3 Years of Failure: My Story

[fnatk]

Hi there, since I've now turned 30 and I'm back on the forum after almost a year long absence I thought it fitting to start a new journal for a new beginning. My first journal for a proper introduction of myself and my problems can be found here:

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=810.0

Now, the reason I haven't even logged in here for almost a year is because I've been in a pretty bad shape the entire time. I completely reverted back to my old PMO ways after a few setbacks elsewhere in life and its taken these past few months to just attempt getting my life back on track.

I lost that sense of the possibility of a happy future for myself and let myself get bogged down in the PMO swamp once more. I wasn't working, I wasn't studying, I wasn't working out. I was doing nothing except playing computer games and PMO. I've been trying to get some help concerning this addiction and its just taken forever to go through the proper channels and getting bounced back and forth a bit in the system but in 3 weeks I will have my first proper meeting with a psychologist who specializes in this area (sex addiction etc). Hopefully that will go well!

Thankfully I've been able to do a few things on my own as well, after speaking to one of the doctors who is in charge of my "case" I got that extra bit of motivation and actually applied for a school in a different city. A few weeks ago I heard back and I've been accepted, so come August I'm moving to a brand new city; I'm really happy about that!

Despite this good news and starting the process of getting professional help, I've not been able to quit PMO, not even attempted it actually. Until this weekend when a girl I was involved with a bit a few years ago got dumped by her boyfriend (Although they have since talked things out and are trying to stay together, even if its on very shaky ground).

I'd sworn to myself that if I ever got the possibility of a second chance with her, (I essentially neglected her and turned down her romantic intentions towards me) I would do everything I could to make that chance happen. That means no more PMO. That I have to get back in shape (I'm a bit overweight atm).

I've taken the first steps of fixing my life by going back to school in a new city to give me a fresh start this fall, now I need to start taking the steps towards that life being a good one. And that is something I can start right now, I don't have to wait until August. So now I've been PMO free a few days and its been a real struggle but I really hope I can start a positive trend for myself now and continue it throughout the summer.

Thanks for reading, I'd almost forgotten how good it can feel to write this stuff down and sharing it with you guys

 

[pinkerton]

Thanks for sharing and welcome back. You're off to a good start for the summer I wish you luck

 

[jnv]

Hey fnatik!
Welcome back!
I wish you much success with this journal man!  ;D

 

[fnatk]

Thank you jnv! I hope this time round it goes a bit better for me but let's face it, it can't go much worse than an almost 5 month long period of not even attempting to stop the PMO behavior

Its been really good just getting back on here and starting the counter again, not to focus on a set amount of days or anything really but just being able to say to myself "Hey, you've just stayed PMO free for 4 days, nice job dude!". I think that encouragement has been lacking, even if when you have to reset the counter because of a relapse is fucking horrible... I think I need this tool for now.

Going to be a good week this I think

 

[CrazyGopher]

Hey, you've just stayed PMO free for 5 days, nice job dude!

Ahaha, just kidding. Welcome to the 30s section, fnatk. ;D

 

[fnatk]

Haha, thanks Gopher Its a bit weird starting up again when you've been binging for several months straight, the first two days are seriously hard and then by day 4-5 you're like "Why was I not doing this?!". I think that's one of my biggest problems, whenever I relapse I can't just let it be one day, I'll binge and sometimes it goes on for months.

Hopefully now that I have a bit more of a future to look forward to, I can limit relapses to a 1 day occurrence if they happen.

 

[fnatk]

So I've been reading through this thread here on the forum:
http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=2956.0

And I found this question that someone asked Gabe:

@ freefreefree90

Have you battled bitterness and regret over robbed youth, stolen childhood innocence, and wasted life?  If so, how did you overcome it?

Originally yes, one of the reasons I was in a deep depression during my reboot. All the thoughts of me wasting my life on video games and porn consumed me. That combined with not knowing if I was ever going to recover had me thinking about (although never coming close) suicide. However, once I found out there is always hope because our brains can change our entire lives, combined with starting to regain balance in my brain my depression went away.

There was a very, very dark period during my reboot, where all the thoughts stated above were running through my head during sleepless nights, panic attacks, and severe brain frog. At times regret was all I thought about. I caused a lot of people pain in my life because of my selfish actions and lifestyle of pursuing my pleasure over others needs. But..... that was all during my reboot. Towards the end of my reboot something beautiful happened. I found a purpose for my life.

