Flushing the toxins from my life

[CountingCrows]

O.K...this will probably be way TMI, but it might be something that others could relate to / learn from, so I'm going to share it. Sometimes, I have a tendency to censor my thoughts when writing here. Don't know why, as we're all adults here. Not sure if it's fear of embarrassment, offending, of judgement, or what...but whatever it is, if it's troubling me the way the following is, I need to get it off my chest regardless.

Although I'm heartbroken and soul-trampled, I'm still a red-blooded American male. I still have certain needs that have to be taken care of. The problem is, my brain's arousal zone is still completely controlled by and centered on W. It's been this way for years. Simply put, no other woman does it for me. Even when surfing the vast porn playland that is the Internet, if I don't find someone who has a strong similarity to her, it just doesn't do it for me. When W and I were together, this was a good thing. It helped keep me faithful and true to her for nearly 15 years. But now that she's gone, it makes me a very sexually frustrated man. I haven't had that kind of contact in a long time and on top of it, I can't even be good to me! Get where I'm coming from?

SOooo...I made a HUGE mistake yesterday. S7 went over to the neighbor's house to play with their son in the snow and was going to watch a movie there afterwards. After some mental wrestling with the idea, I retrieved a external USB drive that I have stored in the trunk of my car for the past 3 months and connected it to my computer. On this drive contains 15 years of VERY PRIVATE digital pictures/videos of my wife and me that we collected over the course of our relationship. Scanning through a few folders of pictures, I'm suddenly thinking to myself, "Hey, this thing still works...it's not broke!"

Encouraged, I continued browsing for a few minutes and end up in a folder that included a video shot in complete darkness, but with clear audio. The 3 minute clip was soft, sweet and absolutely beautiful music to my ears. Effective, too. I barely made it to the end. For a few moment, relief...then...a tsunami of absolute DEVASTATION!! It was like experiencing the loss of W for the first time all over again. OMG!!!...tears are running down my face right now, just trying to recount the event. It's so strange how the pics were slightly bittersweet, but hearing her voice...hearing her talk to me...oh, it is just more than my brain could process, it hurts so bad. It made me miss her more than I could ever imagine, and not just physically. It's something MUCH deeper and emotional than that. Somehow, hearing the love, the intimacy, the attraction in her voice...it's much harder than simply seeing a picture and remembering that we were once that way with each other.

I was so glad that I was alone in the house, because I needed 30 minutes to stop the waterworks, and more than a hour before I felt even remotely sane again. Just asking myself, WHY? WHY? WHY? WTF was I thinking?! What made me think that I was even remotely close to being ready for something like that?! Her beautiful words/noises still haunt me like a aroused ghost. I can't stop them from echoing inside my head. I'd rather read through a stack of anniversary cards/letters than go through this!

I feel so much like Woody Harrelson near the end of People Vs. Larry Flynt. STBXW is definitely my Althea...destructive to me, to our relationship, destructive to herself, gone from my life...and yet I'm still completely, madly, unhealthily in love and "addicted" to this woman.

This (very encrypted) external drive and DVD backup set will be going to my best friend's house and into his safe tonight. I don't know if I will ever be in a place when it will be safe to bring it out again, but I know that now is absolutely NOT THE TIME.

Am I alone here? Am I the only sick b@st@rd who has experienced something like this...opened that Pandora's box, only to deeply regret it? Is anyone else cursed by only being aroused by their WAS or their doppleganger? I truly hope and pray that this will change...that someday, when I find someone new that reciprocates the love I feel, my tastes/attractions will change as well.