[Every Stop is a Step Back] - An Original Story Based on Personal Experience

steemingnow(64)

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Being in constant struggle with the rest of the world and sometimes with my inner lazybones I made myself accept the rule of Never Stepping Back. No returns, trials to convince myself of making another effort of putting bad relations right, no rest in the self-development process; every pause, every stop in the way is a step back.

Part 1
Six Steps

"If there is eleven steps between you and me, I will make six - but not a step more"

I learned this rule quite late (unfortunately) and got some really painful experience trying to put bad relations right. I was used to taking the responsibility for troubles and arguments which was actually a great invention of my parents: that's so cool to quarrel with your kid and make it feel guilty; you don't even need to bother about the argument as the kid will do the job for you - will come and try to put the shit right.
I got this fevered sense of responsibility at the age of nine or ten and since that I was trying to avoid the conflicts in any way. I simply realized that in case of an argument (even if it was me who was treated badly) I will make the first steps. All the eleven fucking steps. That was humiliating, that was hurting, but the inflamed responsibility was burning and I had to calm it down.

Source: econet.com

I realized the burden of responsibility with the first rational people entering my life. And the decision was taken quite soon: to suffer under the duty's knocks but not to make the seventh step as that is a step back. When you make the seventh step you accept the humiliation and the indiffernce and let those people treat you badly again and again.

That's better to be alone than to let people manipulate you just to have somebody.

Part 2
Speak up for yourself

Defend yourself and your interests, that's not egoism even if bad people claim it to be that. I kept silent for quite long as I knitted speaking up and defendig yourself with quarells and arguments. I thought that if I react - I bare the responsibility (see part 1) and that led to consequences. The suppressed emotions needed a quit and I let the stress out when I was alone. Then I learned to direct the unshouted to another spheres: art, sport, hiking. That was verging on insanity. My unshouted art was scary and the symbol of hopelessness was lingering in every second artwork. That was a step back - a jump back - for my emotional harmony, that destructed the basics of the personal development. The saddest thing is that I realized the stuff from the very beginning.

Here comes a piece of the novel I have been working with for about six months for you to get what I am talking about.

Source: zwalls.ru
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I remember the last five minutes of my life as if my brain knew that it was just about to get free from the cramped brainpan and there would be nothing to memorize in the future. The train was noisy in the narrow tunnel of Moscow underground. The passengers sat looking on the screens of their phones-tablets-e-books. The quiet rustle of the pair in front of me was hardly heard. A fat man sniffed and complained to the woman standing nearby of air-conditioners in the cars. I didn't have anything to look on, had nobody to complain to of the sinister conditioners - saviours and Judases of summer heat. I had nobody to whisper to about the coming night. I was an observer, one of the rare breed to be met in the underground. Suits, skirts, bags with a speaking label, high-heeled boots, ties and briefcases. Secretaries' bare legs and sleepy blue collar's bright socks. All that was fleeting by. They should have been lost on the roadside of the crazy information flow. Alas. There was no road further.
That was my red square, a pond filled to the brim with blood and a white line of the railroad running direct into its deep waters. "Blind alley". 8:02 Moscow time. "The next station is Slavyansky bulvar". People rushing into the car, holding the doors to be in time. As if two-three minute interval in the train operation would change something. It would. I looked at my watch. Was late for work. Tried to estimate how much was left. Ten minutes to Molodezhnaya and three more minutes down Yelninskaya str to the clinic. I had no patients in the early morning and the first one was to come at nine. The salary was to come in a week.
Hardly anything could be heard in the riddle of the train, there were only thoughts that were clashing with the ironlike canaries rods of the closed cage. Wait a bit, there's not much left. 8:03. A girl was sitting in front of me. She was reading something. She looked up on me. A deep glance fell to the bottom of my memory as a stone. Her eyes knew that that was the last moment of their imprisonment in the well-done porcelain box. Becoming free from the isolation ward they penetrated the dark matter of my pupils. Jigger, clang, squeal. I am blind. I am deaf. I am dead. 8:04.
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And then I spoke up. That was a usual argument with my father and I was meant to stay there and listen to the insults without any kind of reaction. To accept the negative. But I spoke out. "You behave like a bastard". Five words pronounced with a firm and calm voice. He shut up and left the room. He was thinking.