I want to help others. I want to encourage kids not to make the same mistakes as me. I want women to know they are better and more valuable than porn will ever be. I am now thankful for my reboot and the fact that it woke my ass up. I now have a story to tell. A story of a guy who pursued lust over love, and ended up feeling numb, broken and lost.

The question and the answer have both struck some real chords with me, as that's what I've mostly been dealing with the last 4-5 years of my life. I've spent my life playing computer games and watching porn (Since I was 13). The computer games were a problem for two points in my life 16-17 and then again 22-24 yet I would play a lot with friends and we would still hang out, party and do stupid shit together. But the problem they've caused are insignificant compared to what porn has done to me and the bitterness and regret I feel over essentially my entire teenage years and adult life so far.

This thread here is an excellent read and a good discussion on objectifying women, something I'm very guilty of myself and that is one of my biggest regrets.

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=579.100

So when I turned 16 I had an amazing girlfriend and she was my first, but a few months into the relationship (4 or 5) she's declined any interest in trying anal sex and I'm disappointed (Because I'd graduated to that kind of porn by then, if the girl in the clip didn't do it, I was bored by it!). So towards the end of summer I'm going away camping with a big group of friends and I think to myself "Well my GF is kind of boring in bed and wouldn't it be fun to sleep with other girls on this trip?" and I break up with her, despite the fact that I love her.

I know, I was just a stupid teenager, but I had absolutely no respect for her feelings, even when we got together again afterwards I pretty much did the same thing again, and then after I dumped her the second time I convinced her for a while that we could just have casual sex together. When I myself got dumped almost 2 years ago now by a girl I thought could be the one, I finally got to feel the pain of being on the other side of a break up and I've never been more ashamed of how I treated my former girlfriend than I was right then. I went from being a guy who absolutely adored her to casually dumping her like she meant nothing to me.

I've regretted this for almost 10 years, and I've become increasingly more bitter about it as time goes on. My parents met her parents a year or so ago at a local function and they asked how I was doing and said how they always thought I was such a nice guy.

I smiled and laughed when my mom told me this but inside I was ready to vomit. I'm such a fucking hypocrite, I give off this nice guy persona but I couldn't even treat a girl I loved properly. I've talked to her a little since my last girlfriend dumped me (When I got a taste of my own medicine) and apologized for my behavior towards her back then and she seemed to think it mostly a trivial matter now, its long in the past for her. Of that, I'm glad at least.

So like Gabe, I've been in this dark period where I've obsessed about my past mistakes, all the regrets I have and the pain that I've caused more than one girl and in my despair after the girl I thought was the answer to all my problems (I put way too much of my hopes on her shoulders) I was close to being suicidal for a few months.

Now, with less than 2 months before I move to a new city and finally start studying again so I can hopefully get the career I want and actually move on in life and become a functioning adult... I want to let go of these regrets and stop focusing on the past. I'm one week clean today. I've started working out again. There are positives for me to focus on and more importantly, I know now that I can and should behave better towards women!

 

[fnatk]

So, I've just done what I always do. I relapsed. And it wasn't no surprise either, my behavior followed the exact same pattern its always done.

I start edging a bit in the mornings when I wake up, then I let myself think about a few fantasies in the day... so the next morning I repeat the process only now I'm fantasizing more and more and this continues for a few days and I can't stop until I'm at that point of no return.

I start reading more explicit stuff, articles, perhaps interviews from pornstars or blogs... and by that time I'm just a fraction away from watching porn and I end up doing it. Like I always do. I have to recognize the patterns for what they are and how to counter them. I can't keep coming with excuse after excuse, I want to get better damn it!

I've been doing what I always do and somehow thought this reboot was going to be better, that it was going to work this time. But if I don't change my approach I'm doomed to fail. So time for some new rules in life.

I really have to get up in the mornings. Get out of bed straight away, take a cold shower and then a short walk to start my day instead of lounging about in bed thinking about sex etc. Then I have to have breakfast before I sit down at my computer.

This is going to have to be a more hard-mode style approach.

 

[jnv]

Man I'm really sorry to hear about this. Al the more that I was like 1-2 minutes away from experiencing the same thing 2 days ago, except I was lucky to find a way to counter the auto-pilot mode.

