Welp.. Day 1 again.
I fell. Before, I started journaling my thoughts / what happened. I'm going to leave those thoughts below, and then continue on with my post-fall thoughts.
I have a waze phone that I got that's locked to waze on a factory level. It has nothing else on it, supposed to be "kosher". I had a dream last night. I'm on day 10. I had thoughts all day. I tried to fight. My laptop is admin pw locked, and I have a filter on my device that monitors screen activity and sends updates to an accountability partner... but if i can get around this filter I fall hard. I've found ways to disable in the past, but since putting an admin password lock on my laptop, I haven't had access to do these loopholes. The only way was to factory reset mac which i don't want to do... but i remembered i have a device for waze only. It's from koshercell and is only for wze. I spent some time looking up how to factoy wipe it but I couldn't, they do a good job of locking the device. however, i realized I could bluetooth file transfer from my mac to the phone, so I downloaded something and transferred the vid file to the phone which doesn't have a filter. I'm sitting here waiting as my file transfers. I have about 10 minutes left. I'm feeling an intense head rush and my body is trembling from the thought of what it's about to get. but my neshama is crying. My neshama wants to be pure. My neshama is pure. I know afterwards I'm going to regret it. I'm flushing the last 10 days, and in a sense, the last few years, down the drain. During the time the file is transferring, I could take the phone and I could break it. I would remove access to this for myself right now. and overcome this battle. I could stop looking and choose good over evil. I've been going to therapy for years because of this. I've been feeling bad about myself for a long time because of this challenge. I know that Hashem wants me to overcome this test. I don't know why I don't have self control right now. What's going on with me. Why can't I control myself?
I want to take some time to reflect on what's going on in my life that may be compelling me to use. I'm feeling particularly stressed about work. I started a business that scaled up to $60k/month over the last year at its peak, some months making 30-40k in profit. I felt on top of the world.
However, nothing lasts forever. The strategy I was using to generate results for clients abruptly stopped working. It's industry-wide. Most of my clients churned because of it. I have a few left, but it's not looking good for them. I feel bad about not getting them good results. I feel bad about the failure as well. I also now have to ask myself "what's next?" It makes me feel like a failure. Maybe I had too much of my ego tied up in the business and now that it's not doing well, I feel not so good about myself. I believe it's common for men to tie their self worth to their income. I know that's not the right way to view things, but there's a big distance between the head and the heart. Maybe I feel like less of a man for the business going downhill. All is not lost - I am currently working on a pivot plan that i believe could make the business more durable for the future and sustain longer term growth. However, it's still rocky in the meantime. I see two possible outcomes: either the pivot works and the biz grows again, or the business fails and I shut it down. In the second scenraio, I'm financially very secure as I saved up a lot of money over the last few years, especially during the good months of the business. I could live without income for a while, likely even married. I've been learning over the last few years but never 100% full-time as I've always been working as well. This would afford me the opportunity to finally learn full-time. It's just scary to be without income for a while, and to feel like a failure. Being a successful entrepreneur has been a big part of my identity over the last few years, really since I was 14 or 15.
I think this is the main pressure/stress that's driving me to use right now. the problem is, when i'm doing this, i'm ignoring the problem, numbing my pain, and making myself feel even worse than before, despite temporary relief. And really, I should be far more concerned about this issue than I am about the income issue. This is my main flaw and struggle. It's something I carry with me all the time as part of my identity that I want to rid myself of and move on from.
After falling, I took the device I used and smashed it on the concrete until the screen turned white and threw it away. That was my last unfiltered device. Really, the manufacturer filtered it from the beginning such that it couldn't access anything, but the media player and bluetooth file transfer wasn't totally blocked... you couldn't see the media player button or open it, but if you transferred a file to the phone, you can open and view. I exploited this loophole.
fall was 10 minutes. I broke the phone after. That's my last device. I have a flip phone and a locked laptop with a screen monitoring software installed. Of course, these are just first lines of defense, but they do help. There's definitely more internal work to do here.
What's crazy is Hashem gave me so many chances to stop myself.
- I had to wait 15 minutes for the file to transfer, during which time I wrote the above notes and STILL fell
- When I was just about to start, someone walked into the room
- I moved to another area, the whole way thinking "what am I doing"
- When I got there, my accountability partner was there - for the first time ever - who I was actively deceiving in the moment by avoiding the accountability tool (we meet weekly on Fridays and I'll open up to him then, but still...)
- When I moved once again, I forgot the device I was going to use and had to go retrieve it
Oh, and this is the REALLY crazy part. Another close friend of mine who I've shared the struggle with sent me a text. This is in his words. "You'll never believe the dream I had last night. It was me and you a few years before we became religious. We were in Israel together and I had just fallen with a girl. You (he's talking about me) said to me 'dude, it's so hard to avoid women! The struggle is real!' but I responded to you 'don't worry man, in just a few years time, you'll overcome this challenge and you'll be so proud of yourself.'
This is crazy. What are the odds he'd have a dream about this the night before I fell?
So many stops along the way to snap out of it, and yet I fell.
This is a pattern I have. I've been going roughly 11 days, give or take a few days, and then I fall. Usually within the first few days, I'm able to avoid falling easily. I still feel a lot of shame from the fall. By day 2 or 3, I'm back to a state of normalcy, where I feel like enough time has passed between me and the fall that I'm a "new man" and intrusive thoughts are more easily dealt with.
By day 7 or 8, I start having sexual dreams. Those dreams usually stay in my head and thoughts start coming more aggressively. I start feeling pulled into the habit much more strongly around day 10, and often start exploring loopholes in my defense system until I fall.
Not really sure what to make of this, probably going to pick myself up and continue on, trying to keep my head held high.
