Евгений Мешков - Simple Truths of Life

I talked about my heart complaints to another doctor as well when I took the treadmill test. I do not think she was listening to me, since I was not sent anywhere else regarding that.

Then they sent me to the doctor who spoke to me about my stuttering. She sent me for an examination to another medical center, but I remember the following bit. When she went out to speak with her colleague in the corridor, I remember exactly how that man, at the mention of me, spoke of me as of a “little boy”. He said this in the tone that they say about effeminate or gay men. I know for sure that it was about me, because then he looked at me and said something of an apology about the fact that it is clear that it is hard to live like this for the whole life. It really hurt me a lot, and I could not understand where such an attitude towards me comes from…

It was a cloudy rainy day when I was going for a medical examination of my speech. I think that I was then relaxed, because I decided that in any case I would not go to the army. I have always treasured freedom…

Having arrived to the building, I went into the doctor’s office and something terrible happened. I just could no stutter!

After finishing my “examination”, the woman gave me a closed envelope which had to be handed over to the doctors at the military registration and enlistment office. Then I went out of her office into the corridor to my mother and father with tears in my eyes.

The so-called “stuttering” ruined my whole life. I had neither love, nor friends, and at one time I could not even utter a single word, and now, when such an important moment came up in my life, I could speak almost better than any anchor on television…

When the envelope was opened at the military registration and enlistment office, it became clear that my pathetic attempts to show the woman on medical examination that I had really stuttered were unsuccessful. Fortunately for me, a woman in the military enlistment office could still use her brains, although she did not very flatteringly introduce me to her colleague the other day. The additional checks she sent me to give me a military ID and relieved me of my military duty due to stuttering. I was told that in three years they could invite me for new speech checks.

Despite the fact that I did not need to join the army, the moment with the inability to stammer in the speech influenced me very much. I could no longer live with such mockery in this life. I simply no longer had anything that I could live for, and that night I firmly decided that that day would be the last for me. This was the second time that I really wanted to commit suicide, but for some reason I did not go to the ninth floor of my house right away… instead, I decided to sleep and say goodbye to everything the next morning…

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…