The day I secured my place in hell

I had tried everything, and I mean absolutely everything I could think of to help me break free of my 'addiction' to fapping to porn. Some things I tried which readily come to mind are as follows.

• I destroyed my entire porn collection. The last time I did this was pretty symbolic/spiritual as I actually burned the material after a prayer session over them. However, I'm not sure a lot of days passed before I resumed restocking. Porn material was just too easy to come across.

• I confessed my sins to my secondary school vice principal, Mrs Uzowulu who also happened to be the most involved spiritual mentor that the Christian students had in the staff body. I vividly remember how much hesitation it took me to say the words and how I broke down in tears at some point during the encounter. She was very compassionate and full of positive words and advice for me. I was sure this was all I needed to break free from this bondage. Alas, time proved that this was not to be the solution.

• I reported myself to a visiting counsellor in my home church (RCCG, Lagos Province 10) as well. I left the encounter with the man feeling like he was very inexperienced in these things because all the advice that he gave to me was pretty generic. "Of course, I've read all of this shit on the internet while trying to help myself out", I thought to myself as I nodded absent-mindedly to his words.

On that fateful day, back in secondary school at Ijanikin, I knew I had to do something drastic if I was to be freed from this dirty activity which was definitely going to be my ticket to hell.
I was blameless in every other area of my life apart from this. The solution was not far-fetched. I had to make a pact with God himself. I feared him, and I knew that only my fear of him would be enough to keep me from defiling myself on an almost daily basis. Since I was certain that this was the foolproof solution that I had been looking for all this while, I decided to fap one last time. And then I said my prayers, the ones that sealed my fate:

"Dear God, I hereby authorize you to ban me from getting into your heavenly kingdom if I ever stoop so low as to commit this evil act of fapping to porn again in my life. I admit that I am dirty and irredeemable and that I deserve to rot in hell if I break this pact with you. Signed, your son, Hafiz"

Well, it was not in those exact wordings. I'm given to a lot of drama in my writing these days so you'll have to pardon me. But essentially, that was what my agreement with God boiled down to. If I ever fapped to porn after that day, then God was never to allow me into heaven. I was either 15 or 16 on the day I said this prayer, and I remember I was pretty close to the end of my six-year studentship at the time.

Right now, I can't recall how long it was from the day I made that pact to the next time I fapped to porn. But I remember that fapping for the first time after the pact was not a difficult decision to make at all. Even the fear of burning in hell for an eternity was not enough to keep me away from this pleasurable but sinful act. At that point, I knew I had no hope.

Many times when I set out to fap to porn after breaking this pact, I told myself I was already going to hell anyway, so, why don't I enjoy myself in the time I had. It wasn't like my hell was gonna get hotter or anything, based on the frequency of my doing it. And ever since then, I have lost count of how many times I've breached this pact between me and the almighty creator. I won't be surprised if the count is in its thousands.

One thing has changed, though. Nowadays, thoughts of the pact and how the devil is busy warming up my reservation in hell hardly ever cross my mind. The only reason I remembered it was because I signed up to a 30-day no-fap challenge a couple of days to the end of 2016. That is a story for another day, a day that will surely come very fast as I've made a commitment to write at least, 500 words on my blog every day for the next 363 days of 2017. So help me God.