in the past week, i shared the worst thing i ever did with two people - my therapist and my sponsor. 
the weight is starting to lift....

Amazing!! 

Hi,

thanks for your story and courage. I’d love to be in touch with you. You can email me at levbasar148@gmail.com
 I’m also struggling with similar stuff. 

Great to hear from you again! Catching up on what you've been through while I wasn't around on the forum much.
Sorry to hear about the rough patches. However, it's amazing to see the courage with which you keep putting in the inspiring work to better yourself. KOT!

Was in therapy yesterday and as we are trying to sort out my history and experiences, the therapist made a comment:

"ILH247, it seems like until 12/13 years old your childhood was full of happy memories and idyllic and at a certain point it flipped and there is a lot of trauma. Let's try to identify what happened."

Two memories came up:

1. at 12 years old i managed to get an old junk PC from the garage computer parts bin to work, and hooked it up to the internet somehow (maybe via phone jack?). I tried downloading a movie on LimeWire in the early 2000's, and to my extreme shock, the file ended up being a porno. This was my first exposure to pornography. From that day everything changed, and instead of gently being introduced to sex and body parts of adulthood, I was exposed to completely explicit content in my vulnerable and innocent state. This is something that i cannot blame anyone for. I don't even have the option to be a victim here because nobody did it to me. It happened to me on my own. I am only able to be a survivor here - to own up to the experience and face it head on. this is extremely difficult for me, and I am in a very big turmoil right now. It's a very difficult and bleak emotional struggle and I am begging Hashem to carry me through. It's really hard! 
2. my first memories of sexual behavior revolve around two sisters who were about my age - the older one exposed me to exhibitionism - told me to grope her in public (then again in my bedroom) when we were on the way to my parents' house from shul for Shabbat lunch (we were family friends and our parents were a block away. i don;t think i was even bar mitzvah then. This leads to a memory i have of being in these sisters' house, in the basement guestroom. I remember walking in, feeling uncomfortable, and that the sisters both had no shame of one another - but it's like a censored text - there is only blackness - lack of any imagery - beyond the door to that room. I completely blocked it out, i don't' know why, and that makes me very uncomfortable. 

I am also dealing with some chinuch challenges with my young child, and still have the members of the cult i was formerly involved with slandering me and spreading false rumors about me. I've been starting to pray for the leader recently but right now i just want to crawl into a hole and disappear for a while. 

I have no more of my former escapes - no drugs, alcohol, sex with self or with others outside my marriage, nor do i use my wife as a sex object any longer. I am trying hard to fill the void with G-d but it takes a while. 

I feel worried, confused,  and scared. 

Thanks for reading...

ilovehashem247 wrote on 15 May 2024 15:47:


I read through alot of your thread recently. Your strength and resolve to work on yourself is incredibly inspirational. Hearing about the traumas you went through as a youth, and seeing that despite that you are growing so much as a person, is remarkable. 

Can I just ask something? In the beginning of this thread you wrote that on the outside your life is perfect, but underneath you struggle with a whole host of addictive behaviors. Was your life so excellent then and problems have cropped up now, or was it just that your various escapes covered over everything? Just from what you've shared it sounds like the former, and it seems as if the yetzer hara is on a no holds barred campaign to overturn your progress. 
Just an observation. Keep on setting the bar for the rest of us!

Great Q, and thought provoking as well. I think that the best way to frame it is that by the external societal standards of the world I grew up in, i was doing well. Like i mentioned originally I was (seemingly from the outside) financially secure, married with a growing family, involved in charity and institutions, and set for materialistic success. 

as i am realizing more and more now as i progress through this journey, life is always full of challenges. Just that before I started my recovery journey i would play down the struggles and ignore/avoid them with drugs/sex/alcohol. I also believe that as i progress through life, the challenges only get bigger. more kids = more chinuch challenges = more financial pressure. Hashem doesn't change, He always has and always will provide me my basic needs until i do no need them anymore. most of what i call needs are extras and i am working hard on internalizing that. 

but back to the point - no, it is not that now i have bigger problems. i didn't get more molested by my babysitter now that I'm digging it up and working through the experiences and how it affects my life. the wreckage of my past is the same. But me avoiding dealing with things growing in the dark spaces of my soul - owning up to the incidents where others will probably be in therapy at some point because of what i did to/with them - that only allows the bitterness and darkness to grow. working through it is excruciating, but once it's out, I am then a transformed person. 

