Age 17 – These last 47 days have been the only times I’ve felt human.

As I sit here I feel anguished and full of grief. Yet these last 47 days have been the only times I’ve felt human. As I pour out the contents of the last 47 days know that I never regret anything, even this feeling of grief.

It begins with a bet with a friend. 100 bucks to the one who can last the longest without porn or touching for 90 days. I made and took up this bet without really having 100 dollars to give. I had but one choice: make it to 90 days. I was fed up with being unable to make it past 14 days, I was fed up feeling small and twisted inside. I knew there was something more to me, and NoFap was my key to opening that locked door.

With that Key I opened Pandora’s Box.

I brought a mess of utter pure joy as well as deep wells of sadness.

So I began my 47 days. I was going in squeaky clean. If I could in some way help not watching something designed to arouse me then I was going to do it. No porn, nothing remotely exciting. No touching either, like not even edging. I was going in as hard as hard-mode could go. I was ready to go in fully abandoned. As I began to gather steam from the hard first week I began to flower a little. I started getting a bit more social. I was being just a bit more quick of wit, a bit less defensive, a bit more vulnerable. Sharp words hurt just a bit less, angry words cut just a bit less. I was in some ways confused as the sudden influx of neglected stimuli of the world began to elicit a response from my battered senses.

In that way the world slowly gained color. The grass got a bit greener, the sky got a bit bluer, the world a bit more lively. It started slow, but slowly gained momentum. For the first time in my life I felt overwhelmed by the splendor that surrounded my small short life. My mind began to buzz with excitement again. I was feeling less and less a robot and more a human. A gradual increase that slowly began to take larger and larger steps.

It was then it the swirling vortex of my newfound life that I realized I had been a mean buzzard to an old and exceptionally worthwhile friend I had. It was a she, and she had been the one reason I kept clinging on to NoFap in crucial situations in a period of 3-4 years. I lost her after a fallout in our relationship. I liked her, but never could quite say it. I couldn’t express the desires in my heart, the words I’d write about them were as confusing and strange as the way I felt them. We sort of blundered at a difficult time of life together. At some point we had a mutual trust for each other. But I felt more than that, and in a way I thought she expressed a desire as well.

I never would’ve thought of talking to her after the time in silence. But an english paper about the harmful effects of Internet Pornography I was writing brought me to my knees. One statistic, stating that men who just watch even porn that wasn’t abusive were highly likely to persuade or coerce a woman into having sex using words, drinks, anything. While I never did anything so extreme, I remembered that in a bout of crankiness I had told her to either just be a FWB or get out. Like a reasonable and intelligent woman she got out and I had to sort myself out then.

As I remembered this awful incident I kept thinking back and could find other times I was mean, spiteful, cruel, etc. It got bad as a few incidents became many upon many. I couldn’t think of any reason why she would ever think that was a good friendship. I felt overwhelmed.

So I formed a plan to call her. I ask her the first time to talk, I’m a bit nervous, and I end up getting shot down on the spot. I was bummed. I thought she doesn’t want part of me, so I felt in a way free of any obligation to apologize.

Until a few days later I did something crazy.

I did my laundry and cooked the first time in my life.

All alone.

It was there that I learned what it meant to be self-sufficient in a new way. I felt new strength after doing each one, I was feeling more confident. But then 45 days rolled in and I figured that since it was a checkpoint I’d do something REALLY big to commemorate it. So that fateful Sunday I called her. I knew what I was getting into before. But I felt untouchable, invincible in a way, so in I went.

I got on the phone with her, I apologized for absolutely everything I could remember in my nervous state. I had no idea where I was leading with all of it, but it kept flowing out of me. I had told her of when I had been addicted to porn and masturbation, so I told her of NoFap. Told her how it was now every sight was a Kodak moment. I spoke how happy I was, and I finished the thought with a final question:

“These last few days have been the happiest ones I’ve ever lived in my life; I want to share that with you.”

That was it.

That was the moment my past 3 years had waited for.

… And the next moment brought me indescribable joy that I can’t explain.

“Sorry… But I like someone else.”

3 years, the agony, the excitement, it all came down to this. I couldn’t have asked for a better moment.

I hung up and laughed and cried tear of utter joy, I danced and jammed to Daft Punk’s Discovery for an hour straight without knowing. I had finally graduated. I finally did what had been the haphazard glue that kept me together. I felt reborn.

I was alive.

Up to this point I figured all was over, well it turns out some things also changed in me. Ever since I began to lucid dream for some odd reason I could bring and remove people in my dreams, but I could never bring her in, nor would she show up naturally. Yet last night I was in a room with everyone I ever was friends with.

… And she was there in the middle, walking towards me.

I smiled, looked down feigning slight embarrassment , looked into her eyes and shook hand. Then we moved past and parted ways.

Ever since I asked her out I haven’t been this free and void of so big a purpose and obsession as she had been before. This had been my consuming obsession, and it was over with the greatest feeling of ecstasy I had ever experienced.

I was just now sad because I realized I had no one to tell about this. To laugh about it, to think about it, to reflect with. So instead of wallowing in the amount of sadness I decided to immortalize this experience on the internet, in the hopes that someone will read it and be able to remember this and me. To remember my bravery in my time of distress. To remember that heroism.

Meanwhile I’m still living. I’ve never quite been this connected to humanity before, yet never been this void of a pressing purpose. I’m in a way free falling into a sort of sweet dream.

A story about a boy who became a man and learned to love his life for the first time

LINK – How in 47 days I loved and lost everything. [Long Read but not the average post]

by Stained-glass

UPDATE – 200 days, two stars; one lone ranger