation for many months. I felt very good even though I had an orgasm twice in one hour. Then I calmed down, because before I was worried that sex could be closed to me due to my health problems.
Even though we used a condom (of course), it became clear to me that even such sex is much better than masturbation. It was a great reason to stop masturbating, which I wanted to do… but, nevertheless, I was drawn to watch an erotic film that Friday night, and again I began to masturbate, recalling the feelings that I experienced a few hours ago.
Having finished my deed, I continued to recall the time spent with Natasha… and then I realized that I was falling in love with her.
I could not help thinking about her the next morning. I was able to find the saved number of their phone in the history of my mobile calls and decided to call and say that I want to visit Natasha again. I was told that she would be home.
Going to that apartment for the second time, I thought that I would just get to know Natasha better, find out how she became a prostitute and tell her about my feelings. I thought that, perhaps, I might take her home. Mom spent all summer and part of the autumn in the country, and it was still June. Just in case, I took with me two thousand rubles that I saved from the courier salary.
When I was taking off my shoes, I heard a man's voice coming from the back room of the apartment. I told the lovely girl that I came to Natasha, and she again asked me to wait in the room where I was last day.
I was sitting on the couch, and I was not very comfortable. Then two or three girls came in and told me to make a choice. Natasha was not among them. I explained that I came to Natasha. They did not really want to listen to me, and one said: “And we’re not to your liking, then?” – I thought about getting up and leaving, which I told them about. Probably, at that moment one of the girls ran to tell the others, and soon a very beautiful blonde with a short haircut ran into the room and asked: “Who wants to leave here?” I always liked such girls, and I took a note of her, and of her beauty. I think, having understood what was the matter, she ran after Natasha, who then ran into the room. She immediately began to tickle my stomach – she found out by firsthand experience that I was afraid of tickling during the previous day. She was very cute, but still having in my head the beautiful blonde with a short haircut, I could not help but think that I was not used to her exotic appearance, which was distracting me a little.
When everyone else left us with Natasha, she immediately asked for two thousand rubles. And here the fact that I had little contact with people and therefore I still was sometimes overflown by the fear to speak played a cruel joke on me. It happened at that moment too. I could not bring myself to tell her about the real purpose of my visit and… handed her the same two thousand rubles that I had taken with me “just in case”.
During the break for the second time, I managed to learn more about Natasha.
She worked as an economist by profession and one day her boss asked her to have sex with him. She refused him and was fired. Natasha tried to find a new job, but could not, and when her earned money ran out, she called her friend, who had been working as a prostitute in that apartment for some time, and told her: “I am coming to you” – and now we have our conversation. She also said that her mother lived in Turkey, and her father lived in Moscow Oblast. This explained her appearance and a little dark skin color.
I remember exactly how she said once that “sex is a good sport”. I do not remember exactly if it was said after I mentioned that I did exercises every day after she asked me if I was played sports, or she additionally mentioned this when I asked her if she liked being there and doing all the prostitute stuff.
