“The act of vulnerability is a leap of faith, as sometimes love is.” – Drue Metz

“Lust”

Fiction. Based on a True Struggle With Lust

By K.E.A

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional

It burrows its way into your mind, trailing warm fire through the pit of your stomach. It sinks lower, setting a low heat underneath your skin. You handle the fire in your flesh, wanting more.
But you withdraw from it, feeling the guilt and shame of the thoughts, the lust that creeps in from the mind down into the body. The curiosity of youth created a plague, dark vines you haven’t been able to untangle yourself from. You didn’t understand what it was you were searching for, the dangers of the answers you sought after with your young mind. You couldn’t have known that it would haunt you to this day.

Visual porn. Words that stoked your sexual cravings. No one told you why it was wrong, only that it wasn’t talked about. No one explained how it would warp your perceptions of yourself and others.

You only knew your desire for knowledge and to feel. Some part of you knew it was wrong, but you still waded into waters you were never meant to step into.

Now, you struggle against the flare-ups. You don’t seek sexual content out, but it’s ingrained into your imagination that it doesn’t take much to send your mind wandering down those dark paths. Sometimes you’ll be scrolling through social media and something will appear, derailing you. One thought will smash through those walls you’ve tried to build up to guard your heart. A TV scene or a passage in a book will stir up the temptations, and you’re left having to fight against the thing you thought was subdued.

Even the word lust itself is such a sharp word, so small yet so deadly in its ability to cut into the soul and corrupt. It hisses and slithers like a serpent, whispering poison into your mind.

More often than not, you still look, and always regret later.

And no one knows about your struggle with lust. You never told anyone, and the few you did either didn’t listen or understand why it was a struggle for you. So, you’ve never laid that part of your shame out. You fear what they will say, how they’ll look at you once they know. You know to gouge out the eye that wanders lustfully, but you have nothing left to tear out. Even in blindness, you can’t erase the images locked in your head or escape the double-edged sword that is your creative imagination.
The tension continues to build, begging for some sort of release. Giving in to the demons or finally escaping. There has to be some sort of lobotomy to burn out the sin, some way to fry away the memories. It seems to always be there, that shadow that is waiting to be triggered by something that would be harmless to others. You hate yourself for falling back into the cycle, hate how people can so easily be debased by your weakness. And they have no idea it’s even happened. It feels like dragging heavy chains through water.
God, you just want relief.