Good thing is you don't lose hope and get back on horse straight away, which seems to be what you did. Congratz.

As time passes, the more I realize a zero tolerance approach is the best thing to do. It's always when I become complacent with good results and less hard on myself that I give myself the opportunity to give in.

You will changeand you are already changing man. Stay strong.

 

[J]

I start reading more explicit stuff, articles, perhaps interviews from pornstars or blogs... and by that time I'm just a fraction away from watching porn and I end up doing it. Like I always do. I have to recognize the patterns for what they are and how to counter them. I can't keep coming with excuse after excuse, I want to get better damn it!

I've been doing what I always do and somehow thought this reboot was going to be better, that it was going to work this time. But if I don't change my approach I'm doomed to fail. So time for some new rules in life.

I read your journal and wanted to say I have been there exactly where you are. One of the things I had to decide was to stop being hard on myself. The harder I was, the more frustrated I got and then a relapse. The other decision I made based on someone else's advice is that porn is not an option. That means videos, articles, erotica, etc. Porn is not limited to videos, if you are reading explicit material, it's porn. Reading it was a major trigger for me to then view it.

The porn that goes on in your mind, that will get weaker, but it will take time. That's where you need to start occupying your mind with positive things. For instance, you are back on this journal. That is already a positive change. I know that, for me, with the withdrawal and all, ghosts of the past came back, things that I had been avoiding for years, problems I ran away from. The time will come where you will need to confront them, but it is gradual. Not all at once.

I read you are ridden with guilt of things that happened in the past with your girlfriends. Just because you acted in a certain way doesn't make you a bad person and you cannot let yourself be identified by your past either. Easier said than done? I became a christian when I was 14, by the time I was 25 I started viewing porn, close to 10 years later I finally am seeking that help. I felt like a hypocrite, because christians judge other christians and people that are non-christians judge christians for doing things like this, "oh but I thought you were a christian" is the common phrase. We are all human.

I was afraid to come forward before because of that fear of what people would think and then I went to YBOP and this forum. As I did my research I learned that this addiction also affects many women, but the reason they don't come out is because of mostly shame and sense of feeling dirty. As a woman myself I wanted to share a bit of the female perspective and just let you know that you are right, you may have treated some girls like trash, but our society has bombarded media with images that are creating not only men that view women has sex objects, but the same goes for women who treat guys as objects.

If it will help you to come to terms with the past, then maybe you just need to talk to those girls and apologize. This is so that you will have a sense of closure. In reality you just have to forgive yourself. So you were jerk, I was a jerk too. Make the changes you need to make to become that guy you imagine yourself to be. Forgive the guy that didn't know better and embrace the fact that you are here making a change already. But you gotta do this for yourself. Don't just change because you want "that girl", because that could well fall through. You can do this. You have already discovered some of your triggers and the "cycle" of them. Avoid them at all costs.

I am right there with you, am taking one battle at a time. Small victories add to bigger ones .

 

[J]

This is going to have to be a more hard-mode style approach.

Hey this post is from Gabe Deem's FAQ's on his own recovery. Hope it helps  ;D

-Well, there are a few things I did early on in my reboot that helped, and some things I still do to help me avoid porn. But first let me say this. The moment I realized my selfish behavior of pleasing myself with porn caused my ED, and the pain I caused several girls whose hearts and self esteem I crushed, my hearts desires changed and I had the mindset of never watching porn again the rest of my life. From day one of my reboot I have had anger and disgust build up in me when I would think about porn. I was willing to go through hell and suffer my way through recovery because, to be honest I needed to. I was a young man who lacked discipline and self control and every man needs those traits.

*Lessons not learned in blood are easily forgotten* In other words, temporary suffering can be good for you

I hit rock bottom and felt the weight of knowing that porn destroyed my ability to make love. My ability to enjoy a beautiful girls smile was gone. My imagination was gone, I no longer wondered what sex would be like, I thought about what it looked like in the porn I watched. I no longer felt connected during sex, but felt like I was using girls as my personal sex toys. Knowing porn physically changed my brain to be like this was enough reason to never want to watch it again.

But other than my mindset, I did a few things I believe helped early on.

