Vulnerability is such a tough thing. Empathy is being able to place yourself in the shoes of another, but what happens when your experience is nieche? Does the difficulty of explaining something mean that those who don’t understand your perspective will judge and shun you? Is it worth the risk? The internet seems to magnifiy the risks involved whenever you consider the act of doxing, the obsession with uncovering the anonymous to bring to light identity even if just for nothing but curiosity’s sake. We live in concerning times and it has never been scarier to be real than it is today! I think the realization of the risks involved is what makes people respect someone whenever they decide to express what many of us wish we could say if we were secure about our past actions and how those made us who we are today.

I wish to write suicidally as if my reputation didn’t matter and risk it all just to tell you who I am and where I have been, but my own hesitation about the consequences keeps me stuck. Maybe I am on the edge of a breakthrough where I will suffer enough to just let it all go. I am a man of contradiction; on one hand an addict obsessed with many things-money, sex, drugs. On the other I despise my vices and the desire to indulge in each one. I feel myself struggling with internal dilemmas, worried that one day I will face inevitable karma and punishment for every indiscretion which brought me to this place which I now occupy.

I despise the facebook algorithm which shows me smut even though I keep reporting it. I dislike that at age seventeen I became interested in hookups, that at age eighteen I started smoking weed and cigarettes. Every choice I made has rippled throughout my life. I am a rare case. Since I am not interested in statistics and research I am not the least bit persuaded to double check, but I do believe I have heard that addicts (including alcoholics, sex addicts and so on) make up about fifteen percent of the population. I don’t have to have a degree in mathematics to understand that my experience is uncommon. Most people do not have to go to meetings to find relief or open up a green book with the words Sex Addicts Anonymous: Conference Approved on its front in yellow font.

There is no way to decribe the aching conscience that bothers me. Practically everyone knows what it’s like to harbor regrets which keep them up at night, producing many hours of retrospective cringe and “If only’s”. “In reality no one gets away with anything; if you’re not paying for it legally, you’re paying for it financially, morally or with an aching conscience which takes your sleep away”-I put this in quotes because it falls under the odd category of “I don’t remember if I heard this somewhere or if it was an original thought” but none the less it resonates greatly with my experience. The only way we can be sure that our pain means anything at all is if we can find a way to head out into the world and “use our experience to benefit others” as the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous says. There is after all, nothing worse than pain without purpose.