Being Brave Part II

by artman7391

Meltdown

A few more weeks had passed since Cory began his studies. Still little progress had been made in his basic skills, and he could see the frustration in his tudors faces. Regardless, they managed to cheer him on in his curriculum. With every wrong answer, or missed push-up, they still said things like "Good effort" or "Keep it up" to have his spirit going. However, he felt worried, anxious, even concerned he may have been only burdening his pony friends, making himself a waste of time in their lives. Still, he was amazed they were able to keep their temper after all this time.

Today was no exception, finding himself in the comfort of Twilight's bedroom, and focusing on a grammar problem that was presented to him. Even more challenging, there was a timer to see how fast he could get it done. He fiddled with one punctuation, and he toiled with a sentence structure, but he just couldn't seem to figure out what was right or wrong about this essay. And yet, he persisted, recollecting what Twilight had taught him earlier in the weeks. But just as he was about to finish the last problem, the timer went off.

"Alright Cory," Twilight said calmly. "Let's see what you got."

He handed his paper over to his tutor, and she brought it to her desk. With the magical assistance of a quill and bottle of ink, she carefully examined the changes he made. Cory looked on with the most worried look on his face. Twilight gave him a smile of reassurance, and told him to sit back in his seat. He twiddled his thumbs, patted his legs and toyed with eraser shavings, making a nice small pattern on the desk. About 5 minutes later, Twilight handed back his paper. As she turned away, he nervously looked at the score at the top of the paper. Just as he had feared, a large score of 54% appeared on the corner, wrapped around in a red circle.

Once again, Cory had failed to achieve a passable grade. It was practically the same feeling he had to endure back in his world. He thought 'What's the use of trying?' 'What's the point of going on?' 'Why continue to persist if I'm going to fail each time.' His hands began to shake, ruffling the paper, aggravated at his own personal failure. tears of rage streamed down his exhausted cheeks as the inner emotion grew more and more outer. Finally, he snapped.

"WHY CAN'T I GET IT RIGHT!!!!!?" He shouted at the top of his lungs as he ripped the paper up and threw his pencil to the ground. "IT'S HOPELESS!!!"

Then, to Twilight's horror, his hands turned to fists, and he began to brutally beat himself up. He beat his chest, he landed blows in his face, he kicked himself in the shin, and tore a little hole in his shirt. He was so mad at himself, he didn't even care if he made bruises to his skin, or even bled for that matter. Twilight immediately flew over to him and record speed, and smacked him in the face to come to his senses. She then placed her hooves on both sides of his cheeks and made him look straight in the eyes. It was the sternest, strictest, most un-funny face she had ever made to him.

"Never...Do...That...Again." She said coldly.

He bowed his head in shame.

"LOOK AT ME!" She said as she reinforced his eyes. "Don't Ever..EVER...Hit yourself, Kick yourself, scratch, punch, or harm yourself in the face ever again! UNDERSTAND!?"

Cory nodded as if his life depended on it.

"Alright." Twilight sighed in exhaustion. "I need to lie down now."

She flew over to a nearby sofa, fluffed a fancy looking pillow, and made her self comfortable. Meanwhile Cory just stood there for a few minutes, not knowing what to say or do. Then he shrugged and picked up the shredded pieces of paper and pencil he just threw.

"I'm sorry I got the answer wrong again." Cory said solemnly as he paper in the trash bin.

"It's not that you got the answers wrong." Twilight replied. "It's how you react to getting them wrong in the first place."

"What do you mean?" He asked. "I've always been told to feel bad when I fail a test or exam."

"Exactly. You should be doing the opposite. You should just keep a steady, calm demeanor when you're wrong, not beat yourself up about it."

Cory looked down again in shame, as Twilight flew to him and turned his head up.

"I know you've been taught differently on how to handle these things." She said. "But you no longer have to follow those kinds of rules. You have friends now, with all the support you could possibly ask for. All you need is a way to control your stress load in a simple, practical way, and I think I might know somepony, or zebra in this matter, who can help."

"Zebra?" Cory asked, to which Twilight smirked and gave him to nod to hop on her back.