Chapter 17: (v.2) 'Studying' sounds like 'Student dying!'

Reads: 89

The summer passed relatively peacefully, as Christos had to focus more for the upcoming September exams than on the work he did with the Teacher. Nevertheless, he always kept his guard up.

It is worth to noting the time he asked to take his father's car to go to the Teacher. His father frowned, looking irritated, and Iulia who was present in that conversation, said in a threatening tone:

“Christos, be careful! You should know better what your place is in this house!”

Then Christos became desperate. “So this is my place in this family. Not even having the right to take my father's car! Even servants drive their masters' cars. I am considered lower than a servant!” he thought becoming enraged. But that also made him more stubborn. The following days, he insisted on having the car, and despite all the humiliations, from Iulia mostly, he managed to get the car for one and only time and drive it. Finally, a small satisfaction.

Truth is that the last days of summer he felt a calmness, as he had succeeded in dealing with his parents and his brother, for the first time in his life.

Finally September came, signifying the time to return to Thessaloniki.

While travelling to Thessaloniki, fear started to take over him. Would he manage, or would he experience similar situations of despair, like last year?

“At least the Teacher will be with me,” he thought.

The Teacher would travel to Thessaloniki one week later than him.

Upon entering the apartment he lived in, Christos remembered the loneliness he endured the previous year, and something weighted him down like a burden. As if in the so many meetings with the Teacher, he learned nothing at all.

He felt like sinking into a swamp. The more he stayed inside the flat, the more he sank into despair. When he found himself on the brink of drowning, he couldn’t take it anymore and with heavy steps, he almost crawled out of the apartment to get some fresh air. The moment he called the Teacher, it felt like surfacing from a deep dive in order to take a breath.

“Hello Christos!” the Teacher sounded cheerful. “How was your trip?”

“It was fine,” Christos said, “but now that I am here I am not at all good!”

“What are you thinking about?”

“It is like everything is as it was before, like nothing has changed!”

“This is happening because you are having remembrances of the previous year, and you feel stalling again.”

“What can I do to overcome this?”

“Christos, you have changed since we began having meetings. The only thing you have to do is to mobilize yourself, so that you can erase the old memories. Go out, take a walk, go for shopping or go to the university!”

“Okay, I will do that!” Christos said.

“Give it a try and let me know!”

The phone hung up.

With renewed morale, Christos chose to follow Teacher's advice. He walked in the city and eventually ended up to the coffee shops of Aristotelous square. The hour was ten thirty in the morning and a lot of people sat in the kafeterias, yet no one Christos knew.

His mobilization emptied his mind from previous thoughts. He was not the same person anymore, he knew it. The Teacher was right. He only had to change last year's negative images. That would happen, sooner or later.

Decisively, he returned to the original schedule he planned for that day: to continue studying.

Upon returning home, he realized that there were no pens, pencils, and paper there. Without being conscious of it, his determination turned to tension. He entered a bookstore and there, talked to the middle aged couple that ran the shop.

“I would like to buy pens and notebooks!” he said with an unexpectedly loud voice.

The man stood up and showed him the pens and the notebooks.

“Do you happen to have pens with green color?” he asked with an even louder voice. He didn’t know what was happening to him.

“No, we don’t have!” the lady replied annoyed.

Interpreting what she said as criticism, Christos became afraid and confused, since he didn’t expect such a reaction from the shopkeeper.

To get out of the difficult situation, he bought mechanically some pens and a packet of printer paper and headed towards the flat, being troubled not only from the pressure of the examinations but also from the latest event.

The woman’s earlier criticism blocked him, but when he entered his room, remembering the advice the Teacher gave him to release his anger towards inanimate objects, he grabbed a pillow and started to punch it mercilessly.

“Take this!” he yelled to the pillow.

After five minutes of uncontrollable rampage, his anger subsided and he calmed down, becoming unblocked emotionally. Being calm, he could think more rationally.

“But why did I do that?” he wondered and immediately remembered the memory of the party (Ch. 13) where the landlady gave the guest children toys and he had chosen one of the toys of the kid who had a birthday. Then Christos’ mother strongly objected.

“When I claim something, I take it but then I feel guilty,” he remembered the role that came out from this memory. Ever since, whatever he claimed, he took but then felt that what he did was wrong. So, what did he do wrong this time?

The people who ran the shop did not reject him, but he made them do so. He recalled the stages of rejection second stage of rejection said that we make a person's life a living hell for them to reject us. He realized that he fell again into the trap of that role causing others to reject him, by making them angry with his loud and irritating voice.

“I have a lot of work to do before I become free!” he thought, “but on the other hand, I have to study as well!”

He spent the rest of the day studying, as time put pressure on him.

Submitted: March 09, 2024

Literary Fiction romance therapy psychology counselling personal-development