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Post by amaninfull on Sept 3, 2007 14:56:56 GMT -5
arctic, MrOuch, Geoff: thanks a million for stopping by and leaving a little nugget behind. It makes my day.
On Saturday I had an interesting moment. I've moved recently, and was finally finishing unpacking my office, and in my "equipment" box I cam across the Zip drive and disk that contained my "stash". I decided to keep the drive but break the disk. I plugged in the drive, ejected the disk, and tried to break it. No dice - it was tough. Then I thought, I'll just delete all the contents. Which would mean inserting it into the drive, hooking it up to my computer, and opening up the folder. Something I've done countless times before, a pattern that is strongly associated with indulging in porn, and in fact I would be putting myself one click away from the stuff.
I stood there for a little while, looking dumb, I'm sure. Finally I decided not to risk it, and to just break the disk.
After offering up a silent dedication, I walked outside to the trash, and took another shot at breaking it. Not happening - this sucker was tough. I tried dismantling it, but that wasn't going to happen without a screwdriver. I was just going to give it some muscle - I bent over so I could put my shoulders into it, and applied myself to bending the plastic to the breaking point. Now, I was wearing shorts with no underwear at the time. And this led to something - ironic? symbolic? pathetic? - certainly comment-worthy: I strained, and when finally the plastic gave way, the heels of my hands slapped together - catching the head of my penis between them! DAMN!
In the bathroom I confirmed that it left a mark. Nothing permanent. I'm choosing to interpret it as a sign of liberation, a small price to pay. And how appropriate that the porn was literally extremely difficult to get rid of!
So it's gone, and so are the three or four porn videotapes I had left, and one book of "erotica" - some of it pretty heavy, but since it was apparently translated from French, my father was able to buy it from his book club, and I stole it from him when I was in my 20s.
He had a fairly sizable stash of porn magazines under his bed (not when I was growing up - though he did have a subscription to Playboy). When I was in my 20s, I snagged a bunch of them, and had some of them for many years. I don't know whether he was addicted to porn, but I do believe that his relationship to sex was not terribly healthy. Mainly it was suppressed - we never had any father-son talks about it, or about girls, or about my changing body, etc. I always felt like sex was something I was not supposed to think about, talk about, or, certainly, do. Yet the general atmosphere around our house was 60's middle-America liberal - and my sisters (both around my age) never developed the kind of weird relationship to sex that I did.
I suppose you could say I was afraid of it. I was a very shy boy - which simply means that I was afraid of people. I was particularly shy about approaching girls, which resulted in me not dating much in high school, not really having a girlfriend until just before I graduated, and not losing my virginity until I was 18. Not even coming close, really.
Then, after that one time, I didn't have sex again for over two years. I was, in other words, just one session away from being a virgin until age 20. Girls thought I was cute, too, and I was certainly nice, and even played sports a little. I was just so terrified of rejection that I never allowed myself to try for what I wanted. (This was true in all things, by the way, but sex was perhaps the most painful, as I felt lonely and unwanted year after year after year.)
I was always quick to embarrass, too, going back to when I was a small child. I was self-conscious to the extreme. I never fit in - I always felt like somehow everyone else had been handed a manual on how to handle different situations, and I never got one. (I did, in fact, sometimes have paranoid fantasies very much like this - it's not just a metaphor.)
I don't think I can lay all of this at the feet of my parents, or my father in particular. I seem to have been predisposed, by my personality, to be afraid of sex.
I was also an incredibly romantic kid. I romanticized girls, I romanticized love - and love was pretty much in opposition to sex. Even as a teenager I often fantasized about embracing, kissing, caressing my crush of the moment. And I fell in love at the drop of a hat. Always, of course, to girls who had little idea, if any, that I was head-over-heels about them.
