In the first week of February last year, I had begun taking strolls in the evenings, few hours following my return from work. From our tenement, I would trudge up a slightly hilly tarred road, past the brightly lit Think Well supermarket in front—its parking lot sprawling with cars and people prancing in and out of it—and down the tarmac on my left, slightly eclipsed.

The essence of this: I was trying to unclutter my head of the web of fantasies it had recorded: the young lady in red, thick at the right areas, I had spotted at work during the day, the loneliness etched to my chest—a reminder that my body was becoming a desert that could be revived by the tendrils of pleasure.

At the beginning of that year, I had resolved to do two things. 

1. To be intentional with my writing.

2. To quit porn and masturbation.

So far, my writing had been running on a snail pace but that was fine. At least, I still squeezed out the time to write. But with regards to the second, I had made giant strides in the path of progress. 

I stood at the pedestrian lane, wary of the cars speeding past me, wary of the voices floating around me, wary of the stirring in my chest, as I prayed to overcome this manipulative urge.

The journey to complete freedom is wrought with adversity, fear and shame. Sometimes, you win. Other times, you fall helplessly at the feet of hunger, your heart hammering with shame and loss.

I stopped walking and—accessing the large distance and looming darkness ahead of me—felt a swirl of reprieve from this brief exercise and turned homeward.

I arrived home with a bubbling sensation in my chest, something so akeen to victory. But when I plopped down my bed, flipped through my phone, my eyes met my ex on Facebook, smiling beside her new partner, splaying out her finger nicely dressed with a ring. They had just tied the knot. Although I was responsible for the death of our six months old relationship, I felt cheated in a way, because she had found a way to discard her grief, and discovered happiness before me. A wave of sadness and jealousy washed over me and in an instance, I slipped into one of those explicit sites to feed my desire.

Fast forward to 2024, I haven't made so much progress with my writing. Yet, I'm keen on learning the ropes about writing. 

On the premise of my fleeting sexual urges, I still stumble here and there and cry when sometimes I cannot see or move beyond the fog that's my past. The beautiful thing about this journey to self freedom and realization is that it helps me record my experiences without feeling unhinged. With my journal I'm unashamed of my nakedness and I learn to trust the process, fully, even when it falls short of logic.