Really feel I'm on the road to recovery

I'm going to lay it all out.

As I sit here 4 days from my 30th birthday, I've been watching porn for 24 years.

I saw porn on my dad's computer at 6 years old and have been hooked daily since.

It's led to me escaping to fantasy in every tough situation in my life.

I always knew I had to quit, but I saw it more as a bad habit that I had to break. I knew it was hurting me but I never faced the pain of what I've done to myself these last 24 years.

I look at a life I feel has been completely wasted to this point because I've always felt like half the person I want to be in every situation:

• half the energy
• half the drive
• half the feeling of being present and grounded
• half the calm, eye of the hurricane, I've always wanted to be.

For the first time, I genuinely felt like today was the turning point to me. A year plus of therapy finally surfaced a couple decades of wounds I've been holding in.

I deleted everything off my phone. Spent an hour reprogramming my IG algorithm and just went on a 2 hour hike.

I've been journaling extensively today based on this and just wanted to share all of this here because I genuinely need to.

I needed this space to just share everything that's been messing me up all of these years and to know I'm in a community of people like me (hopefully not struggling as long).

I realized today that sex workers aren't bad people they're just misguided. Misguided like I've been for 24 years - just trying not to face pain head on and doing things my brain felt like we're the way to do it.

If you're younger - in your teens and twenties, just read this knowing that you don't have to waste your twenties the way I did. There's pain you will face and it sucks but it will always beat running from it because at this moment, there is so much I regret and I can't change that now - I can only have a better future.

But you can change that. You can live out your prime, make memories, enjoy the little things the world has to offer, and look back on your early years regretting nothing. I genuinely hope someone reading this takes it as the warning to change now. It would make thousands of negative comments or ridicule worth it if it can change one young man's life.

I'm happy to have this community.