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Post by blueclouds on Apr 28, 2006 14:33:08 GMT -5
I want this to be a catalogue of my days so in the future I can read through for reference, but also backstory on how porn got into my life and has threatened to take it over. All comments, thoughts, related anecdotes, etc. are most welcome.
I remember a moment. The internet was newish and I was over at a friend's. There were four of us there. We were about 18 or 19. Our host brought us over to his computer and started pulling up nude photos, Playboy type. My friends were awestruck. I wanted to leave, too embarrassed to show excitement, feeling I needed to show I was morally offended, to live up to the reputation I had -- and loved: the nice guy, the romantic, the feminist, the best friend a woman could ever have, and so on. I suspect many of you had/have similar reputations? Worthy of study, that. Our friend showed us how you could type in any number of juicy words and the internet would spit back an endless collection of pictures on the subject. I didn't have an internet connection at the time, and wouldn't for several more years. I was above all that. But boy did I remember that first lesson on how to find porn. So you see, despite all my "Come on guys...Do you really wanna waste your time on that?....Let's go do something", I had been quite the attentive student that day.
But I wasn't so innocent at the time. As soon as I discovered MB -- I don't remember if I was 11, 12, 13 or what -- my habits were fairly compulsive. I never had access to porn, though. Later, when other boys got hold of copies of vids or mags from somewhere or other, I often didn't participate in joint viewing sessions -- it was too hot to touch for me, at least in front of others. Besides, I was already constructing my friendly boy persona -- I was not a member of the wolfpack, and would have died rather than be perceived that way.
However, there was a large suitcase under my bed full of cut-outs from magazines, brochures, newspapers -- just about anything that featured a picture of a woman, clothed, in lingerie, in sportswear, even just headshots of women with pretty smiles. I'd spread them all over the floor for my sessions. I even remember ejaculating on them sometimes -- a violent gesture, no? (My God, where did it come from...). I had my favorites, and above all I needed quantity. If I had used most of the cut-outs several times, my stash was getting dangerously low.
During all this time -- about 11 to 16 -- I was an athletic, active, socially integrated child. I didn't put MB above other things in my life, as I would later. I got good grades, played on school teams, and went absolutely nuts over girls, romantically speaking. I was the one leaving roses and poems around for girls I hadn't exchanged two words with, then having weeping fits in my bedroom, or on the phone to female friends, when my everlasting love went unrequited. Every girl was the first and last, the one and only. I didn't reflect on the fact that the love of my life could be up to three different girls in a single week. I was compulsive in love, from the beginning.
Two images stand out now as disturbing from that period. I would sometimes MB while looking out the window at the older teenage girl who lived across the street. Once a friend of hers saw me up in my window and flicked me off. Behavior on my part that didn't bode well. Also, I have a dream-like memory, as if I had blocked it out, of my mother discovering the suitcase, doing away with the stash and sitting me down to talk about it. Thinking back now, I don't even know if that really happened or not. I really think I reached an age where I could think back on my suitcase and call it sick behavior, and could not stomach the idea of my mother knowing, so I snipped the memory the best I could. That scares me.
Somewhere in my teens I read that 95% of males MB, at least in their teens. So how could I suspect I was on a dark road? God, I even believed I was one of very few guys in the world who didn't objectify women! The thing was, I just didn't do it in public. Signing off for today.
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Post by blueclouds on May 1, 2006 14:08:01 GMT -5
My SO is downstairs alone and I'm here posting replies, so I'll keep this short. Let us not become addicted to recovery!
Had peace in the mountains this weekend. Sunday was one of my rare days where I think a print-out of all my thoughts would cause me no shame. Always good to get those little injections of health.
