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.

But I remember exactly how right after her comparison of sex with sport, I asked her: “But what about love?”. Natasha told me that she had love once, but she became disappointed with it after her ex-boyfriend chased her with a knife.

I thought then about telling her about the real purpose of my visit, but different thoughts ran through my mind. One of them was that a few months ago I was looking at photos of a naked girl, and on that page people could leave comments. One of those comments spoke of that girl’s “busted pussy,” referring to her large labia. Unfortunately, at that time I did not check such “teachings” in verified sources of knowledge, and therefore I put it in my head that such large labia meant that the girl had a lot of rough sex, which is why they began to have such dimensions. The fact is that one of Natasha’s inner lips was two centimeters long, which had a certain weight in my following decision.

As soon as I decided to finally tell her the truth and was about to say the first words, she suggested that we have sex for the second time and she began to touch me in the southern latitudes, arousing me.

I am not sure if my first and last cunnilingus was worth the untold truth – no, of course not. During our intercourse, she rushed me, looking at the door and saying something about time.

We finished, and I thought to tell her again, but if before she was very nice and amiable with me, then she just walked coolly to the window while I was dressing up.

While Natasha had her back turned to me, my brain, oversaturated with almost ideal forms of female bodies from porn sites, could not hide the thought that the shape of Natasha's bottom was not to my liking.

Then I once again made a fatal mistake, deciding to fix in my head the fact that she herself made her choice, given that she had a father in Podmoskovye and could just go to him. This was the second time that I consciously blocked my feelings for another person, putting in my own mind a block in the form of an idea – in this case about Natasha’s choice. When I was creating the metal block, I remembered that I regretted that I had once in the same way blocked the other girl mentioned earlier in the tenth grade – even if in the end those fantasies actually turned out to be comparable with the truth, since that school girl slept with a lot of guys from our class —they boasted about that. But I wanted so much to go to the USA that I could not allow the feeling of love to continue to live in me – and it immediately was gone.

Almost immediately it became clear that it was naive to think that the loss of virginity would ease my desire for sex. I wanted sex even more. “Fortunately”, I knew what to do.

This next Stalinist house in the south-west of Moscow, if I remember correctly, was near the metro, and I did not have to walk for too long.

The door of the apartment was opened by a young woman of about thirty years. She was a pretty blonde with good shapes – which compensated for the fact that she could not be the girl in the photo, because of whom I came there.

When I spoke to her, while still in the corridor, her smiling face was visited by obvious shock, if not horror. I did not understand what was happening – such things had happened before – for example, when I was with Natasha, she clearly noticed something in my face during our conversation, and then there was that strange case when I was going to Moscow by train a couple of weeks ago, and a young woman sat in front of me looking at me for a couple of moments, and then she sharply and quickly ran out of the car, turning her head to look at me when she was already at the doors. Then I thought that this was due to the fact that I was attracted to the nipples of her small breasts, which were clearly visible through her unusual white blouse with numerous small cutouts – I saw something like that worn by Abby Martin when she spoke with Peter Joseph about capitalism – but then I almost immediately stopped looking in that area and redirected my eyes to the window, only occasionally looking into the eyes of that pretty woman…

Perhaps I relaxed, and the prostitute invited me in. There were no choices this time, since she was alone.

During the break for the second time, she asked me if I could give the battery of my phone so that she could call her child from her phone of the same brand. I do not remember whether we talked about something with her or not. What I remember very well is how in the depths of my mind the thought of Natasha was trying to form, but my mental block worked so perfectly back then…

The second time, she moved as fast as during the first, which again led to my quick orgasm, despite the fact that with her, unlike with Natasha, I could hardly feel any pressure with my sex organ. At that time, sex no longer seemed nicer than masturbation, as I could barely feel anything.

I quickly washed and dressed. When I left, she politely and from a pure heart gave me advice to be more courageous, showing her small female muscles with her hands. Then it became completely incomprehensible to me – what did other people see in me?

