Porn destroyed my life. An addiction that started at age 10.
I'm 26 years old. When I was a kid, I randomly stumbled onto a porn site. I was 10 years old. Believe it or not, I didn't even know what sex was at that point. From that moment on, I've been addicted to porn, and it set off a butterfly effect in my life that turned it into hell. I already have ADHD, and porn does even more damage to a brain like mine. I was an average student, but my grades completely collapsed. The traits of an addictive personality started forming in me from childhood.
During that same period, I went through a lot of trauma, especially from my family. My father was always traveling. My mother was so harsh that I cannot remember her once encouraging me about any achievement in my life. Just constant violence and beating over the smallest things. All of that was the "normal" part.
The part that wasn't normal: she was cheating on my traveling father with my English tutor. Nobody knew but me. I used to overhear their disgusting phone calls. When the tutor finished my lesson, my mom would send me into the bedroom and tell me not to come out at all, just watch cartoons. I'd been suspecting she was cheating on my father but didn't know why. Every time I found evidence I'd lie to myself and not believe it, like I couldn't accept the reality. Until one day I walked in on them in a bad position. I froze in place, locked up, and broke down into a severe crying fit and shock. Every day I kept dreaming about it. She cried and told me it was the last time, and the tutor left. But she was a liar. It wasn't the last time, nothing changed. She started treating me well during that period so I wouldn't tell my father when he came back from his trip. She changed for two days only, then went back to being filthier and harsher than before. And this wasn't even her first affair. Literally from the moment I knew the internet, she was cheating on my dad and talking to men on Yahoo back in the day.
All of this when I was 10 years old. I never told this to anyone until right now, to protect the family and my younger siblings. I was scared a separation would happen between my parents. I don't know why, but I always loved her, was affectionate with her, did anything just to make her accept me or smile at me, to feel I'd done something right. I was literally her dog. Even though we were rich, she was always depriving me of everything. I don't know why I treated her like that. Someone like her should have died a long time ago. I regret not telling my father at the time.
Ever since that moment, something strange has been happening to me and I don't know what. I can't form friendships, I can't study. Every time I try to focus, I find myself remembering that scene and the things that were happening. I feel rage and sit talking to myself as if I'm talking to her. I started living in daydreams constantly. I went into a period of severe depression.
When I grew up a little and reached adolescence, I started smoking, then weed and alcohol, and any drug presented to me, I wouldn't say no. I stayed in this state for years. My life was completely destroyed and full of different types of addiction. All my friends went to good colleges and were achieving successes in their lives, except me, who was stuck in place, if not going backwards.
When I reached 22, I had hit rock bottom. I decided to change my life, and I actually quit cigarettes, weed, and any other drug I was taking. All of this took a long time with us, and a lot of relapses. But the one thing I can't get rid of is the porn addiction. Even though I got rid of those other addictions, my life is still destroyed. No friends, living in isolation, always blaming my mother for what she did to me. The problem is she's still blaming me and tearing me apart to this day. Every now and then she reminds me how much of a failure I am. I hate that woman with everything in me. I wish she had never been in my life.
My siblings are all in good colleges, engineers, and I'm the only one who's lost and my life is a mess. She always puts me in comparisons with my engineer brother until I started to hate him. Our family is fractured to begin with. Everyone is on their own, nobody knows anything about the other's life. My brother and I don't even talk, like we're neighbors, not siblings.
This is my story in short. I don't know the cause of my life's destruction. The addiction, my mother, or the ADHD. I'm 26, still addicted to porn, never been with a girl in my entire life, didn't even have the courage to talk to one. A failure, drowning in addiction. The guys I went to school with, one became a pilot, one started a business, one became an officer, one got married and has kids. And me, I'm exactly where I am, not moving.