But sitting here at the keyboard as the room darkens, I can feel the machinery wanting to work. I think this is very much a mechanical urge, like a phantom limb, my body wanting to do what it's done so many times before. So I'll kill it by changing rooms, drinking water, cuddling. This is what they mean by one day at a time. One moment at a time. And yet I think there also has to be an underlying sense, a kind of "Just Say No". For me, there must be a timeless, permanent determination, not just daily leak stoppage. Peace should be so easy. It's the obvious choice. But so much of what makes up a person is not our choice -- from genes to culture to family to accumulated experience. But that's enough of that -- bettter, at least for us, to simplify. Today I'll go to sleep clean, which will give me a good start for tomorrow.
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Post by blueclouds on May 3, 2006 2:31:42 GMT -5
Was thinking yesterday of some low points in my porn-ridden past. Walking around Amersterdam's redlight district, soaking in the eye candy. Women in the windows. Male wolfpack tourists leering and jeering. I tried to walk purposefully, as if I knew where I was, where I was going, just passing through, as if I lived there and had long been used to the sordid sights. I didn't dare make eye contact with any of the caged up women I passed. But I circled and circled the neighbourhood, savoring every stolen glance in the deepest way. I was high out of my mind.
Finally I plucked up the courage to enter one of the shops. I dived into the shelves with my eyes, wanting to consume every square inch of each magazine or video box cover. I saw images that (in those early days) managed to shock and disturb me, others that thrilled, but I couldn't turn away. People came in, browsed, bought and left. I had no notion of how much time was passing, but I do remember being alone with the shopkeeper, then a trail of customers, then being alone with him again, repeatedly. I started flipping through magazines, carefully, page by page -- it was paramount to make the best choices. Why buy one with 100 pages when there were some with 110? And which of them were stuffed with ads and teasers, which gave the maximum in large, usable images?
I finally opted for about three or four mags I thought would send me skyrocketing to... Heaven, I guess (I didn't quite get there in the end). They accompanied me on my travels. They made it through a drug inspection at the French border, the inspector leafing through them and looking up at me as if all those young women were his daughters (or so I imagined), but apparently he did not deem them confiscatable.
I used them dry until I had practically memorized every page. Then I left them in a guesthouse room in southern France, stuck between some blankets in the closet. Addiction was not a word I had allowed myself to consider at that point. But I recognised the obsessiveness, the desperateness. I felt like (expletive). The self-image I had built up was jarring with the reality of my thoughts and actions. But this is just the kind of feeling that in the end makes us turn back to porn, isn't it? At the time I felt it was a victory, leaving that material behind. Silly me. I think a few days down the road, I was kicking myself senseless, just as if I had thrown away gold.
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Post by blueclouds on May 4, 2006 18:34:26 GMT -5
There was always a latent tendency in me to indulge in rolling-eyed sensate, tactile pleasure. A seed that has grown for some reason and is now quite a bulky thing in me in the form of my P addiction. I link it to hot showers, how I can stand there for as long as the hot water lasts (terrible, I know), my skin alive with the pleasure of it. I link it to sucking my thumb -- security blankets or stuffed animals to boot -- until I was eleven or twelve. I link it to an experimental moment at five or six, when three of us went into the woods, exposed ourselves and touched. Skin, water, maybe even food is a part of this. The sensual, and the vertigo I feel at its edge, wanting to fall in and lose myself. You can see it from different perspectives:
1) a search for the ultimate, strongest ever, most electrifying sensation, or conversely, 2) a search for total oblivion, the absence of sensation.
Maybe the first is the addict's goal but the second is the long-term result. Or maybe the first is only the addict's surface goal, his/her hidden, unconscious goal being the second all along.
In any case one great yawning pitfall for me in recovery is how I respond to triggers. This thing in me, the sensuality addict, LIKES being triggered, meaning the triggers are an end in themselves. I remember hearing the story of the Pied Piper as a child and thinking, why didn't the village children just snap out of it and walk in the other direction? But I've since known moments where I've been just like them, as they spilled out of their houses: "All the little boys and girls // With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls // And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls," following the call, wanting to be a lured thing, to give in completely.
And yet be in complete control. A surrendering of yourself but dictated by you, and fully retractable.
