Do you believe in dreams? Do you believe that our subconscious is smarter than we are? Do you believe that our subconscious can know things we don’t? Or maybe our subconscious is connected to the entire Universe? Perhaps it understands life better than we do ourselves? I had a dream.
In my dream was my mother, long since gone, but her image was frightening. She looked as if she had lost her mind, as though she had been driven to that state. She was unstable, completely insane, and she was accompanied by my brother. I was stunned by this vision. My brother said to me, “Igor, Vasya and Zhenya are preparing a serious attack on you.”
At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to this dream, but later I realized that it foretold events I was yet to experience.
Soon after, a series of psychological and emotional trials began. I felt like I was on the edge, constantly anxious and restless. This feeling never left me, as if I was gradually losing myself, and each day felt even heavier than the last.
When Nadya left, I naturally shared this with those I considered my friends—Vasya, Slava A., and Nikolay K. I expected at least minimal support, but instead, their reactions were surprisingly similar, as if they had agreed in advance. Every single one of them advised, “Forget it, move on. You’ve got your studies, your job. Just get on with it.” That was all. Absolute indifference, as if my feelings and experiences didn’t matter at all. No one tried to get to the bottom of the situation, to understand my crisis, or even to just offer support.
But over time, I began to realize that their words weren’t motivated by care for my future. They seemed to think they had a certain power over me, and Nadya was interfering with that. Her influence weakened their control, which they had grown so used to feeling. They thought they could direct my decisions and feelings, but in reality, I was just listening to them because at that time I considered their opinions important and valuable. Slava, perhaps, was less involved in these subtle games, but his attitude was cold and pragmatic. He always saw me more as an academic partner than a friend. Our relationship was mutually beneficial: I helped him with his studies, and that was where his interest in me ended.
These people didn’t see Nadya as a problem; they saw her as a threat to their influence over me. I was just a tool for them, a means to achieve their own goals, and she was preventing them from keeping me in that role. Their “advice” wasn’t sincere—it was just another way to regain control. And I found myself in a situation where, it seemed, I was alone against everyone, deprived of support and understanding.
But despite all these thoughts and feelings, I still held onto the hope that the situation could be saved. I felt that if I went to Nadya, if I just met her, brought her flowers, and tried to talk things over, everything could be resolved. I believed that a sincere conversation could restore our connection, that all was not lost.
After some time, Zhenya T. came up to my floor and kept asking to come in. I hesitated for a long time and tried to keep him at the door, knowing that this person had already cost me too much—including Nadya. But Zhenya was persistent, and in the end, I gave in, even though inside me there was still a struggle. He brought beer and insisted that we drink. I still felt inner resistance and wanted to get rid of his company, as his presence made me uneasy. He frightened me, but he wouldn’t leave, and after many attempts to resist, I finally surrendered. Zhenya turned on some rap music on my laptop, which annoyed me, but I tolerated his presence. Everything felt strange, and suddenly he took drugs. At that moment, I became genuinely scared. I was already pretty drunk.
At that point, I experienced a powerful psychological projection. My inner fears completely took over, and I began to confuse my thoughts with reality. The distortions became so strong that I lost control of my mind. The sense of threat coming from Vasya and Zhenya became so overwhelming that I couldn’t distinguish what was really happening from my internal fears. My mind was consumed by panic, and this spilled over into messages. On some intuitive level, my subconscious reached out to Nadya, as the closest and safest person I knew. In a state of despair and panic, I wrote to her, as if I were a drug addict, that Vasya and Zhenya were threatening me, and that I was very scared. This was a reflection of the fears and projections that had overtaken me. I was looking for support and salvation in the place where I had once felt safe.
But in the morning, once I came to my senses, I realized I was in deep trouble. At that moment, it became clear to me that the situation would not be so easily fixed. All my confidence that I could just show up with flowers and try to talk things through disappeared. It now seemed unreal and unreachable. I realized I had gotten myself into a difficult situation from which I saw no way out.