So no, my life did not get worse, and yes i was ignoring the issues i needed to deal with by escaping from them. 

I was so anxious and worried and stressed from digging up the skeletons in my soul that I have been non stop gassy for more than a day, i felt like i want to vomit all day today, and I've been dazed and confused for at least a week. 

but this is how i get through it. 

i can choose to ignore my problems and then live my (hopefully long) life un-worked on and not fulfilling my G-d given mission in this world, or i can put on my big-boy boots and get to work. 

It's the long short way. 

So far, - for me - it works. 

and i will keep on trying because i know that i have only two choices:
1. change
2. die

i don't want to die. 

hope that made sense. 

Makes tons of sense. I feel you. 

May you gain menuchas hanefesh quickly, in the best way!

Dear ILH247,

If i could hug you and hold you tight while you release all the bad mamories from your mind and your body, I would. So imagine im doing that. 

I feel your pain, I might not know exactly what you went thru and now reliving, but i have my share of emotional issues. 
It is hard letting go of our pacifiers after so many years. For me it was Porn, Masturbation, Fantasy, Movies, etc. 
For you its some others, but the idea is the same, we used those things to make us numb and forget. 
When we leave those behind, we are faced with the full truth and it hurts, it hurts like a MF! 

Hashem gave us great capacity in overcoming our pasts, everything can be healed at least enough to not hurt anymore. 

Good luck Tzaddik. 

6 months

day 1

was on a spree over YT. 
destroyed yet another device. 
time is running out and chances are close to zero

I wish I knew what words to say
Or what ancient cries to pray
to sooth your troubled soul
and silence doom's awful toll

I wish I knew how to aid
Or to cast a calming shade
O'er the head of a weary fighter
To make your burden any lighter

I wish distance was not so far
and I could help you spar
against an all consuming fire
to help you keep on climbin' higher

I wish my poetry could help
any more than a dog's yelp
But it probably won't

But know that your fight continues to inspire me and gives me hope in dark times. I'm rooting for you!

steayed away from trouble for about 5 weeks
went to an MP yesterday
still sober but just barely. 

wife feeling empowered after reading a book on codependency (claims she is going to live life for her own wellbeing instead of bending over for others)

meanwhile she has a friend who sits her fat ass on my couch for 6-10 hours a day. every. f*cking. day. 

finally had  enough and instead of dropping small hints live i have been for weeks i told my wife how much it bothers me. I have no privacy in my own home. have to run to a different room on zoom calls because someone else's baby is crying. can't find my expensive work laptop because half the time she was using it. Don't worry, she is so frum she only has a flip phone, but scrolls on my wife's "old iphone" - no sim card but also no filter and wifi access. I don't know the password, but she does. 

i'm feeding this loser at least two meals a day - my wife complains that her business never took off, meanwhile she's cooking meals for this friend every week on my dime. 

i am sick of hiding in my own home. 

rageful

angry

exploding

told wife what's more important, that your poor friend who is "going through a tough time" feel reassured and or that your marriage ends in divorce. Stupid comment to make, especially since wife has a photographic memory, especially when it comes to my mistakes. 

wife doesn't want to insult her friend and tell her to leave. 

i found out that my wife is more than half the problem - this friend calls her multiple times a day and my wife invites her over. 

eats my food. leaves all the lights on. her spoiled only child cries all the time. 

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

I can understand your frustration and anger but trying to burn the house down isn’t going to make things better. I even understand if this is the reason you’re holding on to sobriety by a thread. I wish there was more I could do to help besides extending a hand in a time of need. Good luck not burning the entire damn city down in anger.  Hopefully these words help if not you can attribute it to the maxim life sucks then you die and I’m just a poor wordsmith compared to the rest of the poets here