A Bad Education

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

- Carl Jung

This story doesn’t just tell a tale, it contemplates one. In many ways, it reads like a literary essay written in flesh and feeling, unfolding slowly through the lives of three deeply entangled characters: Nick, Bobby, and Adrian. Love, shame, betrayal, longing, it’s all there. But beneath the emotional realism is something even deeper: a quiet, haunting meditation on Jungian themes.

@CasualWanderer82's secret receipt is here - three individuals, haunted by their own demons, caught in a net of toxic relationships. Oh, @CasualWanderer82 bring the new dimension to the term 'toxic relationship'...read and find out how! The story feels like an exploration of the shadow self - that hidden, often repressed part of our psyche. Each character carries a burden they try to bury, and the drama between them isn’t just interpersonal - it’s psychological. They act out old patterns, echo traumas they inherited, and repeat roles they can’t escape. The choices they make aren’t always rational, but they’re deeply human, shaped by wounds that go deeper than words.

Throughout the story, the ocean plays a powerful symbolic role. For Jung, the ocean often represents the collective unconscious—vast, mysterious, full of forgotten truths. The sea becomes a place where characters confront themselves or let go. It’s where memory returns, where desire dissolves, and where silence speaks. 

The mood is cinematic and poetic—like a European film from another time. It doesn’t rush. It lingers in glances, pauses, bedsheets, and half-spoken words. Settled in Tarkovsky's landscape, with Bergman's psychological depth, interrupted with few Tarantino's shocking scenes and Hitchcock's final word, this story will leave you breathless. 

In the end, this is not a story about answers. It’s about seeing. Seeing the shadow, seeing the damage, seeing the love that maybe came too late. It’s quiet. It’s aching. It stays with you. This story doesn't shout, it whispers Jung and sometimes, that’s louder than anything else. This story screams silence! 

Finally, a note to the readers. @CasualWanderer82 is not writing a “tasteful” psychological drama. He's writing something braver: a poetic, morally ambiguous, erotically charged story where moments of stark physicality rip through beautiful language the way trauma and desire rip through people. If everyone’s comfortable, the writing probably isn’t doing enough.