Day 104!
This is 13/15 toward my overall goal of 120 days.
This is also 3 months and 12 days or 14 weeks and 6 days into this recovery effort.
Today I hit my goal of 104 days without P, PMO, MO, and without P-Subs or edging.
I have only 2 more mini-goals to hit before reaching my 120 days! This is only 16 days away!
How do I feel?
Really good! Grateful that I'm actually changing my life, changing habit patterns ingrained to varying degrees for almost 30 years. This isn't my first long streak, but it's the best streak I've had, the most honest streak without purposely looking up p-subs or skirting around the edges of the porn-pit. I'm no longer seeking to keep this beast alive in some secretive ICU-room, keeping it on a drip-feed of lust, p-subs, and edging, in hopes of reviving it one day when the "coast is clear", and I have this magical time of isolation where I can live out my darkest fantasies of porn use. It's pretty sad when one fantasizes about using fantasy, ha!
My mind is clean. I'm no longer obsessing over anything. If I encounter something that has a strong pull on me, I'll set my phone aside, or look away from the pc, take deep breaths while assessing my pulse-rate (and yes, seeing a particular cue may still affect me physiologically to a degree). Then, I'll calmly, nonjudgmentally look away, change the site, remove that FB friend, or demystify it to take away it's power.
I'm looking forward to my 120 day goal being met in a matter of only 16 days! And that's pretty exciting. But I'm also not thinking of it as a magical date, as I may have before. I'm in training for the rest of my young life, lol...! I'm setting the tempo for the time after the end date. Will I use it to allow former habits to again find foothold? Will I think I need some kind of ungodly reward? The proverbial- "I deserve this!" ? God forbid! Phineas forbid!
Deeper issues or concerns?
That perfectly leads me into the next statements. I am getting ready, I'm in training to say "Goodbye and good riddance!" to pornography and the self-idolization that autoeroticism (M, MO, and edging) is. Hmm, perhaps I should write a final letter to it.
But this is a real concern, and there are deep emotional considerations for me here. It wasn't just a habbit around dopamine hits (or dopamine flooding), and a physical release- there was a deep emotional component for me underlying that addiction.
I've actually been feeling that, too, lately. It's almost like an 'old friend' that you have to distance yourself from, and a certain finality that- "I will never use pornography again..."- along with the other related behaviors. When emotions hit, and I feel them now that I'm not insulating myself as much from them, and sometimes they hit hard! Those behaviors are no longer an old friend (with oh so many pretty faces!) that I can turn to when hungry, angry, lonely, or tired! If I feel rejected, misunderstood, and particularly that I don't have very many- if any- intimate relationships with others- where or to whom do I turn? Medusa will always be waiting for me to glance her way for comfort- turning me into stone.
Lately, the realization that this is more than a vacation away from porn and autoeroticism, a final goodbye, created a strange nostalgic sense in me... But I remind myself: I have an opportunity that this can finally be in the rearview mirror of my life, that I've created a space, a distance between myself and old behavior patterns, and can now be finally rid of it!
It is toward this good riddance to which I am carefully training- not always perfectly, but with purpose.
Thus, toward the emotional component, I'm leaning into my relationship with the divine, and will seek to build up my existing relationships with family and friends, and also seek new friendships.