Thank you all for all your support.
I really do appreciate it.
I am going to post only because I feel I owe it to many of you, and because some of you haven't heard from me for a very long time. I am sorry but today's post is a long one. Don't try to tackle unless you've set aside time for it.
Here is the latest in my life, in order to allay your concerns and to give you guys hope that I may be rescuable yet.
Today, I stand, bli ayin hara, 7 full days clean! (This is an achievement because I've never went for more than 6 days ever!!) I chose to stop Monday night of last week, and Monday night was the last time I was motzi zera levatalah.
I'll start by telling everyone that on Monday night, I hit rock-bottom, at least in my eyes. I am considered to be a smart, considerate, well-mannered, mature, and obviously, very religious Jewish man. People take my advice seriously. I am a hazan at a local shul for shabbat musaf which I love. Everyone in my high school looks at me and thinks the highest of me. So to tell anyone that I suffer from gay ta'avot would be a complete disaster for me. Everyone's thoughts of me would crumble, and I would hate that. I would lose the respect of my parents and my family name would be tarnished. Not to mention the fact that I am my parents' only son. It would kill them. And if they would find out that I found, not one or two, but ten separate guys who would drop everything in a second to do with me anything, and that out of those ten, I found two of those attractive enough to reciprocate those desires, they would be so ashamed. And I thought long and hard about my actions, and what I could possibly end up as. And I hated every option. That night, right after Arbit, I resolved to tell a close Rav of mine, who knows my whole family extremely well, everything. I had already told my Rabbi from High School (by the way, both of them are ashkenaz, so I feel very comfortable speaking here) about my problem, as stated previously in my first post. He had been so busy recently that I hated to disturb him, but I felt that I should two Wednesdays past, when I had made plans to meet up with one of these two attractive men. He warned me not to go, and so, came the day of the event, that Sunday, and I didn't end up going. The next day I resolved to speak to my family Rav because I had such strong urges to disobey my Rabbi. And so, that Monday night, I approached the Rav and asked him if we could talk. He told me to visit his house Wednesday, and from Monday night to Wednesday night I did not do a single action, nor did I look anywhere on the web for an outlet to release any tension. Wednesday night came, and I spilled the beans to my Rav, who gave me such amazing advice. He told me to change my passwords, which he did right then and there, so that I wouldn't have access on my own to my email which contained the contact information of the two attractive men. He told me to dip in the mikveh (off-peak hours, of course) and told me to walk outside, rub my forehead and while doing that say the passuk "Lev tahor bera li elokim, veruach nachon chadesh bekirbi" ten times, and then say, without rubbing my forehead, the passuk "Or Zarua Latzaddik, ulyishrei lev simcha" seventeen times, and then say these ten pirkei tehillim (writing it down for both your sakes and mine: 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150. He then told me that I would have to purchase a beged and tzitzit stings and we would start making a new pair of tzitzit that day. And he told me a few other personal things of myself to change. I did everything he told me and now we are halfway done with my tzitzit (his trick with tzitzit is to go over the 613 mitzvot while tying the knots so that when you look at them, you can fulfill the mitzvah of ureetem oto uzchartem et kol mitzvoth hashem (chiddush, no?). Since that Wednesday night, I have suffered very few ta'avot, if any at all. It's actually been quite easy to rid myself of the terrible thoughts. My Rav also advised me to rub my forehead whenever I lust and to say "Esh Tamid tukkad alhamizbeach, lo tichbeh" as many times as necessary with the intent to destroy the thoughts. What helps with me is imagining them burning up like paper would burn and finally leaving my mind. It is seemingly very easy. My only worry is that this is not the hard part.
So that's the whole explanation. Again, I'm sorry if I wasted your time and I'm sorry it's such a long post.
I will obviously be back when the going gets rough, but until them, as Gevura very fondly puts it, KEEP ON TRUCKING!