This tendency has been a quiet, private part of me since childhood, it seems. But Internet porn has really fed it, to the point where I've preferred it to real world interaction. And as this seed has grown I have felt other parts of me shrink or get damaged in the bargain. I'm not as happy a person as I was. I'm not as optimistic. I don't feel as much satisfaction in helping others. I have trouble feeling passion for anything, compassion for anyone, when I used to be such a gush. Damn. These are problems of spirit.
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Post by blueclouds on May 5, 2006 9:59:31 GMT -5
I was hit hard just now in a cafe. I have a lot of in-between time in my work and the little slots of waiting -- cafes, park benches, bus-stops, etc. -- are dangerous openings for fantasy to creep in. There were three college age women next to me, and their youthful energy and physical presence were pulling me in like a whirlpool. I had little, physical sparks of pleasure and a blanketing desire to MB at the next opportunity. I could feel my addict mind trying to file away their image, even starting little stories I could follow through later. I kept trying to steal glances unnoticed, and I was getting worried because I felt it was almost unbearable for me to NOT look. This is probably the first time I've ever experienced such a moment as a full-on attack. Even now I haven't shaken it off totally. If the images take root, you're in danger. If you give life to the images, start making them speak and act according to your whimsy, you will have some hellish resisting to do. It occurs to me now that that might be one of the greatest pleasures of MB -- directing the fantasy. You get to play God -- all the characters instantly behave as you wish them to, with no consequences (at least in the fantasy). When you are finished, the scene and all the characters just vanish, go up in smoke. That power you are imagining for yourself when you MB is just about ultimate. It is a world where you have no limits, where you are absolutely safe from harm, criticism, rejection, or the smallest unpleasantry. Who wouldn't desire this world? But the more you visit your invented world, the less functional you are in the real one, that is, the one you have to share with other people, animals, objects, laws of nature and society -- in a word, limits, things that by their sheer existence reduce your power, your expanse, your influence, your importance. As PAs we have drunk so much from our False Heaven, we are so enamored of it, that we must choose just one of the worlds. It is no longer possible to go on excursions to fantasy land and come back unscathed. Spend enough time with ghosts and you become one.
To get past this I am thinking of another feeling I had today, earlier. I remember saying to myself, "My eyes are getting better." Two weeks P-free and 11 days without MB, I'm better able to look at people, to meet women eye to eye, and not stray downward. I feel less twitchy. I am feeling more warmth from other people's presence. This is what I want for myself, more of this. I don't want to be a ghost.
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Post by blueclouds on May 6, 2006 17:00:36 GMT -5
Anyone remember that old commercial jingle -- "Everything I think I see // Becomes a tootsie roll to me." Well, I went to a mall today for the first time since joining this board and commiting to recovery. The triggers in me went wild. (They ARE in me. Women are not triggers. Cleavage is not a trigger. My reaction to these things is where the trouble starts). Hanging out around changing rooms while my SO tried things on. I felt quite overwhelmed. I looked at the floor most of the time, though it's true my eyes did stray more than I would've liked.
It helped to analyze while I was there in the throes of it. I think malls are a weak spot for me because they call up my high school days, when much of my compulsion for all things female matured and solidified. It's an almost magical place, as if you could step behind any changing room curtain and enter the world of your fantasies. Even at five or six, I used to crawl into circular dress racks when my mom was shopping, lift up a corner of a dress there in the dark and rub my cheek against it. The mall is a place full of highly feminine sounds, smells and sights, and for me it is almost dizzying.
Am I just white knuckling? Do I stand a chance against that tidal wave? It really does seem a long shot sometimes. But I can also see how these thoughts could be a ploy of the wily addict: "You can't hope to beat this thing anyway, so what's the big deal if you just give in right now?" No. I have this board. I'm in the 30-days group and the 100-days group. I still haven't come close to giving life without P and MB a chance, at least to see what it feels like. I will go downstairs, have a yogurt and spend time with my SO and my dog. I need to dig this out of me but I don't know how. One day at a time? OK, but I don't want to be under attack for the rest of my life.
