As I near my 50th day clean I decided that number one I’m going to share my full story (sorry if it’s a little long) and number two I’m going to start a thread on the forum specifically for bochrim. Why. Because I’m a bachur just like you and I know that the chizuk that you can get from someone who’s in the same situation as you can propel you to new heights. It’s my hope that all the bochrim on GYE will make use fo this thread so that we can get continuous chizuk from each other. Well here goes.
A long time ago…when I was about seven or eight years old I was exposed to porn. It was from my older siblings who are unfortunately otd. Being as young as I was, I “knew” it was wrong but I didn’t really get it. As far as I could tell this is what my older siblings, my role models, were doing in their free time. Of course I wouldn’t ever dream of telling my parents on them. How could I? As time went on I would spend time alone with myself. In my room, in the shower, in the bathroom etc. and I would masturbate. This wasn’t really with bad intentions as I was still to young to really understand the ramifications of what I was doing.
Fast forward a few years and I’m getting bar mitzvah. I get tefillin a new hat, a new suit, and I’m ready to join adulthood. But I still got this secret that no one knows about. (By this time I knew it was wrong to be masturbating and watching porn). I decided that with my bar mitzvah I’m going to stop. A fresh new start for me. I’m sure you can guess what happened. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I continued on in my bad ways for the next two years.
Comes along time for high school and at this point in my life my body is in full lust mode. I decided (with my parents) to go out of town for mesivta so that I wouldn’t be around my siblings for them to have a bad influence me. I’m kinda laughing in the inside because I know it’s too late. It’s not just my siblings who are otd. It’s me. But being that I’m the pride and joy of the family, the “frum” one, I just couldn’t let my parents down. I projected an amazing outside image and I was afraid of anyone finding out what was really going on in the inside. So off to high school I went and these were some of the darkest years in my life. In short my daily routine would be that during shachris I would always be taking my tefillin off, going to the bathroom to masturbate, and then coming back, put my tefillin on and make it seem like nothing had happened. On to shiur, i would sit there fantasizing about all the worst things under the sun and then I would “go to the bathroom” again and masturbate. This is how it went for two years. I didn’t really care about hashem, didn’t care about learning, didn’t really connect to my rebbeim, but all along I was projecting the image of one of the top bachrim in the yeshiva. Mind you for the first two years of high school I only had a phone with talk and text so I couldn’t watch porn while I was in yeshiva but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing, masturbating, and running to the computer every off shabbos the moment that I came home so that I could go find my fantasies and fill my head with videos for the next few weeks.
Then 11th grade hit. I was smart. I ordered a 35 dollar smartphone that would work with my SIM card. No one had to know about it. I would keep my other phone around when I was at home and hand in my dumb phone when I got to yeshiva (after removing the SIM card to put in my smartphone). This was a real treat for me. I finally had access to porn in yeshiva and with that I would lay in my bed every night while my roommates were sleeping and watch and watch and watch until I would masturbate, fall asleep, and repeat the next day. But don’t forget. I’m still a top bachur who people in yeshiva look up to.
Fast forward a few months and I’m in 12th grade. I got a moment of inspiration. I decided that I really need to pull my life together. I couldn’t continue on like this. I was ruining my life and I knew it. I smashed my smartphone. It felt great. I felt like I had just won my life back and with that I started anew. I was on top of the world. This was the new me. Ready to change once and for all. And that lasted until I went home for the next off shabbos upon which i encountered a whole hose filled with unfiltered devices and I didn’t even last an hour. I was a goner. I felt horribly guilty. How could I go back to watching porn and masturbating?? I had just smashed my smartphone. What happened to me. I made a kabala/promise that I would never do it again. As I’m sure you already know this didn’t last to long. I repeated this process of falling and repeating to promise for the whole year. It was horrible. I knew that I would never be able to get out of this vicious cycle but that didn’t stop me from making promise after promise after promise. I was the biggest rasha in the world, but the pride and joy of my parents. Their son, their from son who made them so proud of his learning in yeshiva. He was such a tzadik and they got so much nachas. I’m sure you can imagine the pain that I went through at these times. There’s nothing like someone praising you while you know that you are really the most horrible person to walk the planet. (And of course I think I’m the only one who’s struggling…).
I decide to go to Israel for yeshiva. This time I was going to do it right. I got a strict kosher phone and went off to yeshiva. I started getting turned on to Judaism in a way that I had never felt before. I was really connecting. That Elul in first year I shteiged so much. I was clean from p and m for the whole zman. I had heartfelt tefilos on rosh hashana and Yom Kippur and I was sure that this time I really made it. (If you are still reading this-thank you(-: ) I really had sincere tshuva and I promised hashem that i was done. And I really meant it. But then bein hazmanim hit in Israel. With no structure and a hot climate I slowly but surely started slipping. I was outside and would stare a little to long at the girls walking by. I would go to the separate beaches but on the way there I made sure to feast my eyes on the coed beach. There was nothing rationale about what I was doing and I knew it. But I didn’t stop. I fell. I fell hard and this just made me sink down into a deeper feeling of guilt. I had just come off of my best Yom Kippur davening and I was right back to where I started. I recommitted to winter zman and I shteiged alot. Mind you I would fall here and there but I was in a much better place then when I got to yeshiva. Fast forward to pesach break. Im sitting in the airport trying my best not to look around at all the unclad people there. I had not been exposed to immodestly dressed women since sukkos and I was able to a pretty good job at guarding my eyes. I felt accomplished. I said to myself that this vacation I’m going to do it. I’m going to pass by without falling into the trap of the yetzer hara. I won’t watch porn. I’m not going to masturbate. I was on guard the whole flight home and I felt accomplished. I really did a good job.
