I'm 24 years old. I'm married to a gorgeous wife and father to a beautiful 19month old genius of a daughter. I have everything I've ever wanted in life, but I am weighed down my sin.

It started when I was 11 or 12. Some friends told me about sex (the little they knew) and showed me some pictures. Ever since that day, my main focus has been about sex. I hid it very well, even in the beginning. No one knew about my obsession with sex and pleasure. I was masturbating before my body could even produce semen. I wanted to learn more.

Since the most easily obtained information on sex(to a child, at least) is pornographic, my idea of sex grew into that of what the industry was selling: pure pleasure. I fantasized about things that I really didn't understand.

About the time I turned 15, I started to use the internet to meet a growing passion for lust. I would look at pictures and videos. It captivated me. The pure pleasure and enjoyment these people were getting from these acts drew me in. I wondered what it felt like to be desired by so many, and so I started to talk with others about me pleasing them. I wanted to feel others desiring me. I was soon posing as a girl in order to get guys to show that type of attention.

When I was 16, I got a car. This opened up new opportunities to delve deeper into my need to be desired. I began to go to the local park where men would have anonymous sex with each other. The older men seemed to love me since I was younger, and I got my first real taste of what it's like to be truly lusted after. This was like a drug for me. I wasn't even attracted to men, but was so wanton for that feeling, that I'd do anything they wanted of me. This progressed to where I would go home with men I met at the park or online, and they would do things that were degrading to me as a person.

I knew it was bad and wrong, and disgusting, but I couldn't stop. I don't remember how hard I tried, but, in hingsight, I was already too far deep to quit on my own. I did try to stop though. During these periods, I would still chat online( as a girl, so that I could still feel that lust), and justified it because I wasn't actually doing it in person. All the while, I have my 'real' life that I lead too.

Oh I had a normal life, in which I hung out with friends and dated women. However, I found it hard to trust or respect women after I had slept with them. My exploration into the world of lust had jaded my outlook with me even realizing it(only recently did I make the connection). I viewed them as myself and unconsciously through my anger and resent that I had for myself onto them. I did this for years, never becoming seriously involved with any woman. In fact, I found it very hard to even be friends with most women. I slept with woman after woman so that I wouldn't go back to the online and other thing (its still hard to say). It would work for a perioud of time, and then when I would hit a dry spell with women, I'd be compelled to get my fix through gay men that wanted me. This continued until I was 20 years old.

At the age of 20, I was in the army and deployed over to Iraq. A mortar round hit our room while me and my roommate were sleeping. He was on the top bunk and I was on the bottom. He died (God bless him. He was a good man and know thats he's with God) and I was severely injured. I was taken out of the country unconscience. I woke up at Walter Reed hospital with some major injuries. A few days after waking up, I had a dream.

Now some would say it's just a dream, while others would say it was the medication. During my dream I was shown something I'll never forget. I stood at the gates of Hell. I felt fear and despair like I had never known. I looked down into an abyss that was absent of everything good. There were these 'creatures' that were doing what looked to be patrols around the abyss. Like they were catching strays. It was the most intense fear in the world that I felt. I was thrashing and yelling in my body during my time there. I couldnt get away, but I was only there for seconds. My thrashing and yelling ceased and I came back from the hole of despair by my mom who had been trying to hold me down, and an old irish catholic priest. I couldn't understand him his accent was so thick, but when he prayed over me, I was brought back. More than that, I felt a calm over me as he prayed.
None of it made sense to me at first.

It wasn't until a few days later that I started to really feel the guilt for the things I've done. All of it, it was like a fraction of what I felt at the gate, but I knew it for what it was. Jesus had given me a warning.

I knew that if I had died instead of my friend that I would've been in Hell for all eternity, and it would've been my choice too. For throwing God's laws into his face and slandering everything he had given me in life, I would have deserved no less.

I confessed my promiscuity and using of women to my own mother and begged the Lord's forgiveness with her. I was so ashamed of myself and vowed to heed this miraculous event. I felt comforted that God had spared me and cared so much as to give me a very personal warning. This lasted just a few short months.

I wasn't even healed yet before it started again. All the piety was gone, replaced by other, more wordly, feelings again. And so I fell back into my old pattern again. But I did commit to one thing from that warning I was so blessed to recieve and so evil to throw away, a desire to respect and love a woman.

Just a year or so later, I met my future wife. Now my 'pattern' never left. It ebbed and flowed like the tides, but was always there. She was my normal, real life. Lust was my secret life. The guilt was always there, but I felt...better when around her. Perhaps it was the genuine, true love I felt. Or maybe she was like a life preserver thrown to a castaway at sea, clinging to anything to stay alive. I still dont know for sure. Either way I couldn't hang on to both and live. I had to go one way or another.

My wife and I had a baby soon after. She's is so beautiful and smart I can hardly believe it. The love that I feel for her is so pure, I can hardly imagine the kind of love that God has for us. That an evil wretch like me can still be loved by Him, after everything I've done, is a miracle in itself. And so my daughter gave me new hope.

Since then, the pattern hasn't stopped, but my motivation to fight it has increased exponentially. My wife has started a 12 step program for alcoholism. She still struggles, but she is doing exceptionally well. She has given me the courage to seek help for my own vices, and to pursue it. This is my first step. I am confessing all of my journey off of the chosen path. I've never confessed everything before. Always been too ashamed of it, but this already has felt good. Maybe I'll confess everything to her when she gets back. Thats the goal. Will she think im disgusting? Will she leave me? I can hardly blame her for either one, she has total justification to do it. I can only hope and pray that my struggle will not be passed down to my baby. I have to stop the cycle now, before it's too late.



Sorry it's so long, and thank you if you've read it all. I hope this might help someone, but I know it's helped me already.

God bless you.