I just don't think I would do that program justice. I feel like I would be a burden to a sponsor and other people in the program. Not to mention they would hate me because I question everything.

If none of the consequences I listed really did not happen to you at your in person meetings then maybe you are focusing on other aspects that are important to you right now.

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Day 19

It's pretty new for me to go 19 days without masturbating. It's all thanks to the forum.

I know that for certain purposes text isn't very effective, but text is still communication and it still provides a zchus.

Yesterday at work Hashem basically grabbed me by the lapels and screamed at me "you don't have any friends now but when you were a kid you spent hours playing with a friend."

Maybe His point was that if I did it as a little kid then maybe I have it in me to do it again.

I had a little bit of a kappara this morning. Sometimes this is a precursor to a good thing. Maybe I helped someone here?

Hashem set up an opportunity for me to mingle and socialize today. I forced myself to stand there waiting to talk to someone. I actually felt fearful standing there. Then I struck up a conversation, first chit-chat and then it got pretty in depth. I tried to listen a lot because people like when you listen to them. And in the end the guy turned out to be a secular Jew. I have seen around for years and I never knew!

Maybe the kappara earlier today helped!

I remembered that when I was a kid I had a friend that I used to drive around town with. He had just gotten his license and he liked to drive. I wasn't frum and he was a goy. We couldn't have been more different. He was terrible in school and really successful in love, whereas I was at the top of my class. He used to call his mother by her first name. He drove like a nut. I think he became a cop. We used to hang out and talk for hours. I find the memory very surprising because he didn't get tired of talking to me.

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Day 20

If you are reading this, have a great day.

Today I tried making connections with people I may have nothing in common with. I kept thinking "but what if they reject me?" and I felt anxiety washing over me, but I knew I had to do it.

Thank you for being out there, everybody.

I was thinking that if I quit masturbating long term I will stop keeping alive the memories of living with women before I became frum. I feel really pathetic when I have to reach back twenty years for a memory, since I am not able to access explicit material on the internet for reasons explained above ...

Yay 21 days B"H. This streak is all thanks to the forum. Thanks for being here!

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And thank you for being so active on the forum and giving us all so much to think about. Your honesty is an inspiration.

I was thinking that while the shame-attacking value of posting anonymously is low, because nobody knows who you are, there is a bit of a chesed shel emes going on because when you help others you don't know who they really are. It's a liittle bit like a customer service department, where you never get to meet your customers.

I have some memories from when I was a kid that pop into my head from time to time, seemingly out of nowhere. The memories are really old and they are kind of there but not really there at the same time. I think it means that they are painful memories that I don't want to dig up. So when they pop up I barely notice, and I dismiss them easily. I want to say that these are little messages that there's something unresolved there.

One memory is of my mother telling me not to rub myself in school. I used to do that at home, I think because of an anatomical problem (I was like 4 years old when I started.) I really have to work hard to focus on this memory to recall how I felt while she was talking. I think she seemed to me to be telling me a terrible secret. I think I made up my mind at that time that what I was doing was a bad thing. And I think I also inferred from the conversation that there was nothing I could do to stop it, because she didn't say don't do it, rather she said don't do it in public, meaning there was no way for me to quit entirely.

As always my biggest temptation is right in my backyard.

Day 23

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