I get home and I’m exhausted so I tell my parents good night and head up to my room to go to sleep. Then I see it. I see an iPod touch in my room and I say to myself don’t do it. Don’t pick it up. Just go to sleep and feel good in the morning. But then my “yetzer tov” spoke up. “Remember that shiur that you were listening to on YouTube from that rabbi that you really liked hearing. Why don’t you find another shiur from him and listen to it until you fall asleep. There’s nothing better then listening to torah while falling asleep…” So I picked it up and got down to listening to a shiur. As I go scrolling through the videos looking for some more shiurim to listen to I end up flying past several extremely immodestly dressed women. Be it advertising or the ‘next video suggestion’ but whatever it is it triggers me. I eventually decide that there’s nothing wrong with getting a little entertainment so I go on AGT to watch some magicians. To put it simply the judges aren’t dressed to the standards of a bas yisrael. It escalated very quickly from there and before I knew it I was typing in my favorite porn site to the browser. I told myself don’t do it. Stop. But all rationale thought was gone. I fell. I fell real bad. For the rest of break I fell a few times a day. And I would keep promising myself that it would stop. But it never worked. I dug myself deeper and deeper into my hole and I was got super depressed.
In short this is what happened for the rest of my years in Israel. I would be mostly fine during the zman with a fall here and there and then bein hazmanim I was done for. I’m sure this is familiar to you. But the hardest part for me wasn’t the falls. It was much worse. It was the fact that I was my parents nachas. Their pride and joy that they have a frum child who likes learning. All they would ever see is their son who’s growing and growing. And when they would give me a bracha on Friday night I knew that there were always thinking of my older siblings and how they were so proud that they at least had me. I was ashamed. Mortified. I couldn’t believe how I deceived them. But this wasn’t the only problem that came about from my p and m habits. As a result of my “addiction” I would never have real conversations with Rebbeim. I had no connection to them. I just felt that I wasn’t worthy to talk to them. I had no one in my life that I could talk to. I was all alone with no way out from porn. To further bring on the pain, while I watched my friends grow in their learning and grow yiras hashem, I watched myself sit on the sidelines because I never had really invested into my learning and I could see the gap getting bigger and bigger. This is what I came home to after being in Israel for a few years.
These feelings of being all alone in the world while everyone thought that I was a top guy who’s ready to become something big. It was comical how many people were telling me that I should go into shidduchim. I just pushed them away saying that I wanted a few more years to learn while in truth i needed a few more years to put my life together.
This past bein hazmanim I fell in one of the worst ways that I could. I went to a level that I had never gone to before and I’m to embarrassed to say what i did. But it was bad. And I was so depressed and angry at myself. Immediately after my fall I talked to hashem. I said to him that I’m not going to ask forgiveness. I had played that game to many times. I said that I was going to commit to find a way out and only after I had done something different, something to show that this wasnt the same me who was asking forgiveness and making more empty promises, only then I would ask for forgiveness. For a way to start again. I went on to google and I started searching for people who had broken free from porn addictions.
It’s been 49 days since I discovered gye that night. And I’ve been clean since. I would sit there for hours reading the forum of all the people who were going through the same exact struggles as me. It was so comforting hearing people over and over and over describing the same exact issues that I had. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t the only one. I used all the free time that I used to watch porn and instead just kept going back onto gye. (I clocked in over 40 hours in one week which would have otherwise probably been used for porn.) Bh I slowly started pulling myself out of the muck that I was in. I made real safeguards for myself in the areas that I used to slip the most and I’ve been focusing all my efforts in making sure that the yetzer hara doesn’t get his foot in the door because I know that if he does I won’t win. (I’ll post later what these included…) I eventually got on the phone after 5 days of internal struggle back and forth with myself and back and forth again. I called HHM to get help. I wanted to know what else I should know to make sure I wouldn’t fall back into this problem. He is so knowledgeable and gave me over an hour on the phone. I can’t thank him enough for the time he gave me or for the encouragement and inspiration to keep going. He put everything that I was doing into a real life perspective and made me realize that I can really do this.
I’m here in yeshiva in America now and while i still struggle in that my learning abilities are behind my friends, and I don’t yet have a strong relationship with rebbeim, I take comfort in the fact that I’m putting my life together again one day at a time. I’ll move onto to figure out the other areas of my life later. I got to go one step at time. Ones day at a time. Im sure with hashems help I’ll get there. It’s been a journey of 14-15 years but I hope and pray that this is the last stop.
To hashem. I haven’t asked forgiveness since 49 days ago because I knew that I had to come and show that I was different. Is 49 days clean good enough. Will I be forgiven? I can only beg of you to forgive me and help me fight every single day to face this challenge. I know it’s not going to be easy but I’m doing this for you. I want to get a real connection to you. Please let me come back.
To all my friends at gye. You guys are what kept me going this whole time. Never stop posting and giving chizuk to others. You don’t know who you can impact. It doesn’t matter if people don’t always respond. There will always be people like me who are reading your posts to get chizuk and fight our yetzer hara.
to gye-you are angels sent from heaven to help us all come back to hashem. May hashem give you much success in helping many others out of their situation.
