There’s something shifting in me.
I used to think desire was simple—something to chase, relieve, move on from. A biological itch. A means to an end.
But lately, I’m realizing how much I’ve been numbed by what I thought was pleasure.
What porn promised—immediacy, intensity, control—came at a hidden cost.
Not just my time or attention, but something far deeper: my sensitivity.
My ability to notice. To relish. To revere.
Today, I saw a photo of a woman walking barefoot along a fallen palm—sunlight catching the curve of her hip, a smear of sand on her thigh, the careless elegance of someone unobserved.
And I didn’t think, “I want to fuck her.”
I thought, “I want to smell her skin.”
I wanted to hear how she laughs.
I wanted to feel her presence—not possess it, just witness it.
It hit me like a wave: porn stole that from me.
It trained me to flatten the feminine into function.
To replace mystery with mechanics.
To skip the nuance, the tease, the ache—and lunge for resolution.
But the real magic lives in the space before the touch.
In the not-quite-yet.
In the imagination.
This feeling—this hunger laced with reverence—isn’t new.
It’s been buried.
Muted by repetition, by dopamine, by algorithms selling me the outline of intimacy without any of the depth.
But now, it’s resurfacing.
And I can’t unfeel it.
This isn’t about shame. It’s about return.
A return to the kind of desire that opens me instead of depleting me.
To beauty that doesn’t scream, just stands there—gold-lit and laughing.
I don’t want porn’s immediacy anymore.
I want the kind of woman you watch from across the shore
and thank God you still know how to wonder.