My Struggle - HalfPint

[castaway16]

your recent posts, and especially this one, strongly reveal the amount of pressure these finals are applying on you.. I've never experienced such a sad tone in your posts.

I'm very happy that you still bear in mind that there are people here counting on you -including you-.... it shouldn't be "including you" .. it should be about YOU first an foremost ! .. yes you're giving hope to others .. but you're helping yourself ,before anyone else on the list, live a better life !

it's all about attitude if you "believe" you're happy, then you'll be happy and everything will be smooth.. ofcourse the reverse is true.. it may be tough to delay your studies for an hour or two.. but believe me, those 2 hours, if invested wisely, would make a BIG difference.

and how about studying outdoors ? I don't know if you've tried before, but if you haven't, then why not give it a shot ? that way you'd even be so far away from the environment where all of these triggers are just lying around waiting for you to give in. (you know, we make several attachments with visuals, sounds and even smells .. those attachments may trigger different feelings .. like trigerring the desire to look at P)

my appologies if I'm not perfect in making my point clear, but I just hope I could help someone who helped me a lot when I was still struggling with my first day.

good luck with everything HP!

[AnxiouslyEngaged]

Worried about you, big guy. Castaway's right, I don't remember the last time you sounded so defeated. I don't know if it's much, but I do want to make sure you know that when you're sad, we're sad with you. You've been such a huge help to so many people, that to watch you get hammered is a painful thing for us to see.

So, just remember, we're still all here, pulling for you. I hope that you can at least make time to come back here for a few minutes each day and read a couple of posts--so that you can know of the support that you still have, and so you can be encouraged by the progress of others--even if you don't have time to actually type anything out. I'm with you, man, I just finished my last work for finals yesterday. It was a huge relief to have all that off my shoulders, and definitely marked the passing of one of my life's storms. Sounds like your finals are much more intense than mine were, and I feel for you.

Anyway, my prayers are with you. We'll all be ecstatic when you're through this. I know I will.

AE

[FoolishMind]

When your in times of tire and stress,
These are the times, You should think a little less.
Have break
Ultimately, for your sake
You have undertaken a momentous journey HP
And I feel for you, as you feel for me.
So im looking out for you dude
cos we can all sense a dip in mood.
Your priority is your education
Which i appreciate requires your full concentration
But every now and again,
just here, now and then
Drop in to say 'hey'
And all the TTF crew will help you on your way.

Chin up dude! :)

[HalfPint]

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I needed it. I just thought I would stop in today and give a little update.

Last night I had another one of those "episodes" where I let those thoughts come into my mind, and then today I was stressed out so I masturbated (however, I didn't think of bad pictures to do so which was good). I'm still porn free, which is awesome, considering that today at 10:33pm eastern marks 4 months of being clean of porn. I've taken 1 out of 4 finals and the one I took was one of the more stressful ones. I got a c+ on it (was hoping for a b- or better :( ). anyways, tomorrow at 10:30 am eastern I have an exam, the one I've been stressing over the most. Anyways, again, thanks for the comments, I will try to come in more often, but like said before, this week is finals (finally) and I will be busy studying as much as I can. After tomorrow is over, that will free up most of my time (seeing as most of my time has been spent studying for the final tomorrow).

[Cobalt]

I never tested well in school. Not for lack of understanding, I just didn't test well. I know how stressful that stuff is.

[tipple.downs]

Hey HP. I'm new here, I've been porn and mb free for 8 days and am definitely still in the honeymoon period. I've started a journal but I don't have so much to post so I'm reading through other people's. Your story is incredibly inspirational, I just read it from start to finish and I can't believe how much strength you've shown, I only hope that I can be as strong as you when my temptations return as I fear they will.

I just wanted to tell you, maybe one reason you are finding it harder is because you've stopped taking it one day at a time. At the beginning the difference between seven and eight days seemed huge, now its so easy to say, oh, today wasn't such a big achievement, what's the difference between 4 months 1 day, and 4 months 2 days. But HP, the difference is huge, its as big an achievement as your first day, and God is still helping you, you mustn't forget that.

I also just wanted to tell you how great I think your motivations are. I'm married, and if you read my posts you'll know that this is something I never want my wife to find out about. She once told me something which I really believe is true: you relationship with someone doesn't start when you first meet or even first fall in love, it extends back until the day you were born, why? because the person has to accept all of you, who you were, who you are and who you will become. The fact that you made the decision to change yourself, before you met her, because of your own strength and your own will, will mean that this is something you never have to be ashamed of in her eyes. Keep on going now and you are one step further to being the person you really want to be, for yourself and for your soulmate, whoever she is.

Sorry for the long post, and from a newbie no less. But you inspire me, and you deserve to be happy!

