I am the broken ashamed man

 Everything fell apart.  I'm mentally not well.  I made a mistake, and then some more.  And because I failed at addressing it as I grew up, people are suffering now.  A baby is going to miss a chance at a good happy life now.  I messed up so badly and so many people are hurting because I did.  Because I'm not good enough.

When I was a teenager, I knew I wanted a relationship.  I just didn't understand how to connect with a girl.  And I grew to believe that women were not interested in me.  I turned to porn.  And at the time, torrent was pretty new and I was just learning about it.  I searched for videos.  And I managed to find a set of 4 videos of a young girl... too young.  I'm estimating but I think I was in my early to mid 20s.  And I saw the videos... and... they aroused me.  It feels disgusting saying that now, but it's what happened.  And I saved the videos.

What I should have done was take those files to the police right then and there.  Maybe they could have helped that poor girl.  Maybe they could have found her and helped her.  Hindsight.  I didn't understand at the time.  I just didn't know.

Over time as I replaced computers and backed things up to external drives, I lost track of those files.  I forgot they existed.  But I was still heavily dependent on porn.  Nothing illegal... just young-looking actresses.  Not always.  But a lot.  And I was saving as much as I could.  I'm a hoarder.  I draw comfort from knowing I have stuff saved... even if I never see it again.

For roughly 2 decades I was single and lived alone for most of it.  And I still didn't have a clue about relationships.  When my current wife found me, she was already a friend, and I think that was the thing I didn't understand.  Women are people... I should have been hoping to meet people I have things in common with... people I can just spend time with and have it feel natural instead of feeling like I have to perform to earn attention.

At some point early on, my wife found some of the pictures of younger looking girls.  And she explained to me how that hurt her.  The next lesson I should have internalized better.  Prior to that conversation I didn't understand how porn could hurt a relationship.  Making my wife feel like she isn't what I want.  I deleted everything that was on the current computer.  But I didn't go through the electronics in the basement... those old drives that had been collecting.

Years later, and life is full of stress.  Twin children.  And a foster baby that I desperately want to give a good life to.  So many jobs that I hated.  Trying to contribute to chores and projects and keeping the house and family running and feeling like the only things that I had time for were mobile games and collecting pictures... My stress coping mechanism was pictures and videos.  I hadn't managed to change that.  I knew that if my wife understood how much I was saving, it would hurt her emotionally, but keeping it hidden meant in my head that I could still use it as a way to feel okay for just a few minutes in a life that I was drowning in.

The masturbation fantasies around the pictures... I had to explain why someone so young would be interested in me.  Why it was "okay" for that situation to be happening.  How I would have met them.  Or how I could accept it for the fantasy.  I'll be really clear here and say that the thoughts have never and will never translate to reality.  I understand that those thoughts are seriously unhealthy and that acting on a real-world situation like that would be emotionally and psychologically harmful to a girl.  But the fantasies in my head... they're not okay.

I brought one of those old drives up to my computer and copied the files onto my laptop, thinking I could go through them and see if anything was worth keeping.  Some totally normal stuff like old writings from when I was younger, but I knew there was likely porn on the drive.  What I didn't know was that it was a drive with the set of inappropriate files on it.  And I copied it into a cloud backup folder.  The next day, they cancelled my account.  And I was terrified.  It was my next set of mistakes.

I should have gone straight to the police again.  But I was scared and I hoped it would amount to nothing.  I should have told my wife.  It would have hurt her.  And that's why I didn't tell her I think, but I still should have.  I should have told her how much I was drowning and told her the mistake I had made.  I didn't.  I deleted the files and hoped to never have to think about them again.

In October, the police raided my house.  All my electronics were taken.  I didn't have a way to communicate with anyone.  I lost my job because the police took and kept my work computer.  I love that job and the people I worked with.  The foster people took the foster baby away.  Understandable, but it hurts so much that I failed her.  Child protective services told me I can't even communicate with my kids because of the nature of the investigation.  And I'm staying with my parents... because I hurt my wife so much.  And she's really been so much kinder that I likely deserve.  Kinder than I think I deserve now anyway.  I don't know what the future holds, but whether she lets me into her life again or not, I will always support her.  I owe her so much and in this time of reflection I have only confirmed just how much I love her.  Why wasn't that love enough to overcome that stupid coping mechanism?  I don't know.  But the therapy I'm getting back into is going to focus a lot on that and how to build myself better.