1. I took my laptop out of my room- I did this not because I was afraid I was going to relapse, but because I knew that when you see something associated with your addiction, your brain automatically releases dopamine to motivate you to do said addiction. A study showed cocain addicts brains light up with dopamine when showed pictures of cocain or other pictures they relate to their addiction.

Also, this helped keep me at ease when I went to sleep I would not be tempted to get on the computer and lay in bed for a few hours surfing facebook and waisting good sleep time.

2. I stopped watching TV - No TV except for the occasional family/friend hangout of watching a show or a sports game.

3. Stopped watching R rated movies - unless I knew for sure their would not be any porn scenes in them. Even though I could have handled watching them I did not want my brain to fire up my porn circuits AT ALL during my reboot.

4. Gave up facebook - and all other sites except for YBOP and other educational sites/forums.

5. Stopped reading magazines - I would skim through bodybuilding magazines and sports illustrated and they were filled with sexual ads. I would find myself doing more looking and less reading.

6. Stopped listening to the radio - During my flatline, when I was depressed, and when my anxiety was high, hearing all the songs about sex this, sex that, sex all night long blah blah blah would piss me off and make me sick of how our culture is so over sexualized I had to give it up for a while.

7. Tried to hang around friends and other people as much as possible.

8. Got busy doing other healthy things - I have always been into working out, but I picked up the amount of time I was working out, got a full time job, went back to school, started reading tons of books, playing guitar, and publicly talking about this addiction with people.

9. Got rid of any and all porn that I had - deleted everything off my computer, through away magazines and dvd's etc.

10. Shared my story with others - Talked to my girl about my porn induced ED, my friends, my family. This was very key for me, I know that most guys will not want to do this, I didn't either, but for me I knew it was what I needed to do, and if me sharing my story might save one of my friends or even some stranger from going through the pain I went through, then a little temporary embarrasment on my part is fine with me. Plus, if they laughed at me, I would beat them to a pulp or simply punch them in their throat...just kidding. I do strongly encourage everyone to at least journal here or somewhere and share your story and get/give support. It took me over 6 months before I was willing to talk about it. Wish I would have sooner but at first I was too ashamed.
---------------------------------------------------
Those are just some of the things I did to avoid porn.

Unfortunately staying away from porn in our world today is going to be near impossible, so doing your best is all that matters. As long as you don't intentionally seek out porn you will recover. Nobody should freak out if they are flipping through TV channels and come across 5 seconds of porn, but you might want to get rid of that channel.

One thing to know is that going through withdrawal and suffering to overcome this addiction is worth it. Early in the reboot process I hated my life, now I am THANKFUL that I went through that so I can relate to those in need of help and support. Stay strong guys and be patient.

 

[fnatk]

Hey guys, time for an update here. I've moved to a new city, started school and I've pretty much had the best week in years. Met loads of new people and gotten along with everyone, I kind of feel like a new me! Or actually, I feel like I used to feel before my addiction got the better of me.

This has also been the easiest week of no pmo ever, been kept busy, going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up in the mornings really helps! I've also met a girl who's very interested in me and last night we watched a movie together and did a little bit of light cuddling. I've told her about not quite being ready for a relationship straight away and she understands that so we're taking it very, very slow.

I've also just been able to talk to girls without having all the instant sexual thoughts I used to have, even if a few of them may have been slightly distracting with a healthy cleavage

Anyway, just wanted to give a small update. I'm alive and I really feel like it too. Barely sat at my computer this entire week!

 

[fnatk]

Wow, 3 weeks. Its actually gone quite fast since I've been so busy with school and my studies! There's been a few moments were I've caught myself fantasizing about sex/porn but I've managed to stop these thoughts thankfully.

This is mostly down to the girl I've met. She's a bit shy but so damned wonderful to spend time with and I'm super-attracted to her. Just hugging or kissing her can give me an erection, I kind of feel like I'm 16 again! And damn it does feel great to just be attracted to a regular girl, not some silicone-pumped/photo-shopped porn-star but a real woman with all her imperfections and a few perfections (Dat ass ;D)

But what I find the most amazing is her attraction to me, she thinks I'm very good looking and really likes me for who I am. In my depression after my ex dumped me this idea that no girl would ever want me again worked its way in to my mind and a part of me still believes it. Who would want a slightly overweight porn-addicted guy with no education and no job. That's how I viewed myself for the longest time... I guess she's starting to change that view. And I'm starting to change it myself as I'm finally studying again.


