So here I am, finally beginning my journey into my New Way of Living, thanx to Reb Guard, Duvid Chaim, the fearless crew on the Good Ship Lust-Will-Pop, and the GYE family.

I got here around 7/28/08 while searching for chizuk for shmiras eiynayim, signed up for the emails, then wasted over a year letting them collect in an inbox folder hoping to get to read them one day. The forum looked too intricate for me to navigate, so I didn’t even try.

B”H for “falls” at the right time, cuz picking myself up from one led me to finally read one email. And THAT ONE, ladies and germs, is where I saw the advert for DC’s new 12-Step Program Group Call, and thank G-D I followed the links to find out more. Again, Hashem was stretching out His hand to me, but THIS time, I TOOK IT!! I joined his group when it started in October.

I NEVER would have suspected I was a sexaholic, I just thought I was a guy with a very big yetzer hora for “girlwatching” that just got out of hand with the ease of internet access. But when I read the descriptions that an addict is ONE WHO KNOWS HE SHOULD STOP, BUT CAN NOT, or described as someone who looses time from work and family because of this uncontrollable drive, someone whose life is heading to ruination, it hit me. Those words described me to a tee. I was seeing myself and my uncontrollable life mirrored in the words of so many others, I couldn’t believe it! I WAS NOT ALONE.

All the years of acting out; the guilt and the shame; the hours glued to bad sites while family time and parnose slipped away; the lying to my children who’d call me at work and ask “when are you coming home, Ta?” And I’d close my eyes to the screen to say “I have to work late”, then open them up again after the call to keep watching for hours more… And the self hate, the loathing, the name calling and cursing of myself I did when I’d drive home at 3 am, the promises to Hashem, and then breaking them the very next morning. Days, months, YEARS lost, and I thought I could climb out of it on my own one day.

Duvid Chaim and the brave members of our crew have shown me the real way out of this decrepit existance, toward a life of freedom from this “lust addiction”, and hopefully from my other shortcomings as well.

On the calls I found people whom I could talk to thru the blessed veil of anonymity, to discover who I really am and find how I could heal, and on the forum I found the rest of you, inspirational and needy both, and I’ve been blessed that I could help a little here and there. What I love best is that the time I would have spent on my computer pushing Hashem out of the world, I am now using to pull Him back in, into my life and the life of others.

Thanx to Duvid Chaim, I am on the road to recovery. It was hard to accept that “I’m a pickle, and will never be a cucumber again.” He showed me logically the truth behind it. But I never really understood the depth of my emotional loss at that recognition until I read Letakein’s amazing poem, Falling Leaves. She wrote that to help herself heal, but by sharing it, she MADE me heal. I wasn’t afraid to take the next step, to Let Go and Let G-d, to trust His re-creating me into something new, even tho I do not know where it’s heading.

So, my friends (and it means so much to me to be able to call y’all that), I will be using this journal to share with you my ups and downs (which I’m sure I’ll have – we’re only human), Please forgive me if it’s not as dramatic, or filled with “near brink disasters” as so many of you brave people have to fight every day. I stand in awe of your strengths, your courage and your honesty. THIS is the place on earth for real Milchomas Hashem.

I will try my best to post everyday, and the next few days I’ll add short installments of the BIG inspiration I had just before this Shabbos, on Erev Chanukah, that I’m still flying high from. The A & W's just kept rolling in, so stay tuned!!

Even tho I've been clean now since starting the calls 7 weeks ago, I'm gonna start my 90-day count as of Monday, the third day of Chanukah. Marked for my memory by my physical birthday, but in honor of my spiritual re-birth thru the 12-Steps and ALL of GYE.

Starting this Chanukah, may we all be blessed together to move far away from the Great Darkness that has owned us until now, and come into the GREAT LIGHT of Hashem’s Love.

Kein Yehi Ratzon.

Steve.

Steve,

I have been waiting for you to start a thread! I didnt wanna ask you cause I didnt want to pressure but now that its here, I am very excited.

Hi Steve, Welcome to our community! Once you arrived, there's no turning back, bla bla bla...  ;D 

Welcome to the forum, Steve.

Good luck!

  --Eye.

Thanks for starting a post steve. Im sure theres going to be plenty for us to learn from. As there was already in your first post. Hatzlacha in your climb.

WOW Steve!
[Insert the words I do not have here]

Hi steve,
I've been ur silent admirer for a while. By reading your posts and from the calls, I have come to recognize a great person...Can't wait to see what your own thread 'ill be like...

Congrats on the new Log steve. I feel that it a great way to let off steam. If no one is available to talk to you at least you can talk to "everyone" and it can be very helpful. Usually someone will reply. I try to post everyday.  

Hiya.

Thanx for all your warm comments. I may sound like I've got things together, but I need just as much chizuk as the rest of you. Once we all, TOGETHER by the way, put the Lust stuff behind us, we still got a whole lot of other mountains to climb. Fear, resentment, and loose shoelaces may trip us up, but WE NEED EACHOTHER not to get depressed and down on ourselves.

That's one of the greatest gifts I've gotten from DC and the calls so far, the ability to be less critical of myself, AND of others.

But more about ME later...

I was just speaking to one of my new close friends, a fellow shipmate who said "I'm dying to get to step 5 already". I told him no. He's LIVING to get to step 5! That innocent expression of his undermiines the positive. We have to stop being negative on ourselves.