The police are still investigating me.  They told me that they're looking for criminal activity.  To see if I create and distribute that... uh... I can't settle on a word that sounds genuine and which I can bring myself to use... that illegal material?  And to see if I have ever had sexual contact with a minor.  I am not a content creator/distributor and I have not and never would hurt a child that way (or any way).  I would protect children.  Any child.  I'd risk my life to protect children.  I know and am confident that I am not a danger to anyone in the real-world.  I just need to figure out to fix my mindscape.  To fix how I deal with stress.

I'm not sure what conclusion this essay has.  Maybe it's just me venting like I would to a journal, but I'm posting this story to my blog.  Some part of me has thought I should record some videos of me talking... about my sickness.  I know people will hate me if they know.  But how can I move forward at all if I don't face the problem?  Maybe this essay is for people who have a similar sickness.  My advice to you is to ask for help.  Maybe you are clever and strong enough to fix yourself, but if you're hiding and feeling scared... find a therapist and ask for help.  My previous experience with therapy was a good one, but I was never brave enough to ask for help with this particular issue of porn addiction and liking younger-looking actresses.  I should have been.  It's another one of my failures.  I should have asked for help.

This set of events has blown up my life and the lives of my family.  It's a bad thing that hurts so much.  But maybe it was the only way to make me face my problems.  So, maybe my last piece of advice is to not wait until everything explodes.  Face the demons.  Ask for help now.  I'm sorry.  One more.  Don't give up.  I've thought about harming myself.  I don't think much of myself at this point.  Giving up has appeal.  But my kids deserve so much better.  I'll face whatever consequences I have to for my failures.  I'm not robbing them of their dad.  I'll do anything for them.  And I hope I can find a way to help the foster daughter I want to adopt.  I suspect I won't be allowed and it might be too much for my family to carry, but I don't want to fail her.  There are people I refuse to give up on.  I'm going to keep trying, even if it hurts me.  Don't give up.

The difference between sympathy and empathy as I understand them

Both sympathy and empathy are about feeling concern, care, understanding, and wanting to support a person who is going through something unfortunate and/or unpleasant. The difference as I understand it is that a person who has never experienced that situation themselves can only feel sympathy while a person who has gone through it themselves will feel empathy.

For example, John's dog just passed away. Eric never had a pet before but he understands that losing one is tragic and so he feels sympathy for John. Mark had a dog pass away a year ago, and so he knows exactly what John is feeling. Mark feels empathy for John.

Saying, "I have sympathy for you", is saying that you care, but admit that you don't have the experience to feel what they're feeling. In some cases that might be the more respectful thing to say because the person suffering might believe in that moment that no one can truly understand. Empathy would seem like presumption.

The super rich are the cause of all of humanity's problems

On an individual level, the super rich affect all of us. They require us to work around 40 hours per week to earn a wage that is not enough to live on. They own the huge companies that set the standard on everything. Consider Jeff Bezos. Sure, he created Amazon, but does that mean that the profit that the company produces should have gone 95% to him and 5% to the employees? I made up that percentage, but think about how many billions of dollars Jeff Bezos has and then remember that Amazon paid its shipping people little enough that there were stories of some living in their cars. He created the company so he got to decide, but what he decided is arguably evil. In fact... I'm asserting that Jeff Bezos and every other billionaire is evil.

Let me remind you what a billion is. It's really hard to picture it just based on the word. And the time example is helpful so I'll use it again...

• Thousand: 1,000 seconds = 16.67 minutes
• Million: 1,000,000 seconds = 11.57 days
• Billion: 1,000,000,000 seconds = 31.71 YEARS

... so, when someone has a billion dollars, compared to someone that has one million... they're doing unecessarily well.

Keeping that in mind, the owners of these companies that are deciding where the money goes would have none of that money without the people working for them. Their companies don't function without the employees. The employees are generating that profit. That money is from the labor provided by the employees. The owners and CEO's of companies have tricked us into thinking we're lucky to have a job at all. It's actually that they're lucky we haven't woken up to the financial abuse we're suffering at their hands.