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Post by blueclouds on May 7, 2006 13:38:36 GMT -5
POSSIBLE TRIGGERS -- DESCRIBES PAST ACTING OUT
I'm alone now for a few hours, but I feel strong. There's a soccer match I'm interested in and I have it on the radio in the background. My dog is with me and the miracle of his innocence inspires me (although at my lowest points it has sometimes been torture, as I would look over at him after a session and realize I was pure filth by comparison).
The slow cleansing process -- reading testimonies, keeping this journal -- has brought up other memories of significant moments in the development of my PA. I remember visiting my aunts and uncles on my father's side. I must've been about 12-14. My family was staying in a hotel because of overcrowding over at the big family house. I was sniffing around my aunt's attic one afternoon.
I have always found a special pleasure in snooping, going through drawers and so on. Now I feel confident I can link this behavior to my addiction. It's about getting into other people's secret intimate space, owning it for a while, then escaping without consequences. It's voyeurism, as is most P consumption, I think.
So I found this big old trunk full of my aunt's underwear. I had never found her in the least bit attractive, or even feminine. She wasn't a woman, just my aunt. But I stole a pair of her underwear. I used it later I don't know how many times and, disgusted with myself, I discarded it under some trash in an empty lot behind the hotel.
I had a similar incident around the same age. I was dog-sitting in a friend's house. They had asked me to stay an entire night with the dogs, so they would not panic at the house being empty of humans. This friend had two older sisters -- again, I had never seen either of them as being particularly attractive. But finally bored with the MB-able material on TV, I succumbed to this horrible thrill it gave me to be alone in the house, to have other people's intimacy so within reach. I went upstairs, and into the first bedroom that looked like a girl's. I found underwear, put it on, and "showered" in the waterfall of sensuality I felt.
Going back through these episodes is helping me see that I will have to go back before adolescence to find the root of this problem. Since even my first inklings of sexuality, I have been sexual in this way, compulsively, addiction-prone. So is it possible that this really has nothing to do with sex? That it's an earlier psychological issue that existed throughout my childhood, and that just happened to find an ideal outlet of expression in my sexuality?
I guess I have to get into the issues of my early childhood. I had some trauma -- not the ugly kind but maybe just as heartbreaking. I have analyzed and re-analyzed those issues over the course of my life, but it's hard because most of it occured when I was so young that I hardly have any memories of it. In fact, it was something my mother had to tell me about when I was 17. It was the first I had ever heard of it, but some vague memories did flood in as she told me. But that's all for today. The real, live domestic chores of today and now are calling me.
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Post by blueclouds on May 8, 2006 13:34:44 GMT -5
I had some "cleavage issues" at work today. How pathetic! I did not look down while talking to this woman (She kept talking! I couldn't get away!), but afterwards my eye muscles hurt from the effort I had made. She does strike me as the type of woman who in part derives her sense of value from being attractive in men's eyes, but so what? I must not be a pig-headed man and see that fact as a green light to lust after her.
It is sad, more than anything else. Sad for her. Sad for me for accepting this sham, for having internalized it to such an extent that obsessing over it has become a major part of my identity. Cleavage is nothing, the soul is everything. But nevertheless, I'm still human, still part animal, and chemicals are chemicals. But as a PA I've forfeited my right to play in that game.
For us, there is no innocent flirting, no innocent looking, no innocent brushing of hands when taking objects from people -- no innocence, period. Because we cannot experience these things and then let them go. They get stuck, take root in us. They grow and become stories, full-blown fantasies. The imagined woman takes the real one's place. The real woman becomes only a reflection of the fantasy, a reminder, something that kickstarts the fantasy, until you reach the point where you cannot even say good morning to this woman without an entire MB story playing itself out in your mind, at which point you have to break away, be rude if necessary, resort to pure flight. And she wonders what's wrong with you, and you get the reputation of being a weirdo. And guess what, you are. God, it is so worth it to beat this thing.