I haven't told her yet about my addiction yet but I might tonight as we've been fooling around more and more in bed and I think she has the right to know before things get really serious.

I'm just not sure how much I should tell her, honesty is the best policy but... I'm quite ashamed about some of the stuff I've watched. And her view of me will certainly change. But I don't think this is something I can hide from her, she deserves more than that.

 

[ulaozin]

Hello fnatk,

Those are very good news. You are right, she has the right to know it before things get to serious. But you don't have to give her details of your escalation. It won't be of any good for you and for her. You can explain how this addiction works and what you are doing to get clean. Just tell her what you feel comfortable of telling. You can also try something to build trust with her with your relationship's further developments, make her an active part of your recovery and also respect her limits too.

 

[jnv]

Hey man. How are you holding up. I hope everything goes well for you.
We will succeed!  8)

 

[fnatk]

Thanks jnv, things are up and down! I had a week off school and went home for that week and just binged like crazy, going back to all my bad habits. It was pretty fucking awful, but now I'm back at school, back in the gym and hopefully I'll be able to stay clear of porn for a good while since I know it actually WORKS!

I just still have this focus on sex and how if I'm not having it I want to masturbate, and if I do masturbate that usually gives me a chaser effect. Yet I still struggle to ignore morning erections, its not so bad on weekdays as I have to get up for breakfast and class but on the weekends when I can stay in bed... I just have to hang in there, keep going to the gym and keep focus on my studies! I'm getting better at this but setbacks still happen.

Gonna post again tomorrow I think and write a bit more about how things went south after such a good start.

 

[fnatk]

So, I haven't posted here for a long time. Over 120 days in fact. Basically I've just been on and off the binge-cycle just like the last three four years of trying to quit PMO. School has gone well for me though, I've had a bit of a bad spell the last few months due to a loss in the family (Old relative, expected it to happen soon but it still hits you hard when it does) and a sickness that's left me unable to workout.

I'm coming up on the end of my school year, just over a month until I'm done here and I'm moving on to the next step of studying. I'm going to move to a new city again, which in a way sucks since I've made a lot of really good friends here but at the same time it'll be in a part of the country that's a bit closer to friends and family back home (2 hours instead of the 5+ I have at the moment). But this also means that I'll get another shot at restarting my life. For the first time in my life I'll have a proper place of my own (Living in a student dorm at the moment) if I get one of the apartments I've applied for. I'm going to study a bit over the summer I hope but mostly I'm going to focus on eating healthy and working out!

One of my biggest problems is that I got so out of shape the last few years, in my PMO depression all I enjoyed was my addiction, computer games and unhealthy snacks. And I'm ashamed of the fact that I'm a bit fat, I try to hide it as much as I can but mostly what I do is simply not go out or hang out with friends. Its a really bad habit as it just makes my isolation worse and it makes it easier for me to give in to my PMO urges.

It makes me feel very unattractive as well and I have no confidence, which means I barely dare flirt or date girls. Which in turn leads to me turning to PMO since I miss having sex. I miss flirting, I miss socializing at parties, meeting new people and talking to friends and just having a good time. I miss being confident in myself. I miss LIKING myself.

I think I'm a better person now than I was back then, I was young and could be stupid and selfish and I know I hurt more than one girl with my actions. But I still liked who I was. Now that I've been exposed to my addiction, possibly lost the girl of my dreams, missed out on dating a few amazing girls that I knew were interested in me, I've had to come to terms with the fact that I've essentially wasted the last 10 years of my life in front of a computer... I don't like me. I do like the potential me. The guy I know I can be if I can control this addiction and get healthy again.

Because others here see that guy, I've made several friends here who all think I'm smart, funny and even attractive. One of my friends even thought that if she didn't have a boyfriend we'd most likely ended up sleeping together. I laughed but I knew that I probably never would have dared doing anything with her as I wouldn't want her to see how out of shape I am and risking PIED. Kind of pathetic.

So, I'm going to try and focus on me this summer. I've started already with my PMO habit, I just have to stay clean from porn and masturbation since I simply can't quit porn and still masturbate. The chaser effect just hits me too hard. And right now I'm suffering a case of blue balls pretty bad but I'll just have to power through it this week! Once I've moved to my new place on the first of June (Hopefully I'll get one of the apartments I've applied for!) I can begin a new regime of eating healthy and working out. Hopefully I'll also get rid of this virus I've got so I can get started on my workouts before I move even.