Let's use some more numbers. Last I checked (in May of 2024) the AVERAGE CEO is making 16.7 million dollars per year in the United States. Their average employee is making approximately 61,400 dollars per year. That's a ratio of 272 to 1. Is the CEO worth 272 of the company's employee? If you removed the CEO, would the company have any trouble at all? If you removed 272 of those average employees do you think the company would function differently? I think so. Other employees trying to pick up that slack would mean burnt out employees who are still being paid too little while the company is claiming that it's operating costs are down so their stock goes up.

How many households now require multiple jobs to live paycheck to paycheck? We're not talking about living a comfortable life that affords us vacations and some frivolous spending. We're talking about barely surviving AND having to spend the bulk of our waking hours tending to our jobs or survival needs like eating, buying groceries, and doing chores at home. This situation is not how our lives should be. Wait... that's worth saying bigger...

This is NOT how our lives should be.

The only life we know that we get is this one. Through whatever trick of chemistry we are thinking beings that have hope and can feel joy. Life is NOT meant to be spent laboring so that someone else can have billions of dollars while we give too much time and energy for a pittance. We should have money enough to be comfortable for the work we do and we should have enough time left over to spend it with family and friends and traveling to experience more of the world. And it CAN work that way. The billionaires just need to stop being selfish pieces of garbage. Or government needs to step in and protect the people they're supposed to protect instead of the billionaires.

A 24 hour work week for maybe 6 hours per day, 4 days per week would mean more time on those work days for normal folks to handle the needs of those days, and we get a 3 day weekend every week. The time spent working is less, so perhaps the employer is hiring a second person at the same rate. So, they're paying double what they were before, for the same amount of work completed. That's okay. Let's do a little more math...

• Let's say we have a company of 300 people where the owners are getting 60 million to split between them; the Chief Level officers are getting 40 million to split between them; and the employees account for 20 million.
• The company is paying out 120 million in total between 300 people and that puts the revenue per employee at 400,000 which is pretty good according the searching I just did.
• We need to double the number of normal employees to cover the work the company needs, so lets add 270 for a total of 570 employees.
• If we now split the profit evenly... EVERYONE at the company is making 210,526 dollars per year. The people making ~61,000 per year are now appropriately paid and only have to spend 24 hours per week on their jobs.
• We can massage that a little so upper management gets a little more... like 300,000 per year. And the owners can have a little more. Maybe employees end up with 180 to 200 thousand a year instead of 210 thousand. But this way... a company could be genuinely good. And EVERYONE involved has plenty of money. The millionaires and billionaires might be unhappy they don't get to have their ridiculous and unnecessary amounts of wealth, but they would have plenty to live a genuinely good life. And literally hundreds of other people just in their company would get to have good lives too.

Now imagine if all the big companies pulling in millions or billions of dollars ran that way. More people employed and hundreds of millions of people able to afford to live comfortably and happy. Able to spend back into the economy. Able to enjoy this one life we get. How much less crime would there be? How many fewer people would give in to stress and depression? How many fewer people would lash out because they can't take it anymore? How many wars would no longer need to be fought? If we could just smack down those selfish idiot billionaires who run the world, literally EVERYTHING gets better.

What about jobs where you kind of have to work 40 or more hours per week? What job are you thinking of? Doctors? Nurses? What if the healthcare system was fixed so that it wasn't dependent on you having a job to have coverage? Healthcare costs go down. Pharmaceutical companies get severely limited so they can't charge stupid prices for the medicines and costs go down. Operating costs for hospitals go down and the owners aren't allowed to try to make millions off of healthcare. The staff of the hospital gets paid more and there are twice as many to cover the time. Medical professionals get to be less stressed and have more time to recover.

Teachers? What if teachers only had to work 4 days a week, and there were twice as many of them? Smaller class sizes mean less time outside of school hours they have to spend grading student work and preparing for the next day. Higher pay means teachers don't have to take second jobs to survive. Seems like this should work for Teachers.

Why isn't this happening? Why can't we make this happen? Everyone's lives would be better. But billionaires are straight up selfish evil.