My body still quivers when I reflect on our past. I can picture him lurking behind a Stanley tree, quietly watching, as I run through the green and let the daffodils stroke my fingertips. I imagine him watching me as I grip the steel chains on a playground swing and kick my feet in the air trying to touch the clouds with my toes. I wonder if he was there when I held my Mother’s hand and patiently waited for instructions from the green man. How he managed to slither his way into my home, past the watchful eyes of my parents will forever amaze me.

I was an innocent deer, quenching my thirst at a watering hole, unaware of the cheetah’s watchful eyes. If I had known, I would have been more vigilant and cautious. He hunted me, he plunged his teeth into my neck and robbed me of the life I was purposed for. I tried to channel the power of a tsunami and fight for my life, I pleaded and I prayed, but his force overpowered me. Silence fell like a single tear drop from heaven, and as I exhaled for the last time, the life that God Himself had created for me, vanished.

The more he visited my home, the more he became part of my family and my undeveloped, child-like mind fell into an ocean-deep love affair with him. We would meet in secret, once the sun had hidden its face from us and we’d dance all night to the beat of our iniquity. I was too young to understand that he manipulated his way into my heart. He knew he gave me a high no street pharaoh could sell me and he exploited that monopoly. He studied me, he knew how to make me feel like a Princess when I was with him and a Pauper any time we were apart. He made an absolute mockery of my mind and body, but I somehow developed an appetite for him. I lived in a hazy paradoxical world where I loved him and loathed him all at the same time. His pain brought me pleasure but my pleasure brought me shame. I found myself drowning in a sea of confusion just trying to stay afloat.

It was both comforting and devastating when I found out I was not his only victim, I would read in the paper how he had infiltrated generations of families, and congregations in synagogues and churches. I remember one morning placing my fractured spectacles on the bridge of my nose, standing in front of a full length mirror, and watched as it shattered under the weight of secrecy and shame. I was just trying to understand who I was becoming but he made it so difficult for me.

What should have been a natural exploration of my sexuality was expedited. He had personally severed my head from my body. My mind and my flesh had been forcibly separated and my morals no longer walked hand in hand with my soul, they too had been brutally hacked apart. But the tragedy of it all was not how he would shock my mind while exciting my body but that the person responsible for my medieval beheading, the person responsible for these 16th Century torture tactics, the person responsible for the morbid dismemberment of my body, was sitting on my bed every single night waiting for me to come home, and this is the havoc and the devastation that an addiction to pornography can birth.

He was more than a connoisseur of deception. He was more than just a professor of fraud. He was skilled in the art of deceit. He was the ultimate illusionist. He lied when he told me that all women enjoyed being aggressively penetrated and peed on and spat on and choked and slapped and poked and prodded and pounded and punched and spread and split and twisted and called whores and sluts and bitches and cum buckets and always, always answering “yes” when asked if she liked it like that. Because answering “no” does not make for good TV. I never saw them being loved, or cherished, they were never held tenderly or gently kissed on the forehead, the men would always use their hands for dominance and power and control and never for affection, but he lied to me because he told me that this was formula for pleasure. So when I first experienced sexual contact and it was painful, I began flicking through all of his lecture notes and could not find one bullet point, not one annotation that did not imply that I was the anomaly. He taught me that the issue was not them Gina, but with you, so I put my desires and my voice into a box. I padlocked it, threw the key into the depths of the ocean and put on a mask beautifully decorated with submission and confusion.

My body bubbles over with thanksgiving when I reflect on the love of my heavenly Father. I can imagine Him watching me, His heart shredding as I fraternised and danced with the one who was out to destroy Him. His heart, ripped from His chest with every stolen orgasm, every lustful moan and every fictitious frill. He saw me enslaved, a prisoner of my own pleasures. My mouth was gagged with shame, arms bound with ropes of instant gratification and feet shackled with ecstasy. My Father knew I was unable to escape this dungeon, and even though I hated this torture-chamber, the idea of being released was not always sweet to taste. I was determined to keep chasing the high until my legs buckled from exhaustion and my eyes rolled to the back of my head; I guess I could not bear to see who I had become. I wanted one last hit, one last time to feel like my very first time and then I would quit for good. Pornography was ultimate illusionist.
My Father saw me alone in my room, looking for a way of escape as it went up in flames. He peered in the window and saw my teary eyes through the fire. He was afraid, but His heart remembered me as the innocent gazelle quenching my thirst at the watering hole. He broke the window, climbed through, unshackled me and scooped me into His arms. Even though I could feel the heat and hear the crackle of the fire, I kept looking back wanting to go and visit one day soon. He wrapped His arms around me and told me that no matter the height of the flames, the depths of the waters or the width of the wilderness, He will always come and rescue me. He took me to a land where the air was filled with liberty and freedom, where trust was planted and sprouted trees of love. Where I was free to pick any fruit that grew in the fields of intimacy and eat them whenever my heart desired. Where the streams ran with the cool and refreshing flow of acceptance and peace. The sun beamed rays of security and assurance and the rain poured out mercy and flooded my soul. To this day the still clouds hum to the tune of immeasurable grace and the hills sing the songs of unceasing love. This is my new hiding place.

I decided to plunge to the depths of the ocean, past my past and search for my key. I unlocked my desires and my voice and cried out to the Lord.

Had is not been for the rescue mission of my Father I often wonder where would I be, so my heart will always sing “thank you Lord for remembering a sinner like me”.