Since then, the “October texts” became an emotional anchor for me, one that unexpectedly began to drag me down and wouldn’t let go for a minute. I constantly returned to those messages in my thoughts, realizing that after reading them, Nadya could be completely convinced I was a drug addict and that chaos reigned around me. This destroyed her trust in me, and, unfortunately, she formed a finally negative opinion about me. That impulsive step forever changed our relationship. This realization literally paralyzed me.
Soon people around me started to notice that I had become strange and withdrawn. They thought it was because of drugs, but in reality, ninety percent of my consciousness was focused on those messages. I lived in constant tension, couldn’t free myself from those thoughts, and it began to show in my behavior.
Vasya and Zhenya noticed that my condition was rapidly deteriorating. I was emotionally unstable, completely lost after breaking up with Nadya. No one supported me, and it became unbearably hard. I sought refuge in alcohol, trying at least somehow to forget. But after those messages to Nadya, I felt even worse. I felt drained, my mind was clouded, and my days passed in a haze—nothing helped, no matter how hard I tried.
At some point, at night, around three in the morning, Vasya and Zhenya started knocking on my apartment door. At first, I didn’t want to open, but they wouldn’t stop, and in the end, I opened the door. They burst into the apartment and, wasting no time, headed straight for my room. They immediately began to threaten me. They said that I was a worthless asshole, that I deserved nothing—not Nadya, not my money, not even the apartment I lived in. In their eyes, I was nothing.
They drove me to fits of hysteria. Any time I protested, my own things were thrown at me. I tried to kick them out but couldn’t—they kept pressing me, and my brother Ilyukha woke up from the noise, not understanding what was going on. They made him stay in his room, and kept tormenting me. They kept telling me I was a complete idiot and that I owed them money.
I was in such a depressed state that in the end, I gave them a hundred thousand rubles. But even that wasn’t enough for them. After a while, Vasya declared that the amount was not one hundred thousand, but only ninety. It was obvious that Zhenya, who was sitting next to him, had deftly pocketed part of the money. But I was so devastated that I couldn’t focus on anything. As soon as they got the money, they immediately left.
After that, I finally understood: the world around me had collapsed. The people I considered friends betrayed me. They threatened me, tried to involve me in drug use, and stole my money. I lost Nadya because of them, and there was almost no one left around me who could offer even a drop of support.
I was cornered. The texts I had sent Nadya had already driven me to despair. Left with no support and feeling utterly alone, I began to sink into the dark depths of my consciousness. I started seeing the most frightening things. When I looked in the mirror, it seemed to me that I saw the face of the devil. It was October 2011, and I was on the edge.
In the end, the total amount that Vasya took from me exceeded 160,000 rubles. All that time, I had trusted him as a friend I had known for more than thirteen years, but his actions were an unexpected blow. The sense of betrayal was much stronger than any material loss. The pain of what had happened was aggravated by the fact that it had come from someone I considered close.
After this event, I felt as though the world was finally collapsing around me. And at that moment, music became a reflection of my inner state. The song Nintendo (Noganno, Basta) — “Mama-Ama Criminal” sounded especially frightening and seemed to underscore all the chaos that was unfolding around me. Every time I heard it, the feeling of hopelessness grew, as if the music was the soundtrack to my personal collapse. It literally cut into my thoughts, reminding me that I had already lost control over my life.
Conclusions
The problem was that after Nadya left, I should have maintained emotional calm. If I had done that, our situation wouldn’t have gotten worse, the breakup wouldn’t have been so deep, and at least everything would have remained stable; we could have continued living on without tension toward each other. However, the appearance of Vasya and Zhenya triggered a powerful emotional surge and fear in me. This led me to behave toward Nadya in such a way that I created a new emotional imbalance, increasing the rift and misunderstanding between us. Vasya and Zhenya completely undermined my emotional state after breaking up with Nadya.
