/b/ — Off Topic

none i have never done anything wrong sorry

I've hurt a family member in a way I can't take back. It was for no good reason at all, and it didn't even feel good or cathartic. There was no romance at all. I can't say why. I saw things so differently. I was a shadow, and nothing was alive. I wanted to feel something. Something real.

I can forget that it happened most days. It's surprising what we can forget if we want to. But it never became the past. It casts a long shadow.

I don't know if revenge is a sin or not but I had a lot of weird behaviours that I now regret or make me feel uncomfortable when being reminded of it.
My dad was a very strict parent who banned me from playing outside of home and have me study everyday, I was often picked up by others and a lot of my friends were very ableist, shouting to me "autist" as a slur.
But as I received the best grade on all subjects and frequently be the school's sole representative on regional competitions from arts to science, I gained a huge ego, a kind of weird ideology of "nerd supremacy" or some bullshit, seeing others who didn't take school seriously as lesser human being.

I ended up using a lot of my influence to make my whole class miserable, asking for more and harder and harder homeworks, subtly humiliating other students projects or results in front off the teachers, snitching them when they cheat, or when someone asked me for help i gave them wrong answers deliberately, and several times falsely accusing others of cheating and the teachers bought it because i never cheated. I once sabotaged a group project by doing it all myself, submitting it, excluding everyone else, and then told the teacher others didn't contribute anything. Kind of a chud phase of me. Everyone went from just making fun of me for lols to actively hating me.
This went on more or less until highschool, when I realized I'm lonely, no rl friends, and also none of those will matter once I graduate and I wasted my entire youth chasing some stupid certificates and trophies. That was too late because even when I tried to change, everyone heard rumors about me from the previous school who will make their school life miserable. My dad died, then I reset my life by just going to college far away from home. Now I look back and think I was such a chud.

i have/had crush on both my younger sister and my own cousin

i have one of those 'take with you to death' sins but nowadays i ruminate more on having walter white male bpd--avoidance, lying, discommunication, delusions of grandeur, anger--with a root in a fear and insecurity that seems to repel those that can detect it, and alienates me from those who can't. loneliness begets envy and loathing and fear begets loneliness

i routinely find myself in friendships where i become not a human but the other person's living diary, where they transcribe all their thoughts onto me and i become their primary relationship and friendship, in a one-direction sieve of their thoughts and life superimposed over mine, it's Heavenly Creatures (1994) every couple of years for me it feels like, they'll need me to function and survive and i feel too bad to end it once i realise my friendship with them specifically is causing them to stagnate and not take meaningful steps forward in life, because theyre only experiencing peace in a discord call doing nothing important other than my repeatedly telling them it's gonna be okay. my attempts to meaningfully help go ignored because i'll have no impact since i stopped being a person, just a parasitic ego or a series of text messages, and can't convince them to leave the house / expand their world / try new things / etc. it keeps happening and i don't know how to prevent any one-on-one close friendships with people who I relate to the mental health issues of from turning into this, and I am no therapist nor have I ever had one for longer than a day, so I left them all to find healthier monkeys to belong with instead. I have caused extreme misery in a small subset of still-friendless people who used me as a social lifeline that i care for deeply and only some of them took anything i said to heart in regards to learning how to start wanting to be alive. They are still just trying to get me back so we can do the same things all over again. It took nearly a decade to accept that I didn't really have anything in common with them, that I was not happy like this, that the main thing i could do to help was to stop enabling someone else's spiralling ideology, and it was just that they liked me and were using me as an intermediary to ignore how rough reality actually was. My only regret is waiting so long to be cruel and prioritise myself.

>>3mtlmw674nk2f
I do this with all my irl romantic relationships and it sucks ass but I'm working on it. hurting people by telling the truth and having boundaries is the scariest thing ever but it actually hurts them so much less in the long run

>>3mtlo4rvpwk2f
yeah, i wish i had saved everybody the trouble by doing something along these lines much sooner, but the second best time to do something is right now i guess, hahaha. it hurts when you realize you're also part of the problem but if we're gonna get hurt either way i'd rather get hurt from trying rather than from just thinking about it

One time a friend of mine told me they were living in duress because the person they were in a long-distance relationship with was stalking them and they could not bring themselves to block them everywhere.

I offered to pull the trigger for her, and she turned all of her accounts over to me and I blocked this person across everything.

I then went to the person and I said, "Hey, I would like to make sure that you are also not completely isolated if that is okay," and they obliged to speak with me for several months.

I bit off more than I could chew.
The person in question was an untreated schizophrenic. I spent a lot of time talking to them in various states of coherence and clarity. I tried to pay for their medication but they refused to take it when I did. Then they said they needed a new psychiatrist but refused to go when I arranged for them to.

