Another noob

Hello all, not sure where I rank as far as age, but I feel like an old fart looking over some of the intros. Oh well, better late then never, I guess.

Broke up with (actually dumped by) a woman several months ago and have been doing a lot of soul searching. Went from blame and anger to shame to acceptance, which has led me here out of all places. Just realizing that I have been dishonest with myself (and others, as a result) and have been avoiding and neglecting myself. I mean, what kind of self-care strategy is jerking off? I does work, it takes my mind off things, but it also brings a lot of shame with it, and I'd like to be able to stop using porn and replace it with something like meditation.

Interesting tidbit pertaining to sex and shame, and I don't know where it falls into this puzzle, but I remember being young, maybe around 10 and looking over a book of art illustrations; I enjoyed drawing back then, spent a lot of my days doing that, mostly war-related stuff, with burning buildings, tanks, infantry and all that good stuff. Anyway, I used a semitransparent paper to trace a figure of a nude woman and must have left the paper out in the open. Sometime later, my grandmother, who was visiting caused a huge ruckus, yelling and screaming, shaming whoever decided to do such a thing. I just sat where I was, learning that women, sex, nudity was bad, bad, bad. Thanks, grandma, may you rest in peace.

Oh, I''m 40, by the way.

 

Thanks, guys.