Numb is what I wanted to feel… so I wouldn’t feel the hurt.

My daughters mean the world to me… and I don’t know if they know it.

I was sitting in my nightly AA meeting tonight listening to people sharing. Normally I get something from the people there, learning from their pain and recovery. Tonight the guy next to me said something that stuck with me… he said for years he thought about how his family had left him, and how it effected him. That he spend years, thinking about his loss, how he looked… then he thought about them. How they must have felt, how they had loss their family, loss their father and loss their security. It hit home.

For the last four years I have been bitching how I got screwed. I always said that I was thinking of them, that I wanted to be part of their lives. But I am not sure if I have ever really thought about how they must feel.

My kids are the real losers in this story of mine. Lose of being able to be kids, to feel safe with family, to know their parents love them more than they love themselves. I need to remember how I felt as a kid with my messed up family, I felt hurt, and not loved. And I felt like they didn’t care. I wonder if my girls feel this way? I wonder if they feel like they are torn between me and their mom.

I want to say crap about my x, to blame her… that she did this! But I can’t blame her. I can’t play the victim. But in the deepest part of me, I play the victim very well. But the real victims are my kids… innocent kids that wanted nothing more than their parent to care more about them, then they cares about themselves.

I never made a choice to put porn over my kids. I did make a choice to not deal with my shit, my past. and by not dealing with my past, I made the choice to put myself in front of my kids… my need to self medicate my pain away. To numb my feelings of the hurt I feel, I also numbed away the dad feelings of putting my kids first. I numbed away the women I loved.

I remember those feelings when I was a kid, that my parents were selfish, and only cared about themselves. That when my sister and I didn’t play along with the perfect family, they just had more kids that didn’t live through the pain. I referred them as the replacement family. Now I love those guys, and am close to them… funny because the sister I went through the hell with hasn’t talked to me in almost a year. I remember feeling that church was more important that I was. That telling their story… to look like God healed them was more important than me. That everything was more important than me. Is this how my girls feel?

Do my girls feel that my recovery is more important than them? Do they feel like I hate their mother? Do they feel like they aren’t worth it? How do I recover, and undo some of the pain I caused them?

Work the steps… stay connected to God. Don’t go back to how life was. No matter how tough it gets, it is way better than it was.

Remember the way it was… the way it is… and they way it will be if I can keep myself humble and teachable and do what I am directed.

My mind is full of thoughts the last few days.

Last night I was talking to my daughter on the phone. It’s great that her and I have gotten so close since she left for college. She’s 2400 miles away, yet we talk more, and have more meaningful talks, since she moved away. Away, where she can make her own choices about me.

She told me last night that her mom told her over and over again, her and her sister, that I didn’t want them. Hard words to hear. Hard that the women that I loved…the only women that I have loved, would say that. I know that what she means is that since I didn’t want her, then I didn’t them. Wrong! I couldn’t with her, but I always needed my daughters. I couldn’t be… good enough. I tried with all I was, but I couldn’t.

She wanted me promise that I would never again look at porn. I knew I couldn’t promise that. I wanted to, I didn’t want to look at porn anymore… but i couldn’t make that promise. Just like an alcoholic can never promise that they will never drink again… they don’t want too… but they are alcoholic. I am a lust addict.

What kind of women says this to her kids… your father doesn’t want you.

Still I think about her every day of my life. Wishing I could have been good enough.

Step 1

I admitted I am powerless over __________________ and my life has become unmanageable.

On writing the step out, I purposely left out what my addiction is. Simply, this is the 2nd time I have gone through these steps, and I have found, that for me, it doesn’t matter. Let me fill in the blank with a few things that could be there.

I am powerless over lust
I am powerless over drinking
I am powerless over food
I am powerless over watching too much TV
I am powerless over wanting to read too much
I am powerless over my kids
I am powerless over my x-wife
I am powerless over women
I am powerless over friends
I am powerless over people I work with

I am powerless. I will do ANYTHING to not feel.
And in order to get through this life, I have to feel. I have to live life on life’s terms as they say.

Is (Was) My Life Unmanagable?

Taken from “Step Into Action 1,2,3” Page 53

Q. How much time I have spent in sexual obsession?
A. When I was at my worse, I could spend up to 8 hours a day looking at porn, surfing the web and thinking about (any not doing anything about) finding that “perfect” women that was going to “make it all better” to “complete me”

Q. How has my illness affected my home life.
A. I lost my wife, I lost the respect of my daughters.

Q. What other relationships have been damaged by my acting out?
A. I think that in the last 10 years I just stopped making friends, because I was so much in a fog that I couldn’t relate to people.

