wow I cant believe I'm doing this. here goes then. I would like to share my story and some of my feelings (i may be lengthy hope y"all got patience!) also bc I really think emotions are so tied in to this whole thing. although I'm new to the forum I've been working with and have met/spoken with a few gye mentors and have benefited from that. I have however not been doing great and I'm looking for a new start which is why i recently started talking to someone new and also wanted to check out the forum to try give myself a jumpstart. at first I was gonna just look around without posting but honestly when i checked it out i was so impressed with the achdus and the open honest discussions and everyone's interest in helping each other while really getting helped at the same time I was like I want in! this honestly just one of the most impressive groups of people I've ever seen. my feelings are that is the epitome of the mayla of bimakom shebalei teshuva oimdim ein tzadikim gemurim yecholim lamoid bo. i think tje simple  pshat in that is the difference is in their avoidah. its true that the tzadik is on a high level and his avoidah is lichtig. while the bal teshuva is at least in the beginning in a place of darkness where his avoidah is nowhere near as lichtig by its nature as the tzadiks not in its level beetzem nor in how it is perceived by him or by others around him. yet its precisely that quality that makes in on a level that the tzadik cant match! bc serving hashem from darkness is a trillion times harder there's is much less sipuk and  ur low matzav itself offers incredible resistance. he's in uncharted waters being mekadesh shem hashem from the darkest places in the world which are not what you would think is a place to see kiddush hashem yet hes lighting it up against all odds without the sipuk of the lichtigkeit of the tzadik which is a level the tzadik never reached. i really thought that shines out here on this forum which is the shpitz avoida mitoich choishech this isn't something u can write about in the yated in big flashy letters this is a bunch of guys doing real grunt work in uncharted areas to lift each other and themselves out of the dark and that's why i say I'm super proud to join.  

now for my story. I do not know exactly how typical this is but i started being attracted albeit in a very light way at a very young age, I'm talking four five. i still remember wanting my kindergarten teacher to pick me up/ around six i started with some very light form of M just like applying pressure and stuff. as i started to get older eight nine and ten it developed into the real thing and basically became a habit whenever i would read which i did plenty as a kid i would act out. it totally became part of my life i couldn't really imagine not doing it. i still remember finally getting wind that it might be assur and literally not knowing how to understand how such a thing which i felt i had no control over and was just part of life could be assur. my childhood and especially by my preteen years were full of fantasizing  and i didn't even think about stopping it. as i got older and went through mesivta i finally tried to get hold of myself here and there but to no avail and generally treated it as a lost case. through this tekufa my struggle mainly was just M not so much P in the typical sense bc i was a little different and was just as attracted if not more to clothed individuals so even a regular movie with a little love could be a problem for me. also because of that all the extra tznius that frum women have over non frum didn't help much and probably was worse. when i was a little older one  elul i took on myself to stop on shabbos i dont remember exactly why i may have been inspired by the iglei tal in hakdama who i think connects shabbos to shmiras habris. anyway almost to my surprise it worked! the next year i looked into the hole inyan more and i finally got the guts to talk to people about it. there was an older bachur i was close to who was known as the best bachur in yeshiva a huge metzuyan and oived also. much to my surprise he had struggled with it also. i went to rebbeim one of them really scared me which he probably shouldn't have but at the time it worked I really took on myself to be done with it. and i was for about a year and a half it almost became not a nisayon for me. then came a rough tekufa in my life.  it wasnt just that it was a bein hazemanim that i was home and had access to poorly filtered internet. bc i was pretty strong at the time. the reason was that i had suffered really throughout my life with a lot of emotional distress.  i had a big episode at the beginning of that year which had left its mark already but this time especially was really bad. i believe it is this that caused me to to start suffering from some form of ocd/anxiety that manifested itself with certain thoughts of kefira that i couldn't get out of my mind it was a torture beyond words i cant explain what its like when ur own mind turns on you but those who know know. under this pressure i succumbed. at first i managed to get it somewhat under control and when this tekufa was over i would say i was resisting for about a month at a time. at this time in my life i also had a lot of sipuk i was in my rosh yeshivas shiur and baruch hashem we hit off i became a real talmid and he showed me that he appreciated me and i would say the high level of sipuk i had helped not mess up too often. then however i went to EY. i do not know exactly why but there i completely went under probably because i was a lot more out and about and there were a ton of frum women around which as i mentioned could be a full blown turn on for me. and i was back into my habit of doing it multiple times a week. this continued when i came back to america but with time this got worse in two ways. number one i finally fell into more serious P real and AI. also even worse bc i always have access to my phone is that i fell into call lines put together with the fact that im dealing with a personal struggle of a different nature which has been very difficult and affected my learning i find myself at a pretty low point now. i look back at my peak years when i was on fire in learning i had tremendous sipuk i was from the top few guys in my shiur went to brisk the whole 9 yards  and barely messing up and now i go to seder without much interest ( i will say baruch hashem that he even in this time has given me number one really good chavrusas despite my not being as involved as i have been in the past. this has kept me at least somewhat involved which has been a lifeline. number two hashem has given me really great friends who love me and i love back which is the only way I think I'm still hanging on) i don't feel in control of myself i can sometimes spend a whole night doing P or miss minyanim bc of it and i can do M multiple times an evening, my concentration by davening is almost nonexistent i used to say tehilim and feel a close connection with hashem and cant say i feel it now. and honestly i have tried so many times in the last few years that i really have a hard time convincing myself that this time can be it. i feel like a certain dryness as if I'm almost just joking around because i cant be serious about stopping and deep down a certain voice that says u don't really have the self control. yet paradoxically as i write this and also as I'm on my second day clean with my new gye mentor i am hopeful for a breakthrough. just by joining this chashuve group i feel inspired as i mentioned. i do feel like if i can just get into a position of strength with lets say fifty sixty days clean it would be a whole different situation. is rare however in the last few years that i ever got to even thirty and basically never past that. so here's my tefila that this should be the time that i break through with your help and the help of hashem. thanx for reading!