Where We've Been

Have you ever looked back on your past? In the modern world most of our pasts are easy to keep track of. Social media keeps a daily log for some of us and for others maybe a journal. If you don’t use either, you at least know your own past within memories you have chosen to hold onto over the years. Memories come packed with emotions, sights, sounds, and smells. Some deliver the feeling of nostalgia that can allow us to remember a life that has since passed on. I want to break this down so we can map out some of the feelings we face in our addiction. Where we have been, what that was like, and how that changed us.

We all have a start to our story, the first time we were exposed to lust and perverseness. Most, if not all, first experience this as a child. A friend, a family member, advertising in public, movies, social media, or even our own innocent curiosity. Something somewhere grabbed ahold of a pathway in our brain and began devouring it as fast as it possibly could.  As we know this addiction often will start gradually, then become a fully grown beast before we realize it and are too late to stop it alone. These moments are where we have been. But what were these like for us?

From my own experience first contact with pornography was taboo, it was wrong, but that’s what made it exciting. My own secret I “could” control. It made me feel good and provided me with a false emotional connection. So what addiction was for me at first, was escape. I thought I had found a freedom in pornography that no one else had or could give me. To others maybe it is pornography or it could be physical relationships. The real face to face with another human may have been satisfying similar feelings, but in a tangible way. The problem with any of the masks sexual addiction wears is just that, it is a mask, it is fake. And why would something that supposedly satisfies you, lie to you? This brings us to how it changes us.

Sexual addiction and lust lie to us, purely so that we must return to it. It changes how we view real people. The family we have, the friends we make, the relationships we try and build. It lies to us and tells us it is the only thing that gives us power in this life. The only was to have a “true” satisfaction. Its aim is to devour our soul and sobriety so that we may not truly discover what real LOVE, looks like. So that it is not abandoned itself.

Sexual addiction changed me in more than one way, and I know you can relate. For me, I became angry, stress and anxiety took over my mental health, confidence in who I was waxed and waned until I felt like I was no good for this world. Addiction all the while whispered in my ear that “Everything is okay, I’ve got you, I love you.” Any relationship I tried to have was overshadowed by a sexual appetite. Good women from good backgrounds were altered by my actions, and myself along with them even further. Apart from this it changed me so that I could not emotionally regulate myself under pressure when there was no escape point. I’d shut down, compromise who I was, and mentally beat and bruise myself for my own foolish actions. Grace and mercy did not exist.

So, after all of this. Where we have been, what that was like, and how it changed us. What does it lead to?

It led you here. At this point in time reading an article of recovery. Where and what we were, is different from where and who we are now. Whether new to recovery or old. Grace and mercy do exist here. We have all made our mistakes, and that cannot be changed now. But we can change how we will go about our future. The choices we make as well as the relationships. It will not be easy, but anything worth fighting for never is.

Take a moment to reflect on the memories you have, but do not them then overwhelm you. Give the painful and the good moments over to God at this time. Let him begin a new work in you.

Gaven F.

A grateful believer in Jesus Christ.