Q. Has lust interfered with a precious relationship?
A. Yes. my lust destroyed my marriage.

Q. How has this illness affected my education?
A. Not the lust part, but the only I can take of myself part, I never really went to school past high school.

Q. How has this illness affected my work, my career. Could I have ever been fired for something I did at work?
A. It put a big dent in my career, left a great job because of stealing. I would also masturbate in the bathroom and look at porn at my desk.

Q. How has my illness affected my finances?
A. I would spend hours looking at porn when I should have been working… and since i work on commission it affected me a lot. According to my accounting now, I believe that it cost me somewhere in the area of $250,000 in lost business over 5 years.

Q. Did I miss important events so I could act out.
A. I never missed them, but I would leave early to go act out.

Q. How has this illness affect my reputation?
A. I think that when I became honest about what I was doing, it helped my reputation, before I was honest I lived in fear of being found out and having my reputation ruined.

Q. Have i had an unplanned pregnancy or had to pay for an abortion to cover?
A. Not that I know of.

Q. Have I contracted or passed on a STD?
A. Not that I know of, I was accused of giving some one HPV.

Q. Have been arrested, could I have been.
A. No – thank God

Am I Powerless Over My Lust?

Taken from “Step into Action 1,2,3”

Q. Were their time when I was so consumed with lust that I was no longer aware of the world around me or able to think about the choices I was making?
A. Yes, as I got into my 30’s it became harder to separate fact from lust fantasies. I didn’t make decisions that needed to be made not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. And the decisions I did make were lust based therefore wrong. I blew off bills, I blew off my business to lust.

Q. Did I go to absurd lengths to be with my porn? or relationships?
A. Yes. I would lock my office door and look at porn with my employees right aside my door. I would go to the bathroom and masturbate to images in my head. I would plan to be alone so I could watch porn.

Q. Did I masturbate while driving? Or act out in public places?
A. Yes. I worked for a while over the road, and work masturbate will I drove there. I would masturbate in the bathroom at work.

Q. Did I have sex with persons who meant nothing to me, who I didn’t like.
A. Yes

Q. Did I only notice attractive people in the room?
A. Yes

Q. What I done things I didn’t want to do?
A. Yes

Q. Did I do things that my better nature told me I shouldn’t be doing?
A. Yes- I started looking at hard and harder types of porn.

Q. Did I dress, flirt or manipulate in order to be lusted after?
A. Yes! everyday all the time. $200 pairs of shoes, dressed to the 9’s.

Q. Were there places I couldn’t go without acting out?
A. Strip Clubs

Q. Did I find my self looking in windows?
A. Not windows, but the idea of watching was a turn on for me.

Q. Did I do things that disgusted me? and overwhelmed me with shame?
A. Every week there was at least one thing that caused me to live in shame, a thought, an action.

Q. Did I cross boundaries of behavior that I had set for myself?
A. Yes, I started looking at harder and harder types of porn.

Q. Was it impossible for me to say no?
A. God I tried to, but I always ended up doing it anyway.

Q. What promises did I make my self and others?
A. I would stop. and I always wanted to, but never could.

Q. How many times have I tried to stop and failed…what happened when I failed?
A. Every time I acted out I promised myself that was the last time… and I meant it. When I failed I got the fuck its, and just kept going for the day, saying I would quit tomorrow.

01/28/2011

Why do I feel like I am always on the outside looking in?

I looked at porn because it made me forget that I felt like I didn’t fit in. I worked hard to have money so i could feel like I fit in. I did drugs as a kid to forget that I didn’t feel like I fit in. I isolate so I don’ t have that feeling that I don’t fit in. I drink so I can try to fit in, then I drink so I don’t have to feel like I don’t fit in.

No matter where I go, I feel like I am an outsider. I am missing the gene that makes me feel a part of. I try, no porn… so no fog… but still I have these feeling. I don’t do drugs any more, but even when I did it didn’t really work. Drinking never really works because I am afraid to let my guard down and let people in, if i am drunk… I let my guard down for a second.

I feel broken.

my perception

My thoughts tonight are kind of muddled. My daughter was talking to me about her mom and her step dad…saying how cute they are together. I could feel my blood start to boil. Rejection… Not good enough… I am not love-able.

I feel rejection, I tried for so long. Too long. I tried to be good enough…

It’s funny really, feelings, there are hardly based in my reality but in a my perception. I perceived I wasn’t good enough, so then I did things to be sure I wasn’t good enough. I could give some physco babble on why I felt I wasn’t good enough. My mom didn’t hug me enough as a child…My father wasn’t present. I put faith in men to show me how to be a man, and they failed me, and in some cases caused even more damage. All of these things are true. And they helped to form my perception, but that doesn’t change the fact that is still my perception.