I'm P and MB free, 18 and 15 days respectively. But I see now that I also need to be Fantasy-Free. No more stories. It's astonishing how easily they start, build, twist and finally reach their climax... and their pathetic, empty ending. I have said no more than hello to a woman passing in the hallway, then immediately, on my way down the stairs, fixed her in my mind, written lines for her and for me, developed action and dialogue, then attached about five different endings to pick and choose from later. Some stories stick for weeks, months, even years and yes, even decades.
The fantasizing is actually more dangerous than the physical act of MB-ing, more insidious, more soul-damaging, more mind-clouding. It does little to give up all physical MB if you are still constructing stories. The minute you find yourself imagining a woman saying or doing anything she has not said or done in real life, STOP! Get out the scissors and snip at your fiercest. Because that's where your evil begins.
Sorry for the melodrama but I've had one of those days. My addiction treats me like a ragdoll.
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Post by witness on May 8, 2006 15:53:33 GMT -5
Reading what you write makes me so sad. I too have led a double life. I want people to see me as the good guy. Then in private I would hold on to my fantasies.
I agree with what you just said. The fantasizing is the worst part. I have tried to root it out totally. I feel so much better now without all of those images haunting me all day long.
100% purity is the only way to beat this evil demon.
I've been here for 6 months. I had a slip two months ago. I will not turn back. I cannot turn back. I must not turn back. I want to be free. Today! Forever!
Blessings to you as you take another step down the road to freedom!
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Post by blueclouds on May 10, 2006 2:26:48 GMT -5
Thanks, Witness, it's great to get feedback. I feel for you on your slip. It must be quite a bump after a long stretch of sobriety (although I wouldn't really know since I haven't had any long stretches yet). Keep on keepin' on.
Yesterday morning I was in the shower. Any alarm bells going off? For me the shower is a portal into fantasy world. But yesterday I was just INNOCENTLY (ha ha) reviewing my schedule for the day ahead of me -- no thoughts of sex, women, not even fantasies of success...
I suddenly realized my right hand was trying to initiate things below. I said "F-ing hell!", snatched my hand away and brought my focus back to the task at hand -- wash, rinse, dry off, dress.
I'm still in the early days of recovery and I still need permanent vigilance, permanent focus. A single second of drifting (for my old habit patterns, which would like nothing more than to return) is a gaping window. That shower episode was my addiction's way of saying, "Hey! Nobody walks out on me like that. If I can't have you, no one will," and so on. I can't believe it actually got past my waking, conscious mind and wormed its way into my hand. We are dealing with one sly (expletive) here. (We prefer this type of exterior personalization, to avoid the less pleasant recognition that the sly (expletive) is no other than yours truly, heh?).
Tiredness, I've found, sends me reeling headlong towards MB. I have used it just to wake up a little, to snap out of lethargy. I have MB-ed merely because there were 15 minutes left before I had to go somewhere.
YOU HAVE TO FIGHT ON ALL FRONTS. PA is physical, mental, psycho-emotional, spiritual. Any of those areas you leave unworked become open floodgates. I have never really bought into any "only-one-path" outlooks. It's the same here. It's a mistake to go digging always for the underlying, and ignore the overlying and sidelying. This thing is in me completely, so I have to cleanse the whole me, including the surface. Neglected or suppressed things (people, feelings, issues) have a way of rising up in anger. For us, that translates into a slip, at the very least.
I'm tired right now and I have this annoying feeling that MB-ing would be just the thing to scratch the itch, numb my mind a little so the day will be easier to face. The feeling is like every square foot of floor I step on could be a trap door, every thought could open into a chute, twisting eternally downward. Oh, this is so very much a drug. I'm an addict. A drug addict. Who would've thought? All pride in my moral fortitude (something that was always one of my hallmarks) is gone.
I need renewal. But the infection has already spread to parts of me I don't want to lose. I want a cure, not amputation. I want my spirit to be turquoise, not gray. Is it too late for that? Is my destiny to lay out plastic chairs on stained carpet and plug in the coffee maker, grim-faced, but at least P-free? I don't want death. I want to explode out of this with joy. I don't want a heavy-set spirit, that does not seek porn more than for any other reason because it can hardly be bothered to move. I want freedom. But these are maybe the illusions of a child. These are maybe the astronaut dreams of a future broom-pusher.