I had sexual fantasies about both boys and girls, but never romantic fantasies about boys. Being an avid reader, I knew that same-sex fantasies were quite common, and that most people grow out of them. I never did. Which meant that I ultimately had to come to grips with this as well - the possibility that I was gay or bi, which were both mortifying to the kid in me that was terrified of being different. Ironic, because at the time I was hanging out with a fairly bohemian crowd in the San Francisco Bay Area, who wouldn't have cared less either way. That doesn't matter when you're just a kid inside - the externals don't seem to change anything.
It's been an incredibly long and challenging road, making peace with my sexuality, with myself as a sexual being.
I do, however, have a major challenge already behind me: crippling depression, going back to my childhood. I took this on in my late 20's, worked hard on many fronts for many years, and have now been free from major depressive episodes for over ten years. Without medication, I may add (except sex chat).
So, some very personal history there.
Day 38. Cool.
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Post by suedehead on Sept 3, 2007 23:02:39 GMT -5
AMIF: Wow! Wonderful work breaking the disk. That seems HUGE. And I love the "symbolism." Very postmodern. What I really wanted to comment on was your note about depression. I too have dealt with depression since adoloescence. My parents at one point wanted me to see a professional, but I refused. Like you, I was a bit of a romantic. I sort of embraced the cyncism and malaise of depression as marks of the artist/intellectual in me. And, to some extent, I did not want to lose that. To this day, I believe my depression has taught me wisdom that I would not have otherwise learned. But now, again like you, I find myself walking a fine line between the "benefits" of depression and the real perils of it, which include a predisposition to addictive behavior. I applaud you for dealing with your depression without medication. I have so far resisted medication as well, but things have been so challenging lately. So I've begun to reconsider. Please, can you tell me what you have done (besides sex chat to address your depression without medication? And finally, I know how important it is to grapple with the factors in childhood that have lead us to the behaviors we use today. Good work in beginning to explore these issues. Godspeed, AMIF.
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Post by MrOuch on Sept 4, 2007 13:44:22 GMT -5
AMIF,
Thanks for sharing your personal story. You have come a long way, but the journey is longer still. With a strong conviction you will make it.
I am so glad to hear about how you smashed your disk (personal injury notwithstanding). Get all of that crap out of your life. You don't need it and isn't it better to buy a new zip drive than risk falling back into the abyss. I remember convincing myself once that it was okay to load up an old pornified disk. All I was going to do was reformat the disk. The next thing I knew it was 2 hours and a binge later. Since I've been truly clean, I have simply thrown away anything that I think might contain P. Life is so much better without it.
MrOuch
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Post by rockwell on Sept 4, 2007 14:58:48 GMT -5
Amaninfull,
Excellent Excellent! And the symbolism! Smart move with the disc.
I relate to the depression as well as I have gone through several bouts of it over the years and have a tendency toward depression and anxiety. I also relate to the bisexual side as you already know. Keep up with this journaling. You will learn lots and lots and you will grow! Take care.
rockwell
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Post by arctic on Sept 6, 2007 16:20:17 GMT -5
Hi AMIF,
Thanks for writing in my journal again. You're a legend!
How are things going with you right now? That disk thing must have been a real internal struggle, but you came through! Well done! Thank you also for sharing some of your story with us. I guess I too used to be afraid of approaching girls, largely due to fear of rejection.
I hope that you will find relief from you depression. I've suffered from it too. Being porn free has gotta help though!
Take good care and thanks again, Arctic
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 6, 2007 16:37:26 GMT -5
Gah if I ever make it to even day 3 I'll be happy. I wish I didn't have to relapse all the time. x-x
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 7, 2007 16:30:34 GMT -5
Suedehead, MrOuch, Rockwell, Arctic, and Unhappyheart,
Thank you so much for coming by, reading what I've written, and lending me your wisdom (yes, that goes for you, too, unhappyheart - I am inspired by everyone who has the strength to come to this site, create an account, and start posting: takes guts).
Arctic, I have not suffered seriously from depression for over 10 years now. My comment was intending to say that having taken that on and beaten it (at least for now), I believe I can beat my addiction to porn and sex chat, too.