They had threatened suicide repeatedly but thankfully never followed through but it eventually became clear that I was both deeply resented for my role in putting distance between them and their former partner, and that I was never going to be an adequate support network for them with my inability to intervene physically.

One day they threatened suicide again at a very late hour, and rather than step outside to talk them through it, I said "Here are some places that can provide help and support to people experiencing suicidal ideation. I will not watch you hold yourself hostage again," and I left them without support.

Later, my close friend said they had diffused everything and that they were talking to the person, who was just fine, now. They told me to never talk to them again.

Five years later, I got a letter from the schizophrenic saying things were good. I apologized to them for what I did and they demanded to know who I was and how I'd found them. The friend confronted me and said "I told you to never speak to them again" and we have been estranged ever since.

Immense guilt for how I intervened.

>>3mtlyv7ca272s
As a diagnosed schizophrenic, I think you did nothing wrong
I think schizophrenic or not, a person should realize that dumping everything to one or a few friends will also harm them in a long run, and if you care about them, you won't be mad if they can't handle you anymore

Also I stole something from Michael's exactly one time and my moral ocd has never let me live it down. The last time i told a friend this she responded by openly stealing something from a store right in front of me and not getting in trouble and i admired her for that. But it is my sin, i stole once. from tghe store. it was a bottle of sculpey liquid clay and it should not have cost $20 and i want Michael's to suffer.

>>3mtl6xvc6622f
why would one regret that ┐(ﾟ～ﾟ)┌

well, i try not to regret things but look to the circumstances in kindness to my past self. the only real way to take responsibility is to understand what caused a misstep, too. this can be hard when the mistakes are in the sort of outburts that come after longer periods of numbing and blinding emotional struggle that takes over ur sense of reality. i try to confront the negativity and resentment that builds over time but that can be a more dangerous game than just letting myself get sadder.
a while back i lost a couple of my closest friends due to a moment losing control and lashing out due to some hurt feelings i was still trying to work through. i got kind of evil. all i can really do about it is grow.

>>3mtlmw674nk2f
i'm worried i do this with others in a milder form, and they're just too afraid to tell me the truth

>>3mtm5ofqyds2f
it helps me to identify the issue as the worry itself and not what the worry is about, to try and not take myself very seriously, and to try and make absolutely every decision selfishly. you need to exist at all costs. there are often simple solutions for complex social problems, and a human is just an animal.

>>3mtlzgezyqs2f
This is reassuring to hear.
To this day the situation serves as kind of a benchmark for me to measure things against, like, "Is this something you have the expertise, facts, support, and resources to do, or is this you about to fuck-up that poor girl's whole life again?"

I thought the five-year gap had made things different, but they were still very much the same person and my heart sank to leap at what I thought was an opportunity for closure and literally make things just as bad as they had been when we were in constant contact.

I had not contacted them beyond that instance in the five years and I have not contacted them since - I think it's a matter of mutual respect but also recognizing this is no longer - and possibly never was - a situation where I was going to be able to intervene with any modicum of success.

It routinely and vividly [imagines/describes/hallucinates] itself brutally harming and/or killing its partners and those close to it. It doesn't know how to express its love in any way besides pain and suffering. The closest its ever felt with most people is when they are physically hurting it. At its worst it begs for those close to it to hurt it because it makes it feel "useful".

spoilers and CW for discussion of SA

my confession is that i have genuinely crippling OCD around committing sexual assault and/or violating people's boundaries. for the most part it's an irrational fear. as far as i know, i've never actually hurt anyone in this way. but i've been a victim in the past, and i'm also really autistic, and both verbal and body language are extra difficult for me to parse. so it feels like i can never be sure.

at the worst of times, i've gone over and replayed all my memories of past sexual experiences, scrutinizing them for any hints of discomfort or grey area violations, and in the process convincing myself so thoroughly of being a rapist that i then feel the need to tearfully confess to everyone in my life about it (to which they're usually just confused and/or annoyed). sometimes i also get these horrible nightmares about people from my past reaching out to me years later to say i've ruined their life, and losing all my friends and loved ones as a result.

then there's just the part of me that feels... inherently predatory i guess? like i'm incapable of expressing any attraction to someone without it being marred by violence. i constantly obsess about raping people with my eyes or my words or my very presence. i know that some of this is just being trans and subject to constant rhetoric about trans women being predatory, but it still drives me crazy. sometimes i feel like i need to punish myself by withdrawing from humanity entirely to keep from ever having to risk hurting someone.

idk. it's been genuinely impossible to talk about this with anyone but my girlfriend and my therapist bcuz how do you even bring up something like "i'm terrified i might be a rapist" without immediately being dogpiled or killed for it? but the complete loneliness in dealing with this neurosis just makes it even worse for me honestly.

(i'm sorry if this post upsets anyone. thank you for reading.)

>>3mtnfytnzbs2p
i had a friend who suffered