[HalfPint]

well . . . sorry for that long period of nothingness. Exams are finally over, I got a b in one class a c+ in another (ick . . . astronomy) and have yet to receive my final grades for my other 2 classes. I thank everyone for the encouraging posts that were bestowed while I was away, they are very encouraging. I have masturbated once or twice while away, and like I said before, I'm not quite sure that its a sin to do so and on top of that, really this forum is about stopping porn (however I have been an advocate of stopping both due to if I start masturbating too much again then it will lead to porn again). Kind of goes along the lines of the old saying my dad has always said "give the devil an inch and he'll be your ruler".

Anyways, just keep me in your thoughts I guess, so I don't keep struggling with masturbation and that I can stay strong. I haven't looked at porn, however I was looking for sheet music and this one site (supposed to be good) had one link that must have had a typo in the url and it redirected me to some porn site, and I didn't realize it until I went to the tab. That was a few days ago. I went back in there today and was going to a different website and I was like "hmm, whats this?" I figured the link was safe, didn't sound too bad so I clicked it, thinking it was one of the sites I used to practice piano and nope it wasn't. It was the load screen of a porn site. It had the "enter" and "leave buttons and by law they can't have nudity on the splash screen. which was good. the site got refreshed a couple of times in midst of me trying to delete the link so it wouldn't be a temptation. so a couple different splash screens came up, but the links gone now and out of my mind. anyways, its almost 11:00 pm eastern and I need to get up at . . . you got it . . . 6:00 am . . . w00t . . . isn't that fantastic -_-.

One thing that is kind of encouraging is that there are only 5 more days until I turn 21 . . . w00t . . . and here in the states that says "you can buy alcohol and consume it legally now". All I have to say, is watch my mood after 5 days. It will probably say "buzzed" quite often :P.

[HalfPint]

Well . . . today I was trying to look up a controversial movie that I was forced to see in English class, for some reason. I think I wanted to see the actors and actresses in it and see what other films they were in. I found a couple sites and they were okay but didn't have the movie I was looking for (couldn't remember the name and thats why I was searching for it). I came across one site, and it had a link on it to see information about "sexual movies". I was tempted to click it but decided not to and decided to keep on path (on the same site) and look at the list of controversial films. I started off, first page was meh, had some pictures of women on it that were naked but covered up, and I figured "thats going to happen, I'll just look away and keep going". Well . . . apparently this site didn't care about the rating and had several x rated movies reviewed on it. I was hoping to find the one I was wanting *because there were quite a few other movies without sexual themes on the site to* but didn't and all I got was an eye full of porn which I never intended. After wards, of course, I was sexually excited and uncomfortable so I went and masturbated.

I don't know what to do at this point. I'm not sure whether or not the best thing to do is to recent my counter at the bottom and my date of "deciding to be clean" or leave it the way it is. Right now I'm also at the point that if I do reset it, I'm not going to be depressed over it, I feel strong right now even though this all happened.

Again, I want the opinion of my peers (all you guys) of what I should do. Remember, my journey wasn't to look at porn, its just, it was there, and I kept going further into the site even though there was porn and it was hard to not see even though I was trying to keep my eyes away. I thank you guys for your input. (and no, I'm not going to give up either way)

[fuzzball67]

HalfPint,

I have just started out on this path, so I am definitely not an older wiser head when it comes to such a conversation. But it seems to me that if, as you claim and I believe, were not looking for porn but got hit with it, then it is not a violation of your porn free status.

If you were an alhoholic and were hit by a car driven by a drunk driver, would you be at fault for their being out on the road? The internet has tons of ambush points. I follow a personal finance guru who talks about a "debt snowball". I have done a search on the previous words and some of the links were extremely pornographic in nature. You do your best to run away from sites like that as soon as you realize it is not what you were looking for.

Keep up the good work. Your journal is a definite good influence for newbies like myself.

fuzzball67

[castaway16]

Hey HP,

1st - Glad to hear ur finally done with your finals.
2nd - Glad you're back writing in your journal :)

about this incident, I don't think you actually looked at porn, in your shoes I wouldn't consider this a relapse, considering that you regard mb as a mere pressure-release method.
You don't need to reset your counter, I guess, as at least it tells you where you are standing right now, and I've to admit how far you've gone already ;) .. briefly,and honestly as well, a relapse depends on how you define it, for me I want to quit, cold-turkey, so it's obvious what a relapse is for me, for others it's the struggle with porn only,...seeing that your main goal is to quit PA then you hadn't relapsed .. but if you want to quit mb and p all together (I said I'd be honest), then you just need to focuse back on your goals, and don't care much about the counter thingy, for as powerful as it is,
"it's not important that you fell, it's how far you've gone this time.." as I quote from Dominus...
I didn't mean to be annoying in any way, I just wanted to tell you what I really think, emphasizing that you hadn't relapsed if you want to cut p only .. either way, you're doing a darn good job :D ..and are very encouraging as well.
Hope I made myself clear!

now to the most important part of my post :

"happy birthday to youuu, happy birthday to youuu, happy birthday to HP ... happy birthday to youuu!!" :)


Castaway