Having returned home poorer by two thousand rubles, I decided to record myself on the camera of my phone in order to try to find the answer to my question. I was just saying out loud a sentence. When I watched that video on the computer – I was shocked! Everything fell into place – my friend who called me a moron, two statements in the military enlistment office, strange looks and whispers of my village friends, the woman running out in the train, Natasha averting her eyes and the bewilderment of the last prostitute – it all made sense now.

The reason was that because of my habit of talking to myself in my imagination – what I got used to shortly after I began to actively fantasize in the ninth grade – the muscles of my face, and the whole body, were tense, which affected the facial expressions and the general expression on my face, making them distorted – just like in that dream that I recently had.

Yes – even though I was able to completely remove all thoughts and fantasies on the day I learned the truth about stuttering – I did not notice at all how I began to smoothly misuse my imagination again almost during every second of my life… such is the strength of habits… and if in the case of alcohol and smoking you clearly see the moment when you start drinking and smoking, here things are not so obvious… but usually only when you are not completely here and now.

At that moment, when I first saw my distorted face, I seemed to think of myself with the very word that my village friend called me – and this terrified me very much, because since I was that person, I could not remain indifferent about this, as, for example, people who call others names – those who have some problems. Maybe later you will understand the possible reason why I had to go through this experience in my life.

That day, remembering absolutely clearly the consequences of my habit of talking to myself in my head, I was completely in the present with a pure consciousness and ease in the body which muscles could finally relax and rest – only the “processing” of data coming from my five senses and nothing more.

But habits would not be habits if they did not tend to return. As the days passed, the desire for sex and other thoughts returned, crowding out the memory of my recent shock and its cause.

This time I got off at the Paveletskaya metro station. When I was still working as a courier, I often went to the Paveletsky railway station to give, or receive, parcels of the company from other cities. The house I was going to was located near that station.

It was late evening. The sun had long set and it was dark. They told me to wait when I called them. I stood at the entrance for quite a long time, and all this time the thought about the correctness of my actions did not leave me. I was agitated and thought about leaving. But then I was finally invited inside, and I was told the apartment number.

Inside, I chose a girl again, who was apparently from the southern latitudes, and once again I gave two thousand rubles.

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…

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.

As for that girl, soon that same pretty guy began flirtatiously flirting with her, showing some figures on his hands. She clearly noticed this, and I, in turn, noticed that I had once again made a mistake. I tried to alleviate sadness with the thought that I was still going to leave Russia, and the girl would only be an obstacle, and her smoking also helped me not to worry too much. But how long was I destined to live with this new lie?

I think it is worth mentioning that I met girls working in a store that I came up to talk to. With one we even had a very good and pleasant conversation while we were waiting for the store to open, along with many other merchandisers standing nearby. Then I was not shy at all to speak with that sweet girl in a crowd of people. But in the store, she got colder and began to ignore my flirting. Then I did not know that Orthodox believers wear an engagement ring on their other hands than Catholics. Another girl ignored me, but the next day she talked playfully with someone, and most likely she was simply taken and did not communicate with other guys. The third one simply complained about a lot of work and ignored me, but what was a little upsetting to me was that the next day she was almost flirting and talking to a guy who had hair and, most likely, looks.

I remember when I first started working as a merchandiser, a fairly plus size woman who was older than me tried to flirt with me. But what turned me away were her facial expressions, which did not seem healthy at all. Unfortunately, I did not think then that I myself could look like that in the eyes of other people when I was not completely relaxed.

In the end, I continued to walk on the deliberate path, wanting to start everything from scratch in another country and forget about everything bad that had ever happened to me in Russia.

Despite my self-deception, I was still able to discover one of the simple truths for myself. Returning home from work, I often found myself thinking that I was lost again in my head: dreaming, thinking and talking to myself – I often thought through different variations of events in my head, and how I could act in each of them. Tracing the reason for my constant withdrawal into myself, I realized that the beginning were often thoughts about what to do in the future – for example, on the same day. I decided to try not to bother myself about what will happen when this or that event occurs, but simply to initially put in my mind a general plan of action and solve the details as they materialize. The effect of this decision was amazing! My productivity increased, as my mind was freed from garbage, and I could spend the freed up resources of the mind on a quick and correct assessment of the situation, and on the subsequent making of right decisions.