I am getting a lot of satisfaction these days from most of the things I do: from work, from songwriting, from maintaining the house and the animals, from exercising, from being with my new wife. A handful of times a day I still get a kind of pang that might, in the past, have sent me to the Internet for porn and sex chat, but it is not hard for me to make a different choice instead.
I am kind of freaked out about becoming a father, which should happen in about a month. Not so much the chaos and bedragglement that I expect from caring for a newborn, but from the prospect of having that responsibility, that relationship, for the rest of my life. I so badly want to do it well so that the kid can grow up happy, but I am far from sure of my ability to do so. I know that unconscious patterns of relating can take over so quickly, patterns I got from my father and mother that weren't so hot, and led to a lot of pain and unhappinsess for me.
Specifically, patience, or lack thereof. My father got so frustrated with me so easily. Any time he tried to show me how to do something - and when you're raising a kid, that's a lot of times - if I didn't pick it up right away he got so frustrated. Not that he ever hit me or anything, or even really berated me, but he'd turn red and swear, and I felt small and stupid and clumsy. A few years ago I had stepchildren, and I saw how easily I slipped into that pattern with them. I was horrified!
Nothing can kill a kid's confidence like that, his sense of himself as competent. And I never had that. Like I said, by disposition I may have been a little timid, but by the time I had been raised by my dad (and *not* helped by my mom's propensity to just go ahead and do things for me), I had zero confidence in my ability to figure anything out and make it work for me. None. And this was pretty ironic, because I was an extremely bright kid. Deep inside I thought I was capable of great things, but I was completely lacking in confidence, never persevered at anything that I didn't have immediate success at, and therefore steadily built up a life of, well, failure. This gulf between what I believed myself capable of, and what I actually achieved, really messed up my mind.
No question that porn and sex chat were ways to escape from all this.
Something really interesting happened the other day. I was actually on this site, and an email came in my email program, so I, being compulsive about checking email, opened it up. It was from a good friend, who constantly sends me links to articles, videos, etc. that he thinks I'd be interested in. This email contained a link that was nondescript, so I clicked on it, and it took me to a page with pictures of a semi-nude woman. And my brain just went blank. I actually think my mouth was open. The impact of those pics was shocking. I did not linger at that page; closed it up and asked my friend not to send me any more links like that as I'd ended up addicted to web porn.
But it was pretty interesting to realize the kind of impact those pics had after six weeks of not seeing anything like that. Two months ago they just would have made me yawn!
And it was cool how easy it was to tell my friend that I had become addicted, something I never would have figured out how to say before.
MrOuch and Rockwell, I owe you gentlemen a visit to your journals - you have been so generous about contributing to mine.
Peace and love to you who reads this.
