Increasingly Ungrateful

52 Weeks of Freedom - Week 21

The words “increasingly ungrateful” came to me yesterday during my weekly men’s group. We were openly discussing how porn used to or still does make us feel deep inside - how it transforms us into people we don’t desire to be.

I remember the second after hearing those two words, feeling like a piece of butter being cut with a hot knife. Those words melt me down to the core. Those words reminded me of the past years of a boy lost at sea. A sorry and ungrateful boy spine bent and tied to his phone for navigation, while the north star shimmered in the distance.

Lost in the deep space of the screen instead of witnessing the wonder on the horizon, the infinite and comforting beauty of existence.

To be small in this universe instead of trying and failing to rule my own.

Ungrateful for breath.

Ungrateful for words.

Ungrateful for touch.

Ungrateful for love.

While I thought I was getting somewhere, I really was just drilling down into the abyss of nihilism and addiction.

Instead of that glistening north star as my guide, pixels dusted my mind and clouded my sight.

A fluorescent pit of seduction instead of the natural ascension into the heavenly realm of the real.

The only star constellations I knew started with the letter P.

How ungrateful of me to be consumed by such an unnatural thing.

Failing to be struck by the divine and instead hooked by the phone line.

Gratefulness increasingly becoming a burden on my time with the meal, desperate to pick meat off the bare barb.

Ravenously swiping.

Voraciously biting.

Snapping at the constant distractions of my values like they were competition.

Attacking my faith and honor like a wounded catch blinded by pain.

With each flail sinking the trap tighter.

Unable to stop and catch my breath, chaos ensues in my mind.

The shame and negativity bite deep, the bait becoming the master.

The invisible line stiffens, this reel is ending.

I pray for it to loosen, to be freed from this doom.