But there were days when I returned from work and could not get out of myself. And I thought why? Previously, I managed to do this, but here I seemed to have forgotten everything. I soon realized that the reason was in my thinking about the need to live in the present instead of actually living in the present. These are two opposite things, one of which is a characteristic feature of a focused mind on reality, and the other is a feature of the mind of a person who is living in his inner world.

Having cleared my mind, I noticed something else… During my readings about UFOs, I came across a story that said that aliens consider us not very smart, to put it mildly. I do not know if that story was true or not, but after many meditations, I began to work almost all day with my five senses and pay attention to what was happening in reality. I realized that a great many people were absorbed in their minds even while walking along a sunny spring street. This was the first time when I saw that I was not the only person who was absorbed in his mind when it was not required to be done. Yes, most of those people were not lost in themselves as much as I was lost a couple of years ago, but one way or another they also made a mistake – I was not alone.

I often recalled that I had lost four years of my life because of empty fantasies – I say empty because there are only two worlds on which our consciousness can be concentrated per unit of time: the external (the reality that we feel with the help of our five senses) and the inner (fantasies, memories, thoughts). Then I realized that if we take the age of sixty years, for example, I still had to live two-thirds of my life, and given the fact that fourteen years of that third were childhood, I still had a lot of time to enjoy life. I was able to reassure myself that even though I lost those years of my life, I gained invaluable experience which, as someone might say, tempered me no worse than the army. It is a pity that optimism was always replaced by a depressive state every time I came across a mirror… and the coming long years of life, which had just given me so much joy, almost instantly changed their polarity, and I could no longer live with the thought that I had to live my whole life with my scars…

Soon it became very clear to me that I could not save up money to study in America by working in jobs that I used to have, and the lack of higher education did not allow me to get a well-paid job. But I could not give up anymore, since I had been doing this all my life and as a result of this, I almost lost everything. It was then a weakness for me to retreat from my goals, and so I began to look for other solutions and remembered that I had always liked movies.

When I got the Internet access, I was downloading a movie every day and then watched it in the evening. I often liked to watch the actors acting out their roles. I also remembered how in early childhood I asked my mother to teach me how to write, and at the beginning of high school I wrote poetry. Of course, my childhood thoughts in verses about why parrots do not have a hose could hardly take on Pushkin, but still.

Then I decided to start writing scripts in English, which was no longer such a foreign language to me since I completely immersed myself in English at home. I watched TV shows and movies in English, in fact I started watching them right as soon as I realized that I rarely came across unfamiliar words when I was reading – all I had to do then was to learn to distinguish words by ear; then I read news, forums and study guides in English only. As a result of all this, soon it was easier for me with English than with Russian, which I hardly spoke in my life.

Of course, I realized that it was not easy to write a story that would please Hollywood producers. I was ready to painstakingly work on my screenwriting skills and learn from mistakes. Also, I did not want something grand. I just wanted to go to the USA and live there in my own small house, which I always dreamed about.

Also, I wanted to first make a career and only then look for a wife. This wrong idea came to me after two women refused to talk to me when they found out that I hadn’t studied anywhere. I thought that girls of my age would also not want to deal with a guy who has nothing in material terms.

Masturbation continued, and I felt worse and worse. It got so worse that one day I was walking up the escalator from the subway and I started feeling not well at all. My legs barely walked, being very heavy, and my head was almost spinning. Thanks to meditation, which I tried to practice from time to time, I realized that our thoughts and psychological state play a huge role in how our physical body feels. Trying to gain control of myself, I remembered this and completely removed everything superfluous from my head, focusing my consciousness only on the present moment. I was then positively tuned to all the data that my five senses sent me. Result? A couple of hours later, when I was returning home after work, I was already running down that escalator without any symptoms of poor health. I was completely healthy.

