🪁🧵🧶 Growing a self ( fiction):

While I was reading Dr Winnicott's book, I can across this sentence talking about adolescents:

"at fourteen they are commonly suicidal, and theirs is the task of tolerating the interaction of several disparate phenomena- their own immaturity, their own idea of what life is about, and their own ideals and aspirations; add to this their personal disillusionment about the world of grown-ups - which for them seems to be essentially a world of compromise, of false values, and of infinite distraction from the main theme. As they leave this stage, adolescent boys and girls are beginning to feel real, to have a sense of self and of being. From being comes doing, but there can be no do before be, and this is their message to us."

And this inspired me to write the shortest fiction every written:

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The phone kept ringing and ringing. It was with much difficulty I got his number. It was a friend's friend's sister's teacher who used to teach him too. previously thought of phone chains being very gimmicky, they were transformed into a holy grail for me at that moment!

"Hello? " he said on the other side.

I was blinking, was this real? Did he pick up my call? Was I talking to him ? Was I hearing his voice after three years?

"Hello, who is this?" He repeated aggressively

I couldn't utter anything, I pressed the end button so hard that the Nokia ____phone vibrated a tiny bit.

I took a few deep breath, okay okay, talking, that is not my strong suit. I am not really the talker, unless I can prepare what I need to talk. But in this case, preparing was not going to help too!

So I started typing....Hi, how are you, I am Yyy from school. I wanted to tell you that I like you very much, maybe I love you!.....

Waiting.. waiting... waiting..my phone beeped and I almost thought my eyes would pop out when I saw the '1 text ' on my phone.

The text read ' if you text me again, I will talk to my parents to talk to your parents about this.'

For a minute, I thought it was a joke. Was it a joke? What an innocent joke. It wasn't a joke. He was very serious. He took what I said very seriously! I think that was the first time someone actually took what I had to say very seriously.

His text, made me think, what an innoct boy, what a self-less innocent boy. He actually has conversations with parents about girls. He actually thinks he can have a conversation about this with his parents.

I wished I did not have this large than life self. I wished I did not feel so self conscious with my parents l. I wished, having feelings was not taken very convoluted(ly).

I looked at the text again. Decided, it is for the best to keep all the feelings inside , because I was not very innocent and self less.

It is best, to float with minimum damage to anyone else's self worth.

I put my phone on charge, got up from my chair, and walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water.