J316 journal

J

J316

Active Member
Hey thanks for the feedback, will. Unfortunately my e-mail has my last name in it, so I'm not comfortable giving my e-mail out, but I really appreciate your offer and might take you up on the phone buddy thing, I think that's really what I need most.

Today we moved my other sister in to college now, so I'm officially the only "child" left at home. I'm really looking forward to starting school, but I'm not looking forward at all to being a commuter student. i really loved campus life, and was involved in several things on campus before, but I just can't trust myself to do the work on campus. My campus is in the city, and that's always been a trigger area for me. In the past I've blown class to browse craigslist and stuff and I can't afford to do that, for obvious reasons. But I'm sure this semester will be better.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Just got back from hanging out with a friend. Probably had a little bit too much to drink, but not on purpose. Maybe that's worse, I don't know. What do you guys think? I was there from 9 PM until now (12:00 AM) and I had 2 beers, about maybe 4 oz of a mixed drink he made up and about half a glass of whiskey. I feel a little drunk, but not very. I don't know, I've had problems with responsible alcohol use in the past. I wouldn't say I'm an alcoholic, but I definitely have a history of using alcohol irresponsibly. Usually my Mom will call me out on it if I come home in a condition that indicates I had too much alcohol, but we just had a whole conversation and she didn't voice any concerns about my alcohol consumption, so I think I'm probably good. Basically I think I'm good because I didn't look at tonight as an opportunity to get drunk, I just looked at it as an opportunity to hang out with a friend. In the past I've drank with the intention of getting drunk because it made me not think about my problems. I wasn't trying to get drunk tonight I was just having a good time with a friend so I think I'm ok.

On a different note, willtochange has already offered to be an accountability partner of sorts for me, and I'm very grateful for that, but to be honest I could use all the help I can get. If anyone else is reading this, I would really appreciate it if you would either post on it or send me a message. Like I said, I can use all the help I can get. The problem is, I very often don't use the help I do get.

Does anyone else have this problem? You ask for help; you sincerely WANT help; you GET the help, but then you don't USE the help? I have a family that is incredibly supportive of me in this struggle, and a father who has been through this addiction and emerged victorious on the other side, and yet I don't lean on them for support. I don't know if that's because they're my parents or if it's because somewhere deep down I don't truly want help. I don't want to believe that it's the latter. Has anyone else had this problem? It's really bugging me. If I want recovery, why don't I take all the help that is offered me? Any insight you guys might have had or experiences you'd like to share would be much appreciated.
 
W

willtochange

Active Member
No problem man, i completely understand. I will keep commenting here to support you and i'll message you my number so we can call or something.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Remembered to not wait until the end of the day for this. Day is going well so far. I ran into a problem with some morning wood, but I managed to not masturbate. Need to find some way to keep busy today.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Good day today so far, but kind of a lazy one. Struggling with some temptation to masturbate, but I've managed to keep busy. Went fishing with my father in the early morning, that was a lot of fun. Doing pretty well, although I can tell my parents are feeling antsy but I need to not let that affect me. It's hard sometimes though. When they get nervous and anxious I feel like I'm doing something wrong even if I'm not. of course if you ask them they'll say that they only feel that way when I'm acting out, but that isn't true. It's just that, unfortunately, in the past there's been a good 9/10 chance that I'm in the midst of a binge at any given moment. But that isn't happening this time, and I'm determined to not have it happen again.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Thanks, will.

Rest of the day went just fine. Ran some errands and went to work. Not much else to tell, really. Didn't encounter any other major struggles. Starting to feel a little bit anxious about going back to school in a few days, but I know it's nothing I can't handle. Although there's a part of me that as I say that pipes up and says "You've never been able to handle it in the past" but I know that that's because in the past I was trying to MANAGE my addiction and not ELIMINATE my addiction. I can't handle school and "managing" a sex/porn addiction at the same time. But if I stay away from the addiction and just do what needs to be done I know I'll be fine.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Good enough day so far. 8 days in and counting :). As I'm typing this I am getting the random urge to masturbate and I don't know why. I need to get my books for school ordered, but I can't until my Dad transfers money from my savings into my checking account, because I don't have access to my savings. It kind of bugs me that I don't have free access to my own money, but every time I have I've used it to buy phones to act out or to go to strip clubs, so I understand. Still, it is very frustrating that at 22 years old my parents still control so much of my life.
 
J

J316

Active Member
At nine days now, starting to feel it a bit. Especially at work. I used to always bring my phone with me to work and whenever it was slow I'd disappear into the bathroom for ten, twenty minutes at a time. There's a lot of employees, so no one ever noticed and I'd kill time in there browsing porn sites and chat sites or trying to hook up with people on Tinder. So now when work is slow it's very hard to not go into the bathroom and masturbate. Adding to that is the stress of school starting in two days.