But each time the mirror reminded me of my real appearance, and the porn addiction’s return would follow to brighten up the emerging depression. There was a moment when for the second time I decided not to masturbate for a week. I wanted to prove to myself that everything would be fine with my heart if I stopped feeling his heavy beating every day. After a week, I felt great, and my heart no longer reminded me of its presence. But I had to ruin everything again…

However, I often masturbated in those months to prove to myself that I was in good health. If I stopped masturbating after I had health problems, the idea that I was not healthy might not leave me alone. I wanted to think by having proof that everything was great with me. And I really had days when I felt good after masturbation… which led to think about why I cannot go to porn sites again and do a physically pleasant thing if it does nothing bad to anyone? And so the cycle repeated itself again and again…

At the end of June, I began to feel constant pain to the right of my heart, under the ribs – was the continuing masturbation the cause of that – I do not know. The pain was not very strong, but due to the fact that it lasted several days I decided that it was a sign to quit my job because in any case I found myself a new occupation where I was, as I thought then, my own boss.

I wanted to go to the doctor to check my health, but since I used to be treated for a non-existent disease for 13 years, my opinion about doctors was not the best. Moreover, in the fall of the past year, I went to the doctor when I again felt unwell after masturbation, but then I kept silent about my dirty hobby. My heart was checked then, and after processing the data, the doctor quickly told me that I had arrhythmia and turned to another girl. Yes, that girl’s health situation was more serious, but she could give me more information, could not she? For example, asking me to wait while she would finish talking with that girl. Now, having gained wisdom and experience, I changed my position – but then I decided to go to an alternative clinic, which my mom had visited before. She learnt about it from an ad in the mailbox…

In that tiny “clinic”, located on the first floor of a residential building, they put headphones on my head and pointed some device at them. The computer pretended to be working on the calculations, and after a few minutes the female doctor returned. The leaflets with pictures of internal organs were printed for me. There were different geometric figures on them, each of which “showed” the degree of health of the corresponding organ. Based on this “analysis” I was prescribed vitamins and nutritional supplements. Then some of them really helped me. For example, black walnut helped me get rid of a constant feeling of malnutrition – one of the symptoms of the presence of worms in the human body.

I was assigned a second “examination”, and I decided then for the third time not to masturbate for a long time. Again, such abstinence went for me quite easily and I felt great, which was as if reflected on the second “examination”. I was still prescribed a couple of vitamins, and in total I spent on that “treatment” a good share of my saved money earned by honest work. Was it the sunshine of a cloudy nature, among which I was walking that day, which after many years made me realize that something was wrong, or had I already had enough life experience and technical knowledge to understand that all those devices simply could not do any diagnostics on health, but it finally dawned on me then that I was simply deceived – to which I found confirmation from the reviews of many people about that company. Well – “losing something, we always find something, and that something is always knowledge”. It was expensive education, and one of the vitamins once almost stopped my heart – this was the first time my heart skipped a beat and then I was not feeling too well. Naturally, I stopped taking those vitamins…

Is it possible that my heart stopped beating then for a moment due to rebellious masturbation to porn? I admit that it could have enhanced the negative effect of vitamins which would most likely be contraindicated to me if I went to an official doctor for a real examination… most likely…

As for my successful abstinence from masturbation, it was so successful that I stopped wanting to have sex in general – and it frightened me. All my life, one way or another I thought about sex, and I could not live with this unexpected emptiness. I went to porn sites to prove to myself that everything worked in me as it should…

There were still warm days outside on the street when I was again awakened by the unbearable noise of the bank’s air conditioners that did not allow me to study or write scripts. Sometimes I tried to put on headphones and turn on calm music without words, but even that did not allow me to fully concentrate on the intellectual and creative work that requires peace and quiet.

I called my father to ask him to drive me to the village. He did not work then, and we left the same day.

