The Core of Pain

 

Image by Holger Langmaier from Pixabay

Those who know my story or have been reading this blog for any amount of time will know that I am an addict. My drug of choice is porn. That addiction dragged me to some dark places, and I ended up in Federal prison where I am now.

We all have a hurt, a God-shaped scar on our soul. A piece of us that is hollowed out. As children we looked to our family to fill that void and heal the scar. Our caregivers usually meant well, but often their best intentions still left us wounded. It is an unfortunate reality that in most cases our parents and siblings are broken themselves and instead of pouring ointment into the gash, they poured in salt and vinegar. They loved us and wanted the best for us, but their love is still a fractured gift, it may have been genuine, but it was still tainted.

For others of us, those caregivers abandoned us, or worse, tormented us further. Opening the wound even deeper.

So, we looked to our friends to make us whole, and we found some comfort there. But often we were met with rejection and insults, and rather than stitching the lacerations, they ripped them open further.

This wound festers and grows, hollowing us out more and more, leaving us emptier and more desperate, with an aching hunger deep inside. We needed something, anything, to alleviate the pain in our souls. We searched desperately for some sort of medicine to escape our pain.

We looked to the left and right, and there was no one. In front and behind we only found more emptiness and disappointment. We learned that we are on our own to meet our needs. We can't trust our families or friends. They either caused the pain, they wouldn't understand, or they would just make the situation worse. We wouldn't want to bother them anyway; they have their own problems to deal with.

And so, we turn to porn and masturbation to salve our pain. We want to escape the sorrow. We need comfort, peace, and rest, and porn gave us just that. But porn is a terrible medicine. It heals nothing and, in the end, only makes things worse. It is an analgesic, it is effective at temporarily relieving our pain, but the injury still remains.

Porn numbs the pain so we can endure the wound for a while, but the pain always returns because we have not addressed the core of our pain. We have not dealt with the trauma that the roots of our addiction are soaking in.

When I was a teenager, I would ride my bike home from school and find an empty house. My mom was home, but was shut up in her room, leaving me with unsupervised, unfiltered internet access, and it did not take me long to find that drug of choice.

Whatever loneliness, frustration, anger, fear I felt all washed away as I typed and clicked my way into oblivion. Whatever sorrow or pain I felt was quickly extinguished. It was wonderful. Until it wasn't.

For a long time, I believed that porn was its own thing. It was a bad habit, something I could quit if I just had enough willpower and focus. If I wanted to bad enough, I could overcome it.

That never worked.

No matter how many resolutions I made, no matter how determined I was, how much self-control I mustered, porn came back time and time again.

I had to learn that there were wounds in my heart, which led to false beliefs and lies that I had believed, and until I addressed those wounds, until I found healing for those deep, inner hurts, I would keep going back to porn.

I tried to fill the emptiness in my heart by pouring porn into it, and no matter how much I poured, I could never be filled, I was only left emptier, drier, and desolate. Porn was my analgesic, it numbed my pain for a while, but it only infected my wounds and made them fester and grow, spreading through my whole being and life.

How do we address those wounds? We will look at that next time.

Inspirational and Spiritual Greeting Cards and Prints covering a variety of topics including God's Word, Love, Christmas, and Recovery: https://www.etsy.com/shop/desperatejoy