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Post by witness on May 10, 2006 10:35:05 GMT -5
I believe in real hope and true freedom!
What are your goals? What are the first few steps you need to take to reach them?
Blessings!
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Post by blueclouds on May 15, 2006 2:16:20 GMT -5
Last Friday night I was at a wedding, and something incredible happened.
I danced. Must have been the first time in 7 years. Pretty pathetic considering my SO (we've been together almost as long) loves to dance. But I did it. I was sitting at the table as usual. She returned from the dance floor to sit with me for a while (she is so good about it). She asked if I wanted to go up there with her. I said, OK, but I'll probably just stand there. She said, OK, forget it then, only if you want to...
And something broke in me. The pole I have shoved up my you-know-what withdrew, at least for that little window of time, and I danced!
A direct result of my being MB and P free for 3 weeks. And I can't stress enough that it is especially the MB. The P is much more destructive, in much more dramatic ways, but these little moments of coming out of your shell, having the confidence and the peace of mind to face the world and not be so damn SELF-ABSORBED -- I think I had to leave MB for that.
And you know what? While I was dancing, NO ONE STARED AT ME. No one laughed. No one sneered. I was just another wedding guest acting out a time-honored ritual, like everyone else there. I had less style than some, more than one or two, but none of it mattered. Remembering my partner's face, her eyes, her happiness (it's so easy to make her happy!) brings tears now, and makes this fight worth every minute of suffering.
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Post by blueclouds on May 15, 2006 14:54:34 GMT -5
I have to do the work. I have to dig in. I'm doing pretty well at staving off temptation so far. I cut fantasies at their root. I have not had major urges to search for porn. I have had urges to MB, but nothing too overwhelming; I have remained in the driver's seat, and three weeks have come and gone.
But I'm sad sometimes. I still feel the burn in me, still have an endless string of images I could call up so easily. I am not cured in any sense of the word (despite small successes and new injections of life), and I AM STILL LAZY DURING MY FREE TIME (reading this months later, have decided to put this part in bold and caps because I now see it as a crucial -- and addiction-related -- issue) , I still am not actively free.
So I think I need to dig. I don't really feel like it, because I'm busy and tired. I'm having my house renovated and living in it at the same time. There is steadily more and more work. I'm so eager for happiness, normality, balance. I don't want to sort through emotional baggage, damn it! But it seems called for.
When I was around five months old, my parents were sent out on church missions around the country. They left me in a care center the church had set up exactly for that purpose. Most of the carers there were childless themselves. This situation continued until a few months after my brother was born, when I was three years old.
It broke my mother's heart, I learned later. So she wrote me letters (I still haven't read them -- I can't bear to ask her). She made a tape for me of her playing the piano and singing. And she visited me every chance she got. Every 2 or 3 day window that opened up for her, she showed up at the center.
And she was killing me slowly. I could not understand what was happening, where she was going. Every time she came back, I must have felt she was back for good. I NEEDED her to be back for good. She has told me later that she often had to leave late at night. I would get myself in such a state if I realized she was leaving, she didn't dare leave my side. She stayed until I was asleep. Then in the morning she was gone.
I do have foggy memories of some of these scenes. Of my mother (my mother -- warmth, love), standing in the door to the room I was in, or sitting on the edge of my bed, her face above mine. Her skin so close. Her unending warmth. She thought she was giving me small doses of love. Every minute counted, right? Four times a month was better than never, right? Wrong. She was torturing me. I was abandoned, again and again and again. She was breaking my heart, but a toddler's heart is too young for such trials. It does not bounce back into shape. Instead, it scars, and remains deformed.
My father did not make these visits. I think he was assigned further away. So my bond with him has always been weaker, but the breach also less painful. He did not suffer my anger and resentment over the years (not as much). He was not the victim of my revenge my mother has always been.
