There has been a lot of talk on Xanga and Revelife about pornography. There are people that strongly oppose it and people who don’t believe it’s really that bad. I am writing this to everyone. To the people who think porn is alright, see how it can tear the soul and drive a person mad. To the people who are strongly opposed, I warn you not to be judgmental of those who watch porn. They may be sitting right next to you in church, wishing they could kick the addiction. Your hateful words may be hurting them deeply, giving them more reason not to share their burden and ask for prayers.

    My first experience with porn was back in the day when the Internet was still kind of new and filters were pretty much nonexistent. I was a child, and had either accidentally or naively clicked a button that I should have stayed well away from. Suddenly a large image popped up in the middle of the screen of a cucumber being abused in a way that had, until then, been inconceivable to me. I stared in fascinated horror for a moment before gathering hold of myself and trying desperately to close the box. The Internet would have none of it. There were still images loading, each more enlightening than the last. Click! Click! Click! The screen would not be budged. I heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. I tried just minimizing the window. Nope. Closing it still wasn’t working. I completely freaked out and jabbed the power button on the monitor. I nervously tapped my fingers and gave my mother an overeager smile as she walked by. I pretended the computer was restarting – the darned thing was just moving so slow! Eventually she went back downstairs, thankfully not kicking me off the computer. I would have died of mortification if she had seen that. By the time I turned the monitor back on and beheld the human body in all of its many creatively athletic glories, the Internet had decided it didn’t mind me X-ing out of the screen. I couldn’t look at cucumbers for months without feeling like I had been horribly naughty and needed to take a scalding shower.

    Fast forward to college. I was in my room, alone, surfing Xanga. Someone had a video on her site. It looked like Youtube, but not. I clicked on it. Definitely not Youtube. My mind spun back to the cucumber. There were no cucumbers here, but there was action as opposed to a still picture. I turned down the volume and watched, horrifically fascinated until the end. I had never heard of this website that was a perversion of one of my favorites. I typed it in the browser, expecting the site to be one of those “Join now and download free videos!’ things. Instead, it was very much like Youtube. Just click and watch. This is wrong. My conscious said. Yeah, but I’m curious what sex is like, I thought back to myself. I had heard people talk about it. I had actually heard it going on, thank you College Roommate Number One. But I had never been anywhere close to sex, myself. I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what an adult penis looked like. I knew there were different Positions, but I couldn’t quite figure out, mentally, how they worked. Guess what, Tiger, that sucker’s more flexible than it looks. A “hard on” or a “stiffy” doesn’t mean it’s stuck in one direction. That was new to me, a sheltered naïve twenty-something.

    Living with an emotionally unstable roommate who could come home and walk in the room at any moment kept me from checking out the site too often. I felt dirty, but I was an adult, I could handle it. Besides, wouldn’t I feel deliciously dirty when the day came that I actually, you know, did it? I wouldn’t want to be a total loser would I? I hadn’t French-kissed a guy until college, and even then I didn’t really know what I was doing. I felt like such a dork. Girls in Junior High were getting more action than I’d ever had. I didn’t want to be a total loser on my wedding night. Right?

    The next year I managed to score a dorm to myself. I never had to worry about someone walking in on me. Gloriously wonderful. I didn’t immediately hop over to that site. In fact, it didn’t even cross my mind for a while. I honestly don’t remember what it was that made me think of it and convinced me to head back over. I eventually did, though. I watched video after video out of sheer curiosity. How does ______ work? What does ______ mean? How can she have two guys at once? Three holes? OH. Ew. Weird. At some point I had to have seen it all. Yet I kept coming back. Do they have anyone who can actually act without giggling or looking like she’s going to eat the camera? Does anyone on here have a larger vocabulary? Meanwhile I began to feel more comfortable with my own body. Before, I was locking the bathroom door while I took a shower and would knot a robe around myself before emerging. Now I would wander around my room naked, comfortable and slightly turned on. Wasn’t that a good thing? To be comfortable with my own body?
   
    Once I was comfortable with myself and could even sleep in the nude, I began to be curious about my private areas. I wondered what I felt like and what it would feel like to be felt. It kind of hurt. Tampons really aren’t all that big, especially compared to some of those Internet guys. Jeepers! There was no way one of those would fit in there! Physical exploration made it a little easier to imagine what it would be like to really have sex. I could imagine two slender fingers becoming something thicker and longer. I could imagine the pain of my body stretching to accommodate it. I could imagine the feeling of being part of a rhythm, now that I knew what that was all about. I never was able to imagine it in a loving situation, though. I felt worthless.

    When life called me away from the computer, I would find myself wondering what people looked like without clothes on. Wondering if they had sex or if they were virgins. Wondering what kind of sex they had. I felt humiliated and rotten and yet I kept going back. Why? My body wanted to try it, but my morals were still hanging on for dear life. So if I couldn’t try it, I could at least see it and hear it. I tried to stop. And sometimes I would for a while. Then I’d feel horny and wander back. I progressed (or regressed) to going to a new website, chatting with people. I discovered cybersex. I didn’t do video chats, but I did post pictures. Never without my panties, but provocative enough to keep men coming. “I have to clean up before my wife comes home,” one man wrote. Oh my gosh. What was I doing??? I felt convicted in church that Sunday. I came home and immediately deleted that account and email account with it, never to return.

    I didn’t go back to the video site, either. One evening, I was feeling those sexual urges again, happened (by accident) across another site, and ended up setting up yet another account and another email address. I chatted again. Some guys had live video feed. I could see them though they couldn’t see me. It was that horrifying fascination all over again. I received hundreds of emails, requests for chats, pictures of yucky things (for the record, I still don’t understand why guys think that turns girls on), and so on.

    I had recently seen and felt God really moving in my life. I felt absolutely putrid before Him. I could literally feel His disappointment. I struggled to stop. When I got the urge, I would open my Bible and turn to Song of Solomon, reading about sex in the pure form it was intended to be. Sometimes I found myself back at that ugly site. I couldn’t find a terminate account button. I felt that if I could find one, I would be done and never come back. Maybe that would have been true. However, I never found such a button. I hid my profile so I wasn’t inundated with suggestive emails and chat requests. That made it easier to break away. Meanwhile, my Bible, still lying in a corner, open to Song of Solomon, was staring at me, emanating waves of conviction and self-guilt that even the best mother can’t match.

    Finally. Finally, I broke away. I laid myself bare before God. I cast my sins at the feet of my Lord and begged Him to take it from me. I don’t want any part of this! I could feel that God has something in mind for me. He wouldn’t mess with my life like He did without a reason. I was holding myself back from being a part of his plan, though, by giving in to fleshly desires. Christ’s words, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” pierced my soul. I was an adulterer. My heart ached for a man’s wife I had wronged. My soul ached for a Savior I had wronged.

    Christ’s love is so great that He kneeled down next to me and said, “I forgive you, child. I love you. Get up and sin no more.” I am not sinless. I will continue to struggle. Even now, I am curious about that un-deleted account. But I will not bow to sin so easily. The Bible is my bread, and Christ is my living water. When I feel temptation I cry out to my master. I quickly find something to distract myself with and I pray, “Lord, deliver me from evil.”

    He is always there for me. He is always there for you. Just ask for His help and He will give it freely.