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Post by arctic on Sept 7, 2007 16:59:00 GMT -5
Hi Man(infull)! I'm glad to hear that I got confused about the depression thing. Well, I sure am glad that it's now in your past, because having been there myself, I know the kind of hell that depression is. Something really interesting happened the other day. I was actually on this site, and an email came in my email program, so I, being compulsive about checking email, opened it up. It was from a good friend, who constantly sends me links to articles, videos, etc. that he thinks I'd be interested in. This email contained a link that was nondescript, so I clicked on it, and it took me to a page with pictures of a semi-nude woman. And my brain just went blank. I actually think my mouth was open. The impact of those pics was shocking. I did not linger at that page; closed it up and asked my friend not to send me any more links like that as I'd ended up addicted to web porn. But it was pretty interesting to realize the kind of impact those pics had after six weeks of not seeing anything like that. Two months ago they just would have made me yawn! This is a very important observation I think, and one that I've made many times myself when observing my own behaviour. Seeing anything even slightly suggestive is absolutely shocking! I'd like to suggest that your shocked reaction to seeing that image is a sign of your sobriety being highly clean. To me, it is a clear indicator that during your time sober you've kept your eye on the ball, which has caused your sensitivity to mild triggers to increase. I remember feeling equally sensitive when I had been sober for some time after deciding to sober up in January, but then loosing this sensitivity when my sobriety started to get weaker towards my eventual balls up. The reason I lost my sensitivity was that I had started to expose myself to triggers on account of having become complacent and allowing my beast brain to gain more and more control over me again. When triggers came I welcomed them and drank them in. They did not shock me and I was on my way to landing on that pile of manure again. This I no longer do. Three days ago, for example, I was in a bookshop browsing for some novels and suddenly I noticed that someone had positioned a sex mag on a shelve containing normal books as a joke or something and my eyes briefly landed on it. I was totally and utterly shocked, just like you were upon seeing that image, and I quickly averted my eyes. I then reflected on what had happened and thought that "Wow, that really did shock me didn’t it? I must be back on track again!" So, what I am getting at is that your being shocked at such images is indicative of a good and healthy state of mind. And finally, you seem to have much better things to do these days than engage in cybersex! That’s awesome! When one decides to rid themselves of an addiction they had better be prepared to answer this question: Now what? You seem to have answered it AMIF. Take care, Arctic
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Post by timoteiy on Sept 7, 2007 17:58:22 GMT -5
Hi Amaninfull. I just checked in here to see how you are doing. Its good to see you are sharing how you are dealing with the triggers-from magasines, e-mails, to computer porn. I am struggling with it on all fronts. It also reminded me that I have to take time to be a father today if I can. See ya.
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 8, 2007 9:34:44 GMT -5
Neh I know this message might be short, and shoo commented alot on most my stuff. So this is meh little thanks for now >_< Cheers you on. Sorry if this be short x-x I think I am out of words after 2 days of mega postage
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 9, 2007 17:52:42 GMT -5
Hi, journal.
I used to think I didn't know where to draw the line. I mean...I used to NOT know where to draw the line. I would promise not to engage in sex chat, but allow myself to check out personal ads for sex, as a cheap thrill. And inevitably I would end up one day pushing it a little further...then I was back in it.
And yet, after this time, after I said, "No. I'm closing the door. I'm an addict and I need help. No more," I don't have this kind of confusion. Sure, I'm exposed to potential triggers as part of daily life. But I don't pursue them. I recognize when my thoughts are going down that track and I stop them before they can turn into action. I doubt I could articulate exactly where that line is, but in practice, I haven't been confused at all, and this is Day 45.
So that's a relief.
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 10, 2007 11:45:01 GMT -5
Hallo again, wanted to thank you for all the encouragement once again. x-x Waves hands around. Anyway imma cheering you on. I was going to ask you something but my brain put the question in the recycle bin. So I don't remember x-x Gahness... o-o I think it was something about self-loathing but it kind of flew away XD Maybe I felt no need to ask it so it became forgotten. Tankoo again for the encouragement.
Neh did you ever feel like you've hated coming to the site sometimes, or teh concept of being an addict in general. I feel kind of dumb like I fell for this really bad practical joke, and everyone is all haha >>; I unno.... Not the people on this site, I mean you know the situation in general. If you find the question annoying you don't have to answer -sweat-
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 10, 2007 11:58:04 GMT -5
Hallo, being a daddy is scary I was thinking of being a kindergarden teacher but I am afraid of scarring children. I've always been cool with younger people but I unno... I have so much fear in my heart, so much instability in my soul, I feel like I don't deserve to raise kids x-x Blah nu I am not here to discourage you, silly me. x-x Neh neh.. I am glad at least that shoo don't want to repeat the mistakes that most parents do. Maybe if shoo read some child psychology books it can help? Or if shoo remembered what bothered shoo from my childhood that your parents did. Till now my parents still make mistakes. But I don't feel like I have a right to say what they are if I myself am flawed. Cause then it could be becuase I have a rotten temper, or the other way round. I don't know which came first ^_^ but ever since I was teenage, things kind of...........................splatted........... Blah not negatie encouragement again. x-x Bad at this...
