Flawless resistance

I am 22, a somewhat confused student who doesn't know what to do in life, who does with certainty anyway? Although the picture is coming together, slowly, but steadily, parallel to my life I've had a struggle just like you all had and perhaps still are going through, my mind is still mobilized like the war itself has begun, but I've impressed myself to how far you can go to succeed at any cost. I am one of the heavy examples, I begun to watch porn for the first time around ages 10-11, as time went on I quickly adapted new exciting things at the time (you name it, I know it), unknowingly and without a single drop of anticipation to what's about to come. Rape fantasies started around age 12-13, as time went on, nothing felt strange anymore, my view about the world and life became stale and gray, flawed with an utterly empty look on my face at all times. I am wired close to the core and the last 3 months have been the darkest and longest days of my life, quitting smoking felt like a cake-walk in comparison, but in the end I prevailed.

When I started I did not really contemplate the difficulty of this challenge, but I did and quickly. I understood that extreme measures were required to battle this, I called it - the resistance. Imagine a wall of values, a tree, as higher it gets the more it spreads, think of it as your basis for life, food, love, compassion, empathy and just about any value that you value, what's important to you. Used this to build up this wall of perspective never seen before, wider and more flexible, greater than ever before. I understood that we, at least me, with the use of pornography, went below this wall to what I call ''point zero''. Point zero is below all ethic norms, below everything you can imagine, at this moment there's nothing shocking anymore, your at the point where norms seize to exist and that's the way how fetishes, abnormal sexual desires express themselves. To some extent it's all healthy, but for some of us it is a milestone of failure we have tripped over. That's how I viewed it for myself.

Then hell broke loose, each failure, each relapse I thought and questioned myself negating any weaknesses. Why do I feel the way I feel, why do I feel the way I feel about how I think about the way I feel? I tried to contemplate as much information to use about my situation and my actions, in order to counter the most basic human needs, I took an idea and I twisted it in as much ways possible, tried to connect as many dots as possible and develop a mindset that would serve as an automatic defense system. With time my mind fought back many ways, it tried to adapt to the complexity, new feelings, new doubts that tried to set me aside, I always was one step behind to anticipate and predict to how my body and mind is going to try to solve their situation and craving for another fix.

Some week ago I thought I had succeeded, like many times before, I begun to wonder of what's going to happen next? But I didn't see anything. I kinda relaxed, mistake, it attacked. It was during a dream and in it, my mind fooled me and shocked me with such a violent fetish cue because of what I ejaculated, only a wet dream, right? No, FAILURE in my opinion, I thought that's a desperate move to force out some dopamine. It punched me, I PUNCH BACK, never give up!

I was diverse, as always, and it was desperate enough to try again, in the dream I had access to the internet and was browsing you know what and I kinda started to masturbate, something like this has happened quite often even before I begun to make recovery. And in the dream at some point I stopped, I understood what's happening...

I resisted during sleep, it was not enough for me to maintain control while conscious and I succeeded. If I can do that, is there anything you can't? I felt like I've just picked up an axe and killed all the neuron pathways that were unhealthy for me, it's done and game over, I've won and so can you!

Fight back and resist, it's only a matter of time till you will adapt!

I am 46 and wish that I could have met someone like you 25 years ago!  Of course, back then, porn was in video format found in seedy stores and in the back of porn magazines where you could order various videos - mostly poor quality - unlike today, where free stuff is all over the internet!  Since the advent of the internet, porn has become a monster that continues to grow becoming seemingly unbeatable; unstoppable! 

I wanted to know what your viewpoint is concerning spiritual matters - are you an atheist, agnostic, etc?  As for me, I became a Christian a few months before my 20th birthday!  Wish then that I had met people who knew the dangers of porn and could have articulated such to me! 

I hope this doesn't rub you wrong or offend.  I liked your analogy of the tree, the "wall of values."  In the Old Testament, there is a story of when the Israelites returned to their homeland after being in slavery for decades and went about trying to rebuild the Temple - in the only place that a Jewish person believes they can build it.  As they started the process of fixing the walls that had been broken down, they met resistance from locals who had moved into the area in their absence making it difficult to build and fight simultaneously!  So with a building tool in one hand and a sword or spear in the other, they began the work of putting the walls back together - a painstakingly slow process, if you can imagine!

Most people upon reading this only see this as a historical occurrence.  But I think it can be thought of as a spiritual lesson as well.  Like your tree with a wall of values, this story depicts a Holy wall that needs to be rebuilt.  For me, it is what needs to take place in our lives.  We need and want to be about the business of building a wall of values that show forth what we live for!  For people like you and I, who have had their walls undermined, destroyed, infiltrated and/or overcome by the enemy, we have to build and defend at the same time.  Though slower going than most, it is necessary and possible to rebuild and develop a system of defense, watching for the crafty enemy's schemes to thwart our efforts of maintaining the security of the castle, temple, tree or home - whatever structure you think the walls support. 

Thanks for spurring me on to think about such things!