Mom lived in the village then, as she usually did in the warm months, but upon my arrival she decided to go to Moscow to write another complaint against the bank.

I was a little embarrassed when my mother told me that I shouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary alone at home, and my father parried her words by saying that I was already an adult for those things…

Unfortunately, I proved my father wrong when I began to masturbate in the evening on a video of a porn actress, which I had previously downloaded onto my laptop, along with several others. In addition to porn, I also had normal films and TV shows, which I watched to improve my knowledge of the English language.

But how could parents know? They never bumped me over this matter… I remembered how a while ago my aunt Zina came to my apartment in Moscow and when she was walking into the kitchen she managed to read a small part of the rules I wrote for myself on a piece of paper that I attached to the door’s glass so that I could see it every day and remember. The rules were as follows: do not masturbate; do not quarrel with mom; do not talk to yourself (stop fantasizing when it is not necessary); educate yourself and learn something new. The order might have been a little different, but masturbation was definitely in the first place.

I think at this point I should get a little ahead of myself and say that my parents never talked to me about sex at all, and therefore did not explain anything to me. Perhaps they even once saw me with the guy with whom we were fooling around out of childhood ignorance. I do not hold a grudge, but this is a lesson to other parents – you should teach your children about sex by yourself; but for that you need to know about sex yourself (I will talk about this important topic later in my book). At school, not only the teachers almost did not explain about sex, but also when in high school during biology lessons we were taught the anatomy of the genitals, many, if not all, students already knew about sex from the Internet, magazines, conversations with other people, and also from their sexual experience. Then the topic of sex caused some kind of weird smiles in adults, which psychologically had a certain influence on me, and I could not talk about sex as an ordinary thing that does not bother you at all.

At the dacha I tried to write something, but my head was constantly tired because of my imagination, and I could not work for long.

When I arrived in Moscow, I decided to go to a free lecture of one film producer from America. The only thing I took away from there was a saying about a cat sitting on the window, meaning that you should not give up if the first pancake came out lumpy, as they say in Russia. I also could not notice yet another blonde who came to the lecture with her friend. As it was usually the case with me in those years, I did not dare to go up to them and simply ask if they liked the lecture, for example, or whether they were writing something at that moment – in other words start a conversation.

That evening, when I barely walked a few hundred meters from the venue for the lecture, a blonde woman stopped me on the street and asked a question that seemed a little strange to me at the time, since I thought that she should have known the answer herself. After some time it dawned on me that perhaps she wanted to get to know me in this way, but because of the difference in age, or because of the facial expressions of my slightly strained face, or because of my lip – and maybe due to all three reasons – she did not try to continue our communication then. Of course, I understand that I can be mistaken about the real nature of the whole episode…

I think that because of the mixture of some religious texts that I read a long time ago in my search for the meaning of life, and because of the seemingly endless demands of my body to have sex, which often prevented my mind from being completely concentrated, I almost began to consider sex to be a sin and something bad.

Perhaps it was the above-mentioned events that caused the next dream, in which the merchandiser girl I liked and that not at all shy guy had sex. She lay on her back on a bed that was standing as if in pitch darkness, and his body was perpendicular to her – this was the same pose that Natasha and I tried for the last time, but then I still did not see this symbolism… I woke up and I had a very unpleasant feeling from that dream. There were several reasons. Firstly, I still liked that girl. Secondly, for a long time I tried not to think about sex since I already began to experience negative emotions when I heard from conversations of real people that they were having it. Then I thought that dream to be almost a mockery of me, not understanding its true meaning – that dream could have been another lesson for getting rid of errors…

Mistakes continued to be made, but there were also very positive periods in my life, one of which was destined to become the calm before the storm…

It was autumn, and I was finally able to put up with baldness – I found myself a suitable hairstyle that hid the bald patches of the head. The girls also liked it, as some young ladies clearly paid attention to me. One of these girls was walking with her friend along the street and constantly looked at me. I had just left a paid dental clinic then. I went there after accidentally detecting caries on the lateral side of the lateral tooth, but since there was a two-week queue in the free city hospital, I decided that it would be better to spend some of the money that I still had then, but fill the tooth as soon as possible. The first day I went to the clinic, I was not well – both because of masturbation, and because of an obvious upset stomach. The operation on the tooth was postponed to another day. Leaving the building, I was pleasantly surprised to see my dad, who by himself decided then to come for me and take me home, since the clinic was not in my neighborhood, but in his.