And this is where the real damage was done. The years after my stay in that center. I punished my mother by withholding love. I punished myself by bottling it up and refusing her love. I punished my younger brother by providing him with countless examples of emotional manipulation, by luring my parents to occupy themselves always with me, never with him, by being too busy making my useless war to be what he needed me to be. I ruined my family to some extent. We had a chance to be mutually instructive, loving, united, spiritual, nearly perfect. But I stuck my knife in, then twisted and twisted, looking for my parents' pain, my mother's pain, wanting it to equal mine.
And it continues today. I can hardly smile around her. It's a pattern I got into. I don't want to punish her anymore. I want to love, give her all the love I've kept back all these years. But when I am faced with her, I short-circuit. When she hugs me, it's all I can do just to lift my arms a little. If something she says makes me laugh, I stifle it; if it makes me smile, I hide my face. We can talk, especially about politics. I'm willing to show her my mind. But my heart is still off-limits to her, even to me when she's there. It's locked safely away behind the million walls of prolonged habit.
I really think a big part of my recovery -- as an addict and as a person -- will have to include reconciliation. It's hard because she's an ocean and a continent away. I have even considered confessing my PA to her, telling her about this board, telling her my name on the board and letting her read right through to my core.
But I'm afraid of her reaction. Can you believe it? I KNOW her reaction: Love, Love, Love and more Love, and support, and apologies. And I dread these things!
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Post by blueclouds on May 18, 2006 12:17:32 GMT -5
Very tired today, and expectedly I was slower to root out fantasy when it started. Sitting at bus-stops with young women, riding buses, interacting at work... Several times today the machine revved up -- the woman in question smiled in a certain way (in my head), or said something suggestive with a particular tone (in my head), or made some insinuating gesture (in my head), and pictures arose (I have seen so many). Tiredness reduces my alertness, and alertness is all I have against the momentum my mind has built up for fantasy, over these last 15 to 20 years.
But I come to this board every day; I lean on you all, so thank you. I am in a sobriety frame of mind. I know I have undertaken a task, and that has become a constant underlying feeling. However, this is not enough. I want not only to always be prepared for attack, but to disable whatever it is in me that attacks.
I want my mind to be a place where potential sex fantasies DIE, without a word, without bloodshed, without a struggle -- just poof. I want my mind to be a place where the image of a woman standing in front of me does not trigger illness, but the health of human connection.
I made it home. I did not turn around on the bus. I did not steal one last glance as I got off at my stop. I resisted with concentrated effort, clearly not sustainable over time. There has to be a point where I am free to swing my gaze over an entire arc, to see a young woman and continue, not halt, not stutter inside, not initiate a session of lusting after my own insignificant thoughts.
Addiction is so much more than habit, but habit is the engine, about a million horsepower. My hand closes just so while I'm looking out the window. My skin tingles in the old way, though I'm doing a crossword puzzle. My eyes get glued to the screen as if wanting to bore in, though there is only a work email there, a sexless text from the HR department. And my eyes stray out of habit, search the the whole panorama, even when no women are present. And my mind goes on collecting images. It takes snapshots and tries to store them, for this is what it has done for 20 years. How can you tell it now, "Sorry, no need for that anymore. Cut it out." The phantom arm keeps swinging when war victims walk; it keeps reaching for the remote on the couch.
25 days clean and I am still trying to break down the machinery. I'm still fighting a mechanical war. Impatience. I have never been good at baby steps. I want spiritual renewal now, not after 10 years of one day at a time.
Nothing to do but tell myself to settle down. Sweep the floor, play with my dog. You are what you do, right?
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Post by witness on May 18, 2006 12:39:36 GMT -5
Glad to see you hanging in there and talking about your feelings.
Talking with your mother sounds like a great idea. I pray that you will work up the courage to do so. I think you will be VERY glad you did. It could make some important changes that would effect the rest of your life. And no doubt your mother will enjoy having a closer relationship with you, her beloved son.
Blessings!
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