“Nails of the soul…”

– I am a fat – short – shy – ‘weird’ – dyslexic little “boy” and I do not allow myself to be free and spontaneous to enjoy my new bicycle or whatever, because I feel the “judgmental” eyes of my friends and neighbors in me, 24/7.

I usually smile trying to hide my embarrassment.

– Until I finished school I felt ashamed many times.

– Sometimes when my family didn’t have enough money to send me to the best tutorials, sometimes when I didn’t have money to buy Nike Air Jordan shoes like all the other kids, sometimes when I passed my full school. winters with only 2 or 3 tracksuits and if I was careless and ripped them, my mother would put a seal on it to hide the tear.

– Somehow my years as a child and adolescent passed by, and perhaps because of those circumstances I became a shy person, and someone who felt that I SHOULD always BE THE ONE WHO makes jokes in the company of people.

– Be the funny man/woman, seeking and “ASKING” for acceptance, AFRAID TO SHOW ΜΥ REAL CHARACTER. And to tell you the truth, most of the time I felt sorry for myself, knowing deep inside that this is not the healthiest thing to do with your personality.

– But I have found something opposite to that depressive behavior of the first days.

– It was an internal “fire” that I have felt all my life “telling” me something in secret, ALL MY LIFE.

– That “something” made me feel optimistic about my life and my future, the gentlemen that I was returning home, after the fun show I was giving to satisfy my friend’s “appetite”.

– That burning “fire” in my stomach was whispering to me, that when I decide to cut the postponements, the funny and stupid attitude, when I make the decision to MAXIMUM ATTACK, I will be able to do everything in my life.

– For many years that thought made me feel safe and UNSAFE at the same time. My parents worked for the country in their agencies and paid for the country. So they never “swam” in uncharted waters and for them to do something outside the “box” was an “alien” situation. My brothers and sisters the same. My relatives the same.

– My relatives children and friends, the same. Yes, the very few times I tried to tell them my point of view, I received laughter and mockery from them… and I never spoke to them about those matters.

NEVER MORE.

– I was alone.

Me and my dreams… and my FEARS.

– Fears NOT as you read in books and the thousand psychological articles, which tell you that they have the true and only solution, to face your fears (and perhaps sell you something “magical”)… but something else.

– The PRIMITIVE FEARS of being alone against everyone, the fear that YOU and ONLY YOU MUST DO THE “WORK”, without anyone’s help. This fear and the fear of FAILURE can break your spirit, like a tiny branch, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

– I can assure you that when you feel this kind of emotion for the first time, you will never forget it for the rest of your life.

– I’m not smart enough to go to finish the university I want and my environment agrees on that (!), I have never left my small town to go to the big city with the big block of flats and the city so smart -people . It would be like the “fly in the milk”.

– I don’t know anyone who can help me find a job, so I can finish my studies – an athlete’s career – an entrepreneur’s career, or whatever. I should find a job at the newspaper, something I’ve never done before in my life. It feels so strange at first acting away from the safety of my home, but I have to resist.

– What if I fail?

– TOTALLY and COMPLETELY?

– I could never deal with the laughter and humiliation of my environment. If I am forced to give up my dreams once and for all, by society’s criticism, I know that I will die for it, inch by inch every day.
– I know that my soul will never recover and I will be another human who died in his sleep for “unknown cause”.

– “Broken” heart, not an official cause of death, you know?

– And if this FAILURE causes the opportunity not to create my own family?

– What happens if this PERSONAL FAILURE causes the destruction of my existing family?

– How am I going to live the rest of my life, knowing that I have not tried enough and if I had lost, I had lost.

– On the list I would have known my limits, which I could live with.

– A PINE…

those “soul nails” of your human existence, REPLACE THEM with RAW determination and “inhuman” work (yes, the “common” SWEAT, BLOOD and TEARS) and at the end of the “game”,

We’ll see who’s going to win…