The start of a journey

Hey all of you, I don't really know how to start this so I'm just going to do it by explaining how I ended up joining this community today.

My name is Kevin and I'm 23 years old.
I have been using porn for half of my life now basically.
In the beginning, as many others expierenced it too, I didn't think too much of it, because there weren't any other big worries in my life at that time.
No big thoughts, no consequences.
I was into playing video games a lot, like many others too and just lived day by day, as is normal to a degree for a guy that age I guess.
I guess the time when I started questioning the type of behavior you have when watching porn and masturbating regularly was around the same time period that I experienced depression for the first time.

Let's see how I can put this into a simple and short explanation: In addition to having low self esteem and some degree of social anxiety that comes with PMO'ing, I had an aesthetic blemish (I don't know if there's an english word for that, but its basically when your sternum is kind of sunken in a bit and it was reeeeeeeally bothering me at that time and that age, because I felt like I wasn't good enough and yadayadayada, not anymore though.)

Long story short I had a pretty major surgery at age 18 and a difficult time to go through in which I actually took a break from school and I was on antidepressants for a while, which actually helped, I felt like.

After that time, there was another period where I basically fell back into my old habits, doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft and PMO'ing regularly, but without too much of an aftermath.

There is a lot that I can't talk about in a single introduction thread concerning my parents and the overall situation because it would be to much but let me just say that I moved out of my parents place because there's tension there as well, health wise and socially, which I felt I needed to get away from to clear my own head.

It worked out okay (it was only for roughly a year anyway)

After getting my A-Levels, I wanted to travel the world a bit before starting a job, as so many people do, so I did. Went to Australia for about a half year (in which I had difficult times as well, but managed somehow) and after coming back I applied for my new job which took a while.

I can't actually remember how I felt in general at that time, it just went by I guess.
At this time I lived with my parents again because I knew that I had to live somewhere else for a year monday till friday with the new job I wanted to take, so having my own place for only weekends seemed too expensive.

By that time I was around 22 and the new job was going to start soon.
Everything went pretty well, I had a minor depressive phase of about 2 weeks (I guess just adapting to the new living conditions) and then it went away, I reckon because the job involved me being away from home living with 2 other cool guys in a room and basically my whole class in the same building near the school, kinda like college.
So I had no other worries than to perform somewhat well on the new job, or the school part atleast, which covers the first year of it.

At that time, again, I was basically PMO'ing regularly because my life seemed to be just fine.

Fastforward to now, I did pretty well for the first part of the job which is basically only school and now I'm back home, working in my hometown, but still living with my parents because I need to go back to school for another half year when I'm done with my 1 year "internship" to write my finals.

Now, to answer the question why I joined today:

I'm having a difficult time again since the day I started my internship and I realised that there's just a lot of things that I need to work on in my life, one of them being my porn-addiction, my ability to make friends and to actively plan my free time.

One big worry that furthers the latent depression I have right now, is that in my job, I will most definitely be fired when I talk open about it.
I will observe my feelings and listen to my body in the upcoming days, weeks and months and shouldn't the feeling subside I'll consider seeing a professional on my own money, so the health insurance doesn't know.
By the way, I would be thankful for any of your own coping mechanisms that you practice when having a difficult time mentally!

Since the first problems occured and today, there have been a few encounters with girls/women, mostly short-term flings that only happened when I was in a good spot in life, just as additional information.
So I haven't had a really serious relationship yet.

I hope that together, in this community, we can battle difficult life situations even outside porn-addiction!

My goals are to not watch porn ever again and to not masturbate for atleast 90 days to put myself in a mentally and emotionally stable place and see what's next on my self-improvement journey!

So in the upcoming weeks and months there will be challenges for me concerning:

- My (un)healthy routines that I'll try to install in my life
- Living conditions (Should I move out to clear my head like I already did once?)
- Deciding about seeking professional help on my own dime
- Creating space for healing and rest but also for social interaction in my free time (battling the negative emotions with endorphins!)

Sorry for the ultra long read, but for those who might have similar expieriences, I felt like it might be interesting and calming to know that there's more people like you.

Cheers, Kevin.

PS: Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes, English isn't my first language!