ESSAY Magazine (An International Journal of Sexaholics Anonymous)

En mis primeros días en SA era soltero, no tenía trabajo, ni auto, ni dinero, y mucho tiempo. Era 2009, y por la crisis económica estaba desempleado. Asistía a tres o cuatro reuniones por semana, llamaba a mi padrino todos los días, escribía mi trabajo de Pasos diariamente y traduje todo el Libro Blanco, el Libro Grande y La recuperación continúa a mi idioma nativo en un año. Aun así, me quedaba mucho tiempo porque ya no llenaba cada minuto libre con lujuria. Asumí muchos puestos de servicio como encargado del café, limpiando después de la reunión, encargado de literatura, secretario, tesorero y abridor de la reunión.

If I had to choose one word to describe how I felt for most of my life, I would choose "disconnected." I  had a hard time making friends in both kindergarten and school. There were many engaging ways to escape reality—creating stories in my head, adventure books, and video games.

In active addiction, my slogan was “Being alone in heaven is harder than being with a girl in hell.” In early childhood, I could not imagine a world without girls. I used to be ridiculed for playing with girls instead of boys. Who cared, as far as I was concerned; I enjoyed playing innocently with girls.

A simple answer to this question could be, “I am here because I have to be”, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The pain of repeatedly hitting bottom lines was enough to get me in the door, but never enough to keep me inside. 
 
My past was destructive and abusive. When I was less than five years old, my mother burned my hand with a hot spoon to punish me because she thought by doing so she would teach me perfect obedience. When I was six I was sexually abused in a very painful way by a nine-year-old cousin. The abuse became more widespread, first other cousins started abusing me, and then others of them offered me to friends of theirs and to people in the neighborhood for their abusive pleasure. Individuals in school started to abuse me. The emotional abuse that followed the sexual abuse was worse. When people understood that I was abused, I was mocked, teased, beaten, threatened, and treated as a piece of garbage. In family, at school, at work, wherever I went I faced sexual abuse, and if that couldn’t be perpetrated, then emotional and physical abuse. Even in my own home I was not safe. The relative who abused me also taught me how to masturbate and that was how I chose to cope with my feelings and difficulties.

I’m Mike and I’m a sexaholic, sobriety date Aug 7, 2005. SA has given me my second chance at life and has been central to my recovery, but other things have helped too.
From the age of four, I always felt different, less than; that I was on the outside looking in. I was afraid of people and hid my true self from them. Instead, I put on an act to try to get them to like me. At age seven I became obsessed with the pretty girls in my school class—voyeuring, dreaming and fantasising about them. There was no sexual component yet, but the obsession was strong; I was now a ‘romantic’ lust addict. Over time, I became a disruptive child.

My job has nothing to do with graphic design, advertising, illustration of magazines, or anything like that ... years ago in my beginnings in SA I combined the design of the bulletin of my parish with sessions of consumption of chat and pornography ... only by a miracle of my Higher Power did I never by accident place a lust image in one of those newsletters... And, logically, the quality of my work was barely regular, the time invested twice as much as normal, I stayed up late and I used to be easily annoyed if someone criticized my work.

In my early days in SA I was single, had no job, no car, no money, and a lot of time. It was 2009, and because of the economic crisis I was unemployed. I attended three to four meetings a week, called my sponsor daily, wrote my Step work daily, and translated the whole White Book, Big Book, and Recovery Continues into my native language within a year.

من سعی میکنم تا تجربه، نیرو و امید خودم را در مورد نقشی که پدرم روی کی در معتاد جنسی شدن و بهبودی من از آن، ایفا کرد، را به اشتراک بگذارم. به لطف اعتیاد و نقص های شخصیتی، ما هر دو این یک جاده پر دست انداز را طی کردیم.
البته درگیری ها و مسائل، مشکل اصلی نبودند. ما فقط در آن زمان آن را نمی دیدیم. ما در چنگال بازیِ سرزنش گرفتار شدیم، هر کدام به دنبال اصلاح دیگری بودیم به جای اینکه به درون خودمان نگاه کنیم تا خودمان را اصلاح کنیم. سعی می کردیم به جای تمیز کردن حیاط خودمان، حیاط یکدیگر را تمیز کنیم. تغییر دادن خود به اندازه کافی سخت است، اما تغییر دیگران غیرممکن است. در واقع، تغییر خودم بدون تمرین اصول روحانی موجود در SA را، غیرممکن می دانم. اصولی مانند بخشش و پذیرفتن دیگران آنگونه که هستند. "زندگی کن و بگذار زندگی کنند" - راه رسیدن به صلح.
متاسفم که من و پدرمنتوانستیم به این درک مهم برسیم تا زمانی که او بر اثر سرطان درگذشت این اتفاق در سپتامبر ۲۰۰۹ رخ داد. در آخرین لحظات زندگی او بود که نقاب برداشته شد و ما خودمان را در همدیگر دیدیم. دلهای ما در آمرزش و آشتی کامل به هم پیوست. خدا را شکر. چقدر غم انگیز بود اگر او بدون تجربه کردن آن در میگذشت.