Am I not love-able because my parents didn’t know how to love because they were so broken? No, I am love-able. But my default is if someone loves me, my attitude is “Once they get to know me, they will find that I am not love-able” My wrong perception.

It all comes back to me? So does that mean I am letting my X off the hook? Basically agreeing with her thought that it is all my fault? I Dont think so… I played my part, but so did she. But all I can do is work on me, fixing my perceptions.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
JC

Letter to Ted Haggard

I just finished watching a special on TLC on you and your family, and the start of your new church. I have never read any of your books, or your wifes book. While I knew who you were, I didn’t really pay that close of attention.

I remember when I heard the new of you and your struggles I was sitting in a meeting of pastors, about 20 of us sitting around a room about to talk about how better the Church in our city. I can remember thinking to myself… I have been down this road. You see I am the eldest son of a man who has fallen not once but twice in the church to “same sex” affairs. My heart when straight out to your kids. Knowing the struggles that I have had to deal with because of my fathers choices, but more on that later.

As I sat in that room of pastors, I remember thinking many times, if any of these “great men of God” had any idea of the things I do, have done and in some cases want to do, I would be marched right out of the room. I am not a pastor, I served as a “Youth Director” on staff at a small church in my early 20’s, I only mention this because I now go to great lengths to be sure I am being honest, and since it was a room of pastors…

I am not really sure why I am writing to you, but after watching the story, I have been compelled to. So maybe there is something you need to hear, maybe there is just something I need to get out, I don’t know, but I am simply doing what I feel I should be doing right now.

When I was 15, my parents sat my an my little sister down at our dinning room table to have a talk. The year was 1985. The last 3 years of our life had been hell. Our parents had moved us from the suburbs, to the “hood”. First summer we lived there, there was a riot in the nieghborhood… men running through the yard with weapons, police with guns pulled. We had started to go to this church I hated, in the same “hood”. I don’t remember much other than going to church 3 to 4 times a week, and when we weren’t at church, my parents where at church meeting with the pastors. That summer day I found I why. We sat around the dinning table, my father started talking, I don’t remember all that was said, but the words that will hanted me for years after were simple. “I was having homosexual affairs, and your mom and I are about to go public and give our testimony to the church”

He later moved on to travel the country telling his story about how God had “healed” him from his sin. During the amendment 2 times back in the early 90’s he went on radio and was quoted in the paper. At 15, I was pulled into a life, a story that wasn’t mine, I didn’t want, and felt like what kind of god can “heal” him, yet drag me through this. I don’t want to pretend I know what is was like for your family, with the national media gunning for you. I think what might make it a little closer, is that I am a Jr, now if I had been smart, I would have started going by my middle name, but I wasn’t that smart. In my simple teenage mind, the world saw us as one.

They say that our view of God is formed by our view of our fathers. At 15, I had what could only be expressed as one screwed up view of God, that lasted. I had this view of my father that he was for everyone but me. They would go talk, council others, teach bible studys. He was asked to be a deacon, then an elder. He over saw newer pastors the church hired, serving as a mentor. I have no doubt that I wasn’t easy to father once he told me his story, but I felt like he didn’t even really bother since all these other people thought he had such wisdom. He and my mother also had 3 more kids. Between the additions to the family, and the people who know wanted him to tell his story of redemption, I felt like I was cast aside. So my view of God was “I am not good enough for God to care about, that when it comes right down to it, He will replace me… I am not good enough, I am expendable to God.” As I read what I wrote, I can even see how I carried that over to my marriage, in that I though the same of my now X wife.

I would have to say that this view, almost a life view that I falsely had, affected every major part of my life.

I Want a drink

I will do anything not to feel.

Last night I went out, drove with a friend an hour away to another city just to go out, go out someplace new. I didn’t drink, but I wanted to. Doesn this make me an alcoholic? I know I am a lust addict, got the scares to prove that. but I have no idea about the drinking think, I just know that if I drink…I don’t have to feel.

I did get to touch a women, even if she was drunk as hell. There is something about a women’s soft touch that can make it feel right. It wasn’t even sexual, just hands on back, and hands… and it felt so nice. Got the 3rd degree from her, making sure I wasn’t married and out on the town for an affair, but after that I was safe I guess. And before I could get any further my driver wanted to leave. Blonde, white with a rockin body… I am a lust addict.

Love cripple, I want more than anything to find a women that is for more than today, but I never get there…. Did I miss out on Happy Ever After?

1/13/11

Trying to be a better person. Its been 13 days since “acted out” with porn. I can feel the draw, a simple Google search to push me along.

Been 6 days since i had sex with the women i have been seeing the last year.

I don’t want to look at porn…