I mentioned this vort about the Yam Suf: What's the BIG DEAL about Nachshon that he went into the water up to his nostrils and almost drowned? The little Jewish children threw themselves into the sea to avoid being carted back to Rome for tznus; The Crusades; the Inquisition; we Jews have been allowing ourselves to die for Hashem for centuries. It's inherited from Avraham Avinu. What's so special about Nachshon?

The answer is because he didn't walk into the sea to die - HE WALKED IN TO LIVE!!! To do something for Hashem where I know I'll die for His sake is one thing, (and I hope I could do it, tho' may I never be tested), but to have the emunah to do the impossible for Hashem in order to LIVE?!! That's what he showed us how to do.

And THAT'S what all of us brave soldiers on the front are doing. We are walking into unkown territory, trusting Hashem to direct our lives, not really knowing where we are heading, all we know is we are UP TO OUR NOSTRILS with no where else to turn. AND WE ARE DOING THIS TO LIVE!!

I don't know why, no one does, but HKB"H made me go thru ALL my experiences, even the ones which brought me into the world of Lust and exposure to p**n, for a purpose, and He knew what he was doing, and the trick is now that I KNOW that, I have to get to a place where my past no longer owns me, but that I own my past. Then I can take the ME, the product of all those chapters, to A NEW BOOK. NOT a sequel, but a NEWQUEL! Stop writing the old book. Leave it in the middle. Put a period at the end of the last scentence, and ZEH HU!!!

I almost broke my keyboard punching THAT in!!

I shoulda been a hacker, I type so hard...

Anyway, I am the product of my past, a full blown Vlassic Kosher Dill, bumps, lumps, and all. And my goal is to nevertheless LOVE myself, LOVE WHO I AM, because there is so much good in that piclkle it's GEVALDIK! I am a son of Hashem, I am a Ben Avraham,Yitzchak & Yaakov! Hashem has made me FRUM (with flaws, OK, but still Frum), and has blessed me with a connection to Him, and filled my life with knowing that there's His Torah to guide me!

And he has graciously given me the ability to help make other people's lives a little better, a little happier (OK, some kids run when I make funny faces, but they're probably repressed toddlers...), a little stronger to face life's challenges. He has given me talents that I can use to serve him by channelling them toward benefitting my fellow Jews and spreading His Torah.

Now, lest y'all think me a Baal Geivah, I wrote those last 2 paragraphs that way you that EACH OF YOU can read it over OUT LOUD from YOURSELF!! It applies to EACH of us equally (maybe even the funny faces part...). Not just Uri and "Sadie-Sadie-Married-Lady" Letakein, but EVERYONE OF US WERE GIVEN TALENTS, POWERS AND ABILITIES that make us unique, and with which we will be able to help the whole world. Litterally.

So let's all believe in our own GUTZKEIT (Bards, please correct my spelling over here...). We were placed here for a purpose, and have been formed this way for a purpose, now we have to apply ourselves to FIND IT!!!

And now, I'm gonna go find dinner...

Oh, and this was Day 3.

Hey Steve -  nice to meet you!  

Any reason not to make this day #52?  I never heard of erasing consecutive clean days!  There's no need to worry - when you hit 90 days, the game won't be over!

Kedusha wrote on 16 Dec 2009 22:29:


I just had an A&W moment!  You might want to sit down for this, Steve!

You wrote above that you just turned 52 (happy birthday!).  You also wrote that you've been clean for 7 weeks (=49 days), plus 3 days = 52 days!  That's 52 days k'neged your 52 years!  What could be a greater siman that you should count those days towards your journey to 90?! 

cute. i like gematrias.

But that IS a good A & W. It really is...

"OK, think here, rabbit..." (Bugs Bunny, circa 1960s) Hmmmm.....

All I can answer is "B'soch Ami ani yosheiv - I dwell among my people" (hope I got the pasuk right). Everyone who begins their 90 day count here has been so valiant, and they have suffered thru the nail biting and teeth grinding early days. I really do stand in A+W+E of all of you. It would be a disshonor to all of you for me to be so flippant as to count days that I wasn't really paying attention to as a "count."

So thanx for the suggestion, but no thanks. Let's consider those days as a warm-up period. Now I'm in it for the long haul, like the rest of you.

And you know how the Satan LOVES a challenge.... I'm sure it'll be a bumpy ride...

See, here's the first bump in the ride.

I want to use this makom to repeat an apology I owe to Become Holy, which I posted on his Journey Journal here in Wall of Honor. I do this in a humble attempt to apologize B'rabbim, for i am afraid I may have c"v hurt or embarrassed him. If i'm going overboard, so be it. But I'd rather be ashamed in public than take a chance that I hurt his feelings, for which I am truly sorry.


Steve wrote on 17 Dec 2009 04:52:

Steve, no apology needed.... please see my reply on my log. But big points to you for apologizing anyway. It shows your amazing character :-)

Good morning, everybody,

Just checkin in. Today is now Thursday, Day 4. Stayed up too late, woke up too tired, found davenning wasn't as inspired as yesterday's. And Guess what? You-know-who has been tugging at the back of my mind, sending me fleeting images from the past, even in the middle of shul, or on the phone with my wife, that I have to shake out of my head.

Guard, of course you're right that the YH sneaks up when we are tired. Like being suseptable to a virus, when we're run down our defenses are low. When I don't have a battery recharge at davening, or I skip a seder, RIGHT AWAY he comes out after me.

Dang Nab IT! I can't wait till he's out of a job...

B"H I have yous guys, you're like my battery back-up system. Please, someone ENERGIZE me!!