Failed for 5 Years - Finally Beat It - On Day 11

Hello NoFap Community - this will be my first post. I see so many records of people doing weeks / months / even years PMO free, so maybe this doesn't mean much to inspire others.

I'm really doing this for myself, to reflect and write down what I feel so proud of and to continue to motivate myself to become normal.

I started to PMO when i was in elementry school, I had been physically abused and it led me down this habit to cope with stress and affection. I didn't really know how else to feel connected and this habit began to consume my day to day. I'd PMO multiple times a day, 3-5, and sometimes more depending on the situation or my personal life. I did a search early on while I noticed i was beginning to slip into this habit, but found so poor advice on the web about how this was extremely normal for teenagers to be having these habits. The web is full of crap advice like this, and i guess having a self reinforcing bias, i believed it. I actually searched it up again a few years after that first instance of research and again, came across the same crappy advice that if i google 'healthy number of times to masturbate' or ' is masturbating xyz times normal' then Yahoo Answers pops up or some webmd crap pops up saying its biologically fine.

I didn't know the damage this caused me until i met my first SO. The first time we had sex, it was a moment I will never forget because of the connection and the want to be together, but it was marred by how I could not ejaculate. My body did not understand what it meant to have sex, it couldn't figure out that I could do such a thing and feel good and what was normal was now foreign and strange to me. No matter how long or how I tried, i couldn't do it. Everytime I had sex afterwards, i never ended with O. I mean, i loved being with my partner, but I could never get myself to O. My partners didn't mind, but as I went through my next relationship, I wanted to know what does it really mean to O. I began hating not being able to, felt ashamed I couldn't, and continued to feed my habbit because I was scared something was wrong. Now this desire grew even strong to PMO, I had further reason to need to validate I'm normal, to feel good, because I couldn't any other way. I began relying on it when I was stressed, when i was sad, when I was down. So now, it has gotten to a point where I couldn't even feel excited when I'm with my partner, it's as if I'm numb. Like many of the individuals here, I felt so low, felt embarassed, ashamed. So i tried to stop. I tried to quit.

I read that stopping could help, but there was no medical gurantee. There was none of the hard proof I neded, I did not find 'nofap'. I did not read the stories here. I kept seeing mixed signals of how it's not possible to fix, how it could be just a psychological issue, how I might need surgery and all the crap you could find on the web. This doubt, constantly prevented me from success. It prevented me from being able to find the truth and in the back of my mind, I never believed it, nor did I truly want it enough. Because PMO felt so good. I couldn't stop. Even as I write to you now, I know, as I think back, of how AMAZING it feels to PMO. So now, I will tell you how I overcame my failure. How things turned for me, and what were those KEY points in which things began to change.

step 1; I got professional help; After ending my last relationship with my 4th SO, I wanted to make changes to myself. I sought out a local mentor group / rehabilitation group and got in touch with the speaker at one of the circles. I began seeing him and joining the communes once a week / two weeks. We didn't talk about PMO, we talked about life, about habbits, about being a good person. It helped me heal as a person from the scars of my childhood and my past. It taught me the power of resilience, of self control, of self love, of empathy, of desire. I didn't even realize it was okay to have things you want emotionally from others until this. I shared stories about my past, learnt from others, learnt from myself, cried and was leaned on and built some real relationships. I pushed myself in the real world to make friends and begin to have people I cared about. I reconnected with my parents, and fixed things in my life that were long over due. This took over 2 years.
step 2; try & fail. But try again. x100
During this time, i tried many times to kick the habits of pmo, I would try to change my technique, I told myself i would wean myself off PMO, it would gradually grow to nothing if i slowed / changed. These were all just excuses I made. I didn't want to face the hard truth and accept I needed to stop. I couldn't give it up, it meant too much to me, I needed it, my body needed it, my mind needed it. Or at least thats what I kept thinking. So during this time, I would try, and fail. I would try everything I could, but I failed. Then I began to try to stop just P, separated them. THen just M. Then just O. I tried many combinations, I don't know it for sure, but maybe this taught my body and mind that they are all separate, and that I don't need them even if it's individually I don't.
Step 3. I think. I do.
doing the right thing is hard, I realize. It's hard and painful, and it sucks to tell yourself no every freaking single time. I have a habit of edging, it leads to M, then P/O. I learned that from trying to stop. Along the way, i read in a novel of how someone always did the right thing even in difficult situations. The wisest words were, I first chose to do the right thing, then I do the right thing. I may fail to do it, but I have made a choice and will follow that choice. All along, i've been just trying to do something that I DID NOT want to do. I never chose to do the right thing, and that's why i kept failing. I now choose to stop. I choose to do what's right, but because I've accepted and chose to do this out of my own discretion, I will follow the right path.
Step 4. Get sick. Get Busy.
My 11 day journye really started when I popped my shoulder. I was out of commission for a few days, and that helped start me on the right path. I got really busy after I came back having to catch up on life and didn't have time. So my real journey got a 3-4 day bump. I built confidence during that time, and I continued to let it snowball. I'm now on my 11 day mark, and it's a small step, but for me it's one giant step.
step 5. Set a goal
My goal, well my goal is to keep going until the next time I get intimate with another person. I have someone that I'm seeing that I'm really excited and happy to be with, but I'm waiting until the right moment before being with them. I won't be doing anything until then, and I plan to not go back to PMO even after. This goal motivates me, I want to know what it feels like to connect and really be with someone at the most intimate moment.

Thank you if you read my story, I appreciate your time If this helped you, please let me know how. If you have questions, please ask.