hunjy1 wrote:
But before I face off with "captain kirk" I wanted to throw out to the forum some questions about myself.
-Am I a total faker, or was I sincere when I thought I could be?
-Do I have to throw out my old self completely to change, or are there parts of me that I can still hold on to?
-Is everything I have worked on until now worthless? Were all my tfillos just a masquerade? Were my mitzvos without any thought of l'sheim shamayim? Will my torah still protect me when I'm sober enough to connect to it, or do I need to start from scratch?
But how can I first become real now, I'm already in the middle of a life... even if it's messed up in a lot of ways, some things are good....A fake life of fantasies and self gratification is the worst life imaginable, but some things are best left as is. No?
Sorry to do this after your torture of reading the 'Captain Kirk' post, but can you please just read one more post you can find in the same pile
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/sick.png)
that one was in? It goes together nicely with the Kirk one and is called the 'Nuclear Reset Button'.
I feel really evil...
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/wink.png)
Hahaha!
In the meantime, you got (we all got) so much great feedback in the posts above!
Each of your questions (please take this super nicely) sounds like what a lot of my recovery friends call their 'mental masturbation'. Not the sexual kind of masturbation, but emotional and mental. Like someone above suggested, what business is it of yours (or of any of ours)to assess the sincerity of your past prayers and avodah? Just pray sincerely now. That's obviously all that matters. It's
G-d's place and
only G-d's place to assess your madreigo.
Needing to figure it out can just be ego...actually, it probably is. Blech, we need no more of that, right? It's
'spiritual staring in the mirror' and does you and me no good, at all. I bet you know what I mean, here: You may have noticed some bochurim staring in the mirror a long while to 'adjust their ties'...well, it starts with checking the t'filin shel rosh
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/whistling.png)
, but ends up as a yeshivishe self 'beauty pageant', no? "Is my hat straight, my hair ok, my jacket just a
touch 'shtotty'?" It's just vanity, no?
Now back to us and our madreiga issue: Why should vanity be OK just cuz it's spiritual? Enough with it. Feh! I sure don't need it and you don't need it. Let's just be concerned with the work we have now, or as Hashem asks us in the Sh'ma and Torah over and over:
Hayom.
If you insist on 'knowing' where you stand with G-d...guess what? You will try, try, try, and then after 120 will die like all the rest of us, go up there -
and be shocked with the real truth, anyway!! So let's let go the death-grip a little bit at least on knowing what label to put on our foreheads (good, bad, ugly, whatever), and just serve
G-d instead of ourselves, today.
Ok, that was just an intro.
You'd probably rather continue suffering in secret. But one day the pain will be greater than the comfort of secrecy and you will be ready. Pdaini was at that point and felt like he had to tell his wife - but found out it may not be so...is he sober now? yes, I think he is clean a good while and certainly getting much, much better even though he did not tell her. Then why
is he doing better? Because he opened up to real, safe people who understood his struggle because they have it and yet are clean a good while.
It's not the eitzos we get by opening up with real people but the honesty we give, that saves us from ourselves.
Of course a fantasy life with good parts is fine to choose, if you want to! It's your choice! I, for one, am not a religious tahara zealot who will cry tears over your sperm. I consider it 100% your choice - for not a single person can
ever convince another to
really change. But when it isn't working for you anymore, recovery (in some form) is here. And there is nothing to fear from getting real with safe people.
And your wife is probably a very
poor choice of a confidant, at this point. There are guys here whom you can call and talk to (I am included), and who use their real first name here (as I do). And there are others who are not using their real names, but clean, too. You can find a few to talk and open up with, chaver.
Lose the chicken, man. The beef is better.