Secrets That Are Best Kept To Yourself
Some secrets are based kept to yourself because it sounds ridiculous if you shared them. No one would believe and trust you. Not even those closest to you. It might also be too intimate to share with the world. This is that story.
There was a boy who found himself in an all-boys secondary school and at the age of 13, he came across this word — “masturbation”. “What the hell is that?!” he thought to himself. It created quite a ruckus in the class when it was mentioned by his Geography teacher who beat out the ruckus, on the top of her voice she shrieked, “Masturbation was sex with the devil!” That is the first time he heard it but he wasn’t sure what it was. Slowly as time passed by, surrounded by boys with raging hormones, he found out what it was. It was an environment and time when his classmates exchanged “blue” VCDs but not one made its way to him as he was not curious enough to know its content.
Five years passed, and he was in his late teens now. He has had sex fantasies revolving around actresses that he has seen on TV and in movies. He has found himself in the embarrassing situation of wet dreams but he had never masturbated or even felt the urge to do so. Things changed a year later at the age of 18. He would be on his computer either doing his polytechnic coursework or playing games. He would come across sex jokes and read them. In between these jokes, there were pop-ups or fillers of scantily clad or naked women. He resisted exploring further until one night. He started downloading through a file-sharing platform called Limewire, sex scenes from Hollywood movies; movies featuring actresses that he fantasised about.
He watched a ton (figuratively) of these scenes and went to sleep fully turned on. That night he remembered what his former classmates told him about masturbation and he worked it. That night he experienced an explosion, an experience and feeling unlike any other that he had experienced. He made up for the lost time that night as he exploded into another universe multiple times that night. He woke up in the morning like a zombie, going through the motions of the day like one. That evening, in the bathroom, he exploded again. At that moment, he became sensitive to sexy women he sees on TV and being naked just stimulated him further.
The boy had become a man but the discovery of masturbation would create adverse effects for him. He played football on one unfateful New Year’s Day in the 2000s, a day after masturbation and got so badly injured that he had to be helped home by his friends. That changed many things for him as that injury would have a lasting effect on him. In a couple of years, he could no longer run and play football. Then despite undergoing a scope, nobody could really find the cause of his pain and swelling and the injury became permanent. He lost a full-time job in a uniformed unit as well as a result of his injury.
Whatever he had planned for as an adult embarking on a career, was dashed as a result of his termination. One of his greatest joys in life — playing football was stolen from him. He had to adapt. He had to complete his National Service obligation in a different uniformed unit which defied logic and practicality. Once that was completed albeit a majority of it was spent injured and trying to find the cause of the injury, he had to enter the workforce and he was lost.
Anyways that was just a foray into adulthood. Another impact masturbation has on him now is mental. Sometimes he masturbates because he is turned on. Sometimes it's just to clear the sperms in his system. Whatever the case, he feels a sense of guilt and fears the next day that something would go wrong. It could be something that affects his work, his life, his relationship with his family, his family’s health and his favourite football team’s results. These are the areas where he feels things can go wrong. However, if he thinks logically back to a time when he didn’t masturbate, were things always going great every single day? Were there no arguments in his family or no one in his family fell sick? Did his favourite football team always win their matches? The answer is no. They didn’t. Things did go wrong then too and it could happen today too.
On the rare occasions that he has spoken about this, he has been advised to not think that things will go wrong. It’s a very natural human function to masturbate and there is nothing wrong with it. It's just the manifestation of his mind. If he keeps thinking that things will go wrong, they will go wrong but it’s something he struggles to shake off because there is evidence that things have gone wrong when he has masturbated. Is not more than just a mental issue? Is it a spiritual issue that not many can address? The struggle continues for this man in his 30s now.