And now its almost lunch time, I haven't gotten ANY of the school work done but at the same time, I haven't given in to PMO so its a start.

 

[Boaconstricted]

soz for being nosy, but what happened with the girl in September? She sounded like a sweetheart.

 

[fnatk]

No worries, I forgot to mention that earlier! Yeah things didn't exactly work out with her, she had to leave school early on and move back home (Which is quite far away) for a few private reasons. Neither of us wanted a long-distance relationship, so there was nothing I could do about it, we still talk online every few days so we're still friends

She's got a good heart which is what I liked most about her, but if I'm going to be honest we were a bit too different for anything long term I think. But that's life!

 

[fnatk]

So yesterday I had one of the worst days of my life. A classmate of mine that I met for the first time last year when school started has died. I might have been the last person he knew to see him alive.

He'd moved a long way down here from northern Sweden with his girlfriend, to make a change in their lives. They were both former drug addicts, that's how they'd met, they were at the same treatment center. He was very open about his life story, he'd become an addict and done petty crime for years and finally hit rock bottom which forced him to change. And it truly was a change, a big one. They were warm, loving and caring people who stood up for anyone who they thought might have been wronged or treated unfairly. You couldn't help but admire them and be inspired by them.

And I found it so easy to relate to them both for our stories are very much the same in essence.

I'd let my two addictions of computer gaming and porn ruin my life and hit rock bottom. I'd moved down south in the country for a fresh start, to get away from my old life and my old habits, just like they did. I've talked to them about my gaming addiction a lot and how it had ruined part of my school years and a few years after that too, they were great listeners and we got along really well even if we didn't hang out that much outside of school. But they would come to me if they had problems or questions about anything from ordering a pair of shoes online from America to how to apply for a few things, grown up stuff where they trusted that I'd probably know the answer or that we could figure things out together. I'm only a few years older than them but I believe they looked up to me in a way.

A few weeks ago I came clean to him about my porn addiction, I told him parts of my story and how it had affected me and he knew exactly what I was talking about. He had realized he was a porn addict too not long ago. We had a really long conversation about it, how it fucked us up in the head and how it had changed our view on women. I told him about some of the science behind how this particular addiction worked since he already knew everything about dopamine etc. It was a great conversation to have, I was truly thankful for having it with him. He now knew me better in a way than anyone else at school.

He's the first guy I've told about my problem, I've been much too ashamed to tell any of my other male friends but I knew he wouldn't laugh at me or judge me in any way. And he didn't. He listened to what I had to say with an open heart and told me that we'd both fight this thing, that we could do it. It meant so much to me, here was the first person I'd ever met IRL who knew exactly what I was going through. Who'd gone through it already with his drug addiction. I was thinking of having a talk with him just this weekend, to see how he was doing but I was still a bit sick from another damned cold so I put it off for the time being.

Monday came round and I went to school despite still feeling a bit sick and he was there. I hadn't seen him for a while, I'd been abroad on a school trip and then I'd been sick for a week. He was his regular cheery self, his girlfriend wasn't in school that day cus' she was working the evening shift at her new job and I think she had worked it the night before as well. When the day ended I had to go in to town to return two books to the library and he sat on the bus with me. We didn't talk cus' he got a phone call from an old friend but he was having a fun conversation, talking about his plans for the summer. He and his girlfriend had gotten engaged this Christmas and just the other week he'd surprised her by buying them a holiday to Thailand this summer. He was going to help a friend renovate part of their summer cottage.

When I got off the bus he said in his regular cheery way "I'll see you tomorrow!". That evening his girlfriend came home from work and found him lifeless on the floor of their new apartment. He was only 27 years old.

I have friends that I'm much closer to, back home and here at school. But we'd had that long conversation, he knew a part of me that nobody else here did. I talked to him, man to man, told him my biggest, darkest secret and he listened, he joked, smiled and laughed with me about it as he told me in return about how his porn addiction had affected him. He inspired me to do better, to fight my addiction. He made me want to be a better man, just as he was trying to be.

And he showed me that it was possible to change. And fuck do I want to change, now more than ever.