What do I do? I sit in the dark. I don’t want to turn on any form of media. But then again, I want to feel excited, because it has been so long since I have been in a relationship with a real, live human being. It has been so very long since someone has embraced me. It has been so very long since someone has told me that they love me, that they feel excitement when they are around me.
My bedroom has not been a safe place since I was in my twenties. It has been a place where I can quietly cheat on every good moral that I was ever brought up on. In the past, it has been a place of sleepless nights where I turn on the TV and get turned on by fictitious characters- characters that have no idea what it means to truly love another person in the way God created all of us to love. In the now, it is silent and a place where I have found rest, yet the images of those same characters come to play in my mind.
I took out the TV after my last break-up. A better home for a box that sends tiny signals out into the air causing big signals of false utopia is in the living room. A glance at the screen, two naked bodies heaving and grinding, and suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about my own true needs (or worry about what those actually ARE), just the fantasy of what they might feel to get me off.
I miss it. I miss that sense of fairytale, ever after. Even if it wasn’t real life, it was getting me by in real life, so now, the absence of its company is making me crazy. I could just retire into the living room and start all over again, but something stops me.
I am a quote girl. Words constantly flood my brain, even more than images, and I think about a quote from C.S. Lewis: “The good is always the enemy of the best.” Imagery is good, for what it is. But it’s not the best of anything. It is a mere substitute for creative thinking and a playground for an idle mind (there is a pun there I think).
Suddenly, I don’t see anything in my head. I close my eyes. The bodies come back, but my thought is still on the quote. I don’t see words, but I hear them. The images leave again. I don’t see random players on a screen. My hands come together in front of my own breasts, and clasp in thanksgiving. I think about nothing. I find myself giving my thought to my God. I breathe. I breathe again. I concentrate on my breath. I hear it slow down. I don’t see anything at all. I hear my breath…then, I hear it again. I listen. I listen to the silence. In this small moment, I am free of the chains of sexual fantasy. I am free because I let go of the thought. I give it up to my meditation.
After a couple minutes, I open my eyes. I am aware of my body and aware that it needs rest, but it also needs joy. It needs joy from a pure place. I think of all the joy I would like to have in a spiritually driven relationship. And then, I feel excitement in my body. I feel it rise up like Lazurus. I am aware that stimulation from the Spirit is where I can feel a tinge of joy. I realize it is only a taste of what it can be like in a union of Holy direction. I don’t need the television. I don’t need the make believe. I need what is real. It is much better than false expectations of what my television has to offer me. I am at peace, for the moment. I will rest. I will rest in the promises of a Greater Good. The best.