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 10, 2007 19:42:54 GMT -5
Unhappyheart,
Don't worry about annoying or discouraging me - it will take a lot more than that to put me off track.
To answer some of your questions: - Sure I've hated the idea of being an addict. That's why it took me so long (years and years!) before I admitted it to myself. I thought I was too smart for that, too together for that. So it was very hard to admit that I wasn't...I felt like a fool. Now I see that it can truly happen to anyone.
- Yes, being a daddy is scary. I've always wanted to try it, but I think I was just too scared, so I waited a long time. And I never had a great relationship that I wanted to bring a child into - now I do. But I do feel a tremendous amount of responsibility, and that's one of the reasons I needed to stop indulging in my addictive behavior. It was quite selfish and it would have harmed our child (and our relationship) in some very real ways. Even if I managed to always keep it a secret, it would have come out in different ways. The guilt. The small lies and cover-ups. I don't want to do that to a kid.
I certainly remember what my parents did that bothered me when I was a kid, and I will certainly try to avoid repeating those things. But you are right - everybody makes mistakes, even parents. I will be trying my absolute best for this kid, but I'm sure I will make mistakes somewhere along the way. I only hope that he or she is loving enough to forgive me for them eventually. I know that forgiving your parents can be really hard to do - after all, you were entirely in their care, and they blew it sometimes.
Some parents blow it really badly. I'm hoping I don't. I think I'll be a good dad.
Also, you know...it's always the teenage years that are the hardest on parents and kids. The kids want to start really exploring the world independently, and even if parents encourage it (not many do!), the kid needs to push the parents away. That just seems to be the nature of growing up, and there can be a lot of pain on both sides. Hopefully as time goes by we all learn to relate better to our parents (I'm still learning!) - and hopefully they learn, too.
Oh boy, just realized I don't have an avatar of any kind. That won't do!
AMIF
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 10, 2007 20:08:29 GMT -5
Wow thanks again maninfull lots of nice replies :3 Ah avatar is easy it can even be a couple of sentences if shoo don't like pictures XP
And yes you're right my brain is all weeeeeeeee
>>; Thanks for teh advice on me arm. I know what kind of thoughts cause teh pain, but I unno how to solve it ish all. It's basicly, I am stuck like... between all those decisions... one of the major things being... That I don't know what kind of job I want but.. I already graduated.. so my head and heart are in a tremendous battle.
Head trying to find solutions. Heart trying to cope with all the thinking and the feelings and thus being overwhelmed. I went to a councilor, I actually told her of my addiction. But she said that's not a problem that's only a side effect. It was too expensive so I couldn't get her to help me.
I know the addiction itself is a problem too, I don't want to believe it's only a mere side effect. But I wish there was a way I could stop thinking wayyyyy too much. The arm pain is basicly my stored thoughts; things that I fear, things that make me feel bad, and would potentially confuse me. Anything bad happens I used to absorb it in my arm. But recently the pain has been on release. So I feel scared and weepy. Sadly it only gets released when I do something as drastic as going back to sites. I haven't been going back to them if you should know. Those were hopeless and icky times and I wish not to repeat them.
But in times were I wasn't drawn to the sites in the least, I felt confused, and always frightened. And this has been so for at least a year. The site thing was only 25% of the whole of last year. Other than that I pretty much got confusing pains and feelings. (Maybe even much less than 25%)
You see I am thinking maybe my problem is deeper than some addiction. Cause the recovery online program said something about addicts thirsting for more. But it doesn't even have to be p anymore. I am basicly not satisfied by anything I try to learn, and well I feel like I can't belong with most people. I am not trying to be negative but when a pattern repeats for too long it'll start to bother you. Sorry if I rambled on and on. I know that the only one who can help me is prolly God. Life is confusing, and scary for me I unno.
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