For those that are familiar with my life story... At this time last year I was watching porn daily. The main device I had always used was an unfiltered laptop which got filtered towards the beginning of my story. See
here! At some point though, another device entered my life and spiraled me into a deeper darker place than my daily porn watching.
My wife and I went away and we needed a waze device. A well meaning family member offered theirs to us. Little did we know that this was no waze device, it was a regular unfiltered smart phone that was no longer needed. On our trip we did use it for waze, however when we got home and tried returning it... i'm not exactly sure what happened but the relative didn't need/ want it back. And so it sat in our house for a bit... Eventually I started using it for my "personal needs" and life started spiraling and spinning out of control.
When I started putting my life back together this past year yomim noraim time I filtered my laptop. The smartphone however was there to stay. Try as I could, I just couldn't figure out how to get it returned to it's owner. I couldn't smash it... and I wasn't able to give it back... complicating details... For all that remember, I had a few day really rough tekufa a few months ago. See
here! The almost fall that I had during that tekufa was with this device. Chasdei Hashem I survived that tekufa and came up with a plan to temporarily neutralize the device. (Thank you eerie!!!) I've since brought up various "return to sender" options with my wife, yet they somehow never materialized.
Last week with no warning, we suddenly got a phone call from the owner - we need the phone back. Today, the phone left my reshus (hopefully) never to return. I am absolutely overjoyed as although I know that nisyonos can always pop up from (almost) no where, this device brought me an amazing amount of destruction. חסדי ד' כי לא תמנו כי לא כלו רחמיו.
2 personal accomplishments that I am proud of:
1) As I mentioned, I only neutralized the device temporarily. What I did was I snipped the wire, and I didn't have any other wires at home that charged that particular device. I could have quite easily bought a new wire to charge the device, yet I didn't. The device remained dead as a doornail for months straight.
2) I am 100% sure, that had we gotten such a phone call a year ago when I was still heavily using the device, I would have been absolutely devastated. I still remember the feeling of picking up the phone and finding it dead... the pain of having to wait until it charged enough to turn on was absolutely horrific. Had that phone been taken away from me it would have been literally terrible. Yet here I am a year later and I'm absolutely overjoyed with the removal of this phone from my property! When I take a step back and realize just how much I've changed since giving it all I got, I am blown away!