Something just happened with my Mom that has me kind of worked up. We were sitting on the couch having a good evening watching TV, and she asked me about how recovery stuff is going. She has this idea in her head that I'm "not prioritizing" recovery and she got all upset. She got really angry when I told her I was doing reboot nation stuff and she said "Tim, if you were prioritizing things and having the right attitude towards recovery we wouldn't have concerns." Pardon my French, but bullshit. She ALWAYS has concerns no matter what's going on. I don't begrudge her that; she's my mother, she loves me, of course she'll be concerned. But it gets frustrating when her concern ruins a good night. We were having fun, enjoying our show, and now she's sitting there stewing and talking about how I need to stop thinking of recovery as a "pain in the ass." She puts words in my mouth and when I tell her that's not how I feel she just rolls her eyes and says she can't trust me, it's infuriating. And then she makes little sarcastic comments. Like she asked if I had an accountability partner from here yet, and I told her a that some people were responding to my journal posts but that's it so far and she said "there's a place on that site where you can ask for accountability partners. You'd know that if you read it." I've been coming on this site every day for the past week, so that kind of shit just pisses me off.

Sorry, I just had to vent that. I'm not as worked up as that sounded, it just helps me to overblow it and get it off my chest sorta.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Eleven days now, and today was my first day of classes. I was concerned about going in to the city, because that has been a huge trigger point for me in the past, but everything went well. In fact, there was even a delay at the train station that was really annoying and frustrating. Usually I would duck spend that time smoking or acting out, browsing some of the more inappropriate magazines or buying some porn magazines with cash I had squirreled away, but I didn't do any of that, nor did I have any cash squirreled away. All in all, today was very successful, and I'm really encouraged and looking forward to this school year.
 
W

willtochange

Active Member
Congrats on your 11 days man, i don't think your mother realizes how hard you are trying. Keep up with your efforts and i'm sure she will come around to it.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Thanks, willtochange, she's starting to see. These past two days she's been really encouraged by my success I've had going in to the city.

Today I had a potentially really bad situation that I handled well. I completely forgot I had another class after my 3:00 and I got on a trolley and headed back to the train station. My mom texted me to ask if i was heading to my lab now and I had a brief knee-jerk reaction of lying and saying "yes." But then I immediately called her, corrected it, and asked for help because I was now at the train station ten minutes after my class was supposed to start. I ended up just going home. Not a great start to that class, but a good recovery moment.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Thanks, I will. Part of me is getting nervous the longer I go with no PMO. I feel like it's too good to be true, it won't last, etc. I know in my heart that that kind of negative self-talk is not true. At any rate, another great day today. I only had one class, so I wasn't in the city that long. And since I was able to get to the train around noon I didn't have to deal with all of the major issues SEPTA has been having.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Another good day, starting to settle in to a routine now. So, yeah, not much to report really. Watched Blade with my Dad tonight, which was fun, and now my family and I are watching TV and I'm probably going to go to bed soon. Routine is a tricky thing for me because it can be a good thing that keeps me out of trouble OR it can be a horribly boring thing that makes me want to act out.
 
J

J316

Active Member
I have a quiz today, so wish me luck. It should be easy, though, it's the first quiz of the year. Mom is concerned I didn't study enough but I already know all of this material from last year, this is review stuff for me. She's also upset because she saw me spend 5 minutes on reboot nation last night and she said that that wasn't enough time. I don't know, maybe she's right, but sometimes I just feel like there's not much to say. Like right now, the only thing I've done between my last entry and this one is sleep, wake up, and have that brief conversation with my mom.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Quiz didn't go as well as I hoped, I got 8/10 on it. We have another quiz on Tuesday, so i'll do my best to be more ready for that. Even though it's disappointing I'm trying to keep in mind that this is my first time back to school in a little over a year and I'm still getting back in the swing of things. Other than that it went well. Had a couple of mild triggers but I just focused on class. Unfortunately one of those mild triggers was the girl sitting next to me, my friend Erika. She's kind of cute, and for me that's all it takes to want a relationship, but I know that the urge to flirt with her isn't coming from a true healthy desire to be involved with her, just a desire to be involved in a romantic relationship in general. And I'm not ready for that yet.
 
J

J316

Active Member
So I forgot to do this recently, but things have been going well. i have another quiz coming up on Tuesday that I've done some studying and preparing for, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. One odd thing that's been happening is recently I've been missing my ex a lot. It's been over a year since we broke up, so this is kind of out of the blue; I thought I was over her. Maybe it's being back at school (where we met and where most of my memories with her are). I did see her on like my third day back from a distance. I don't know, it's just kind of hurting right now and I'm not sure why, it's been so long. I don't know if it's her I'm missing or if it's a relationship I miss. Actually, that's not true. I know for a fact that it's some of both. I miss having a romantic relationship and having someone in that role in my life, but I also miss the girl I loved and who was my best friend. I miss her a lot, but I guess I had kind of, I don't know, forgot about it? I don't know it just kind of hurts for no real reason now I was hoping that by now the ache would have gone away.
 
J

J316

Active Member
Starting to feel incredibly frustrated with my mother. She won't let up, keeps bugging me saying I'm not doing recovery right. I really don't need her sticking her nose in my life like that. I'm a little worked up about it right now, so take everything I say with a grain of salt; I tend to over exaggerate everything when I'm worked up: the scope of things, my feelings, mostly my anger. I get a lot angrier than is reasonable. Like I'm fuming right now because she's talking to me about recovery when I just want her to get her own damn life. The worst part about all of this is that I know I'm blowing things out of proportion but I can't help feeling this rage. She's telling me that I'm not doing enough for recovery, following up on my username here (although she isn't reading my posts, she promised not to do that. She just looks at my username's recent activity evidently) and just generally getting involved where I don't think she should.
 
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