Another good news was that I put up with my lip, forcing myself to believe that there must be an operation that will restore the symmetry, and I would definitely do it when I am in the USA. Since I did not want to look for a girlfriend because of the tireless desire to leave the country, I had no great reason to solve the lip problem in Russia.

Humility with the two main negative realities of my body made constant fantasizing an unnecessary thing, as I no longer experienced stress while realizing that I had those problems with my appearance. In addition, I with benefit used my imagination for writing scripts, which also helped me, since I did not have a vacuum due to the lack of old habits – I simply redirected the negative erroneous action, habit, to doing useful work. I then wanted to use my imagination only while working on scripts, and by and large I managed to do it.

Earlier, I often had the thought that the fact that I needed to meditate to calm my mind meant that I was “worse” than other people who could be focused on the present moment without meditation. But I was able to overcome those thoughts and began to meditate on breathing every night, and noticed one simple truth – you wake up in the same mental state as you fall asleep. Then I always fell asleep a very happy and inspired person. And if earlier I could have problems falling asleep, in those days I fell asleep in a couple of minutes, just lying in bed without thinking about anything at all and not concentrating on anything. I woke up in exactly the same condition as I fell asleep that night. I was full of happiness and enthusiasm for the new day with its new studies and work on my scripts – and so it went on for a short time. If I used paint to show my spiritual and emotional state in those two years of my new life, it would be mostly bright colors which would only in some places have specks of dark tones…

I signed the scripts with an alias. It was an American name, because I did not want to have mine then, trying to get away from who I was and trying to forget about my life’s story.

Around that period of my life, I had a dream about New York. The city, which I often looked at with such admiration and charm on the Internet, felt just like Moscow. There was a slightly different architecture, but on the whole it could have been an ordinary Moscow district. And that was the main idea that I had in that dream – that the USA is exactly the same country. When I woke up, I reluctantly agreed with this “message”, but, while still being very stubborn, I did not change my goals. In fact, until that moment I did not really want to learn anything about the USA because I used to have a strange desire of unknown origin to be a “pioneer” and personally discover America once I was already in it. I did not want to learn about the country beyond its borders from other people's life experiences.

I also noticed that when I was completely relaxed, the asymmetry of my lip due to my old bite was almost invisible. This was a confirmation of my long-standing reasoning that the muscles of my right cheek, which I felt was more tense during fantasizing than the left, also played an important role in the fact that the lip seemed very crooked under tension. I should have been happy with this, but since there was still a barely noticeable asymmetry, I sadly thought to myself then that now there was no point in going to the doctor, and, accordingly, this asymmetry would remain with me for life.

Another consequence of my relaxation was that my eyes also relaxed, which also completely restored my vision that was somewhat blurry when my brain was overburdened. While still working as a courier, I even went to the ophthalmologist for eye diagnostics, but as it turned out, in my case I just needed to relax my mind and body in order to regain my vision.

In general, I was very optimistic about my future. I just wanted to live a happy life, believing that everything good should be given just like that. I thought that bad things and negative periods in my life, like my stuttering, were just accidents of our existence.

From time to time, I thought about going somewhere and asking women and girls what they thought about my appearance. Did they consider me beautiful and did my lip and balding head bother them? I never did this, which was one of the mistakes.

I noticed an unusual thing when while being outside, I could often get out of my mind and be focused on reality, but each time I entered my apartment I would immediately see how I was losing this state of mind and becoming absorbed in my thoughts. Perhaps the thing was that at home I had nothing to cling to with my attention, as everything was the same old way in our apartment, or it just reminded me of the past and the present… After some time, I began to gain focus of mind at home too, but I would still get absorbed in my mind after each arrival of my mother from the village, since I could no longer be in silence.

Here I need to talk about one very important and unusual incident in my life. There was a time when I caught a cold on the street, and at home I had a runny nose, a sore throat, and a fever. I knew that I would be ill for at least five days, since for about such a period I had always recovered before. Also, my mood always worsened greatly during the illness. At that time, I did not want to lose all the joy and pleasure of life that I gained through meditation and concentration on reality. It is a little hard for me to explain what happened next, but I will try my best. I was in the toilet when I decided that I would not be depressed because of all the sensations that we feel during illness. Then I realized that those painful feelings are simple data that must exist so that we can find out that there is a virus in us and we could take appropriate measures, and therefore there is no reason to experience bad emotions due to painful sensations, since those feelings are neither good nor bad – these are just data that we feel in this way for our own protection. I immediately turned that new way of thinking into reality and was instantly cured! I had absolutely no symptoms of the disease. The only reminder that the disease had really just existed was an unusual sensation in my throat that lasted for a couple of days. I felt that sensation for the first time and have never felt it again. The best way I can describe it is a sensation of throat that was sore and then was instantly cured. Then I did not know what, or who, is the cause of such healing, but I found the answer to this question after some time later…

Due to the fact that I did not want to meet girls, I continued to masturbate from time to time, because thoughts about sex prevented me from thinking, and the urge to masturbate while browsing porn sites was quite strong at a time when my defense was breaking through, and constant thoughts about sex consumed my mind after all…

All that has a beginning has an end. It was two years since I found my answer about stuttering. To this day, I consider those years to be the best in my life, since then I for the first time started to really live a free life, and I had many choices. Yes, there were problems, but I no longer ran away from them, and tried to solve them… but I was not solving all my problems, thinking that I would solve them in the future… which never came.

Because I continued to masturbate, not wishing to redirect the time spent on masturbation and pornography to searching for a girlfriend and love, my health could no longer recover quickly enough after each such session…

Once I went out for a walk. I remember exactly how while walking along Bul'var Marshala Rokossovskogo I tried to concentrate on my breathing in order to slow it and my pulse down. Previously, with normal meditations at home, I could successfully normalize both breathing and heart rate, after which I felt perfect. This time it was different. On Boytsovaya Ulitsa I started experiencing strong coronary symptoms and my mind became cloudy. It was very scary, and I immediately went home. I felt very sick during the whole walk, and I was just thinking about getting to the house and not falling down somewhere. The distance to the house was not at all great, but because of my panic it seemed painfully huge…

Since then I was in bed for a long time, not being able to walk even a few meters, as I began to have difficulty in breathing and I was overcome by an almost all-consuming panic. My heart then beat very hard, and if before by a new day the pulse returned to normal, during those times my heart was beating constantly. At one time an old acquaintance came to my apartment, and when I opened the door I could barely stand on my feet. I do not know how I did not fall then… And when I was washing, I could not help noticing how a huge amount of hair began to come out of my head.

A door that was suddenly and loudly opened two years ago was no less loudly shut in front of me.

This was the third time that I could really say goodbye to this life, as I was disappointed in it. I did nothing bad to anyone: I did not harm anyone; did not lie to girls to sleep with them; stopped swearing with my mother; was educating myself and just wanted to live a normal life, just like everyone else – no more and no less – but it seemed that exactly and only I was punished. I was also disappointed in a capitalist-oriented society.

As before, I still had the last thread of hope, which was then Aura about which I had read so long ago and not so long ago I had thought about writing a screenplay where Aura would play a role. My idea was very simple – if Auras really exist, and people could see them in ancient times, then this means that anyone can learn to see them, including me. If I could prove to myself their existence, it would mean that in this world there is something more worth living for, that life is not an empty pursuit of money, which it is for many people of our time.

With these thoughts I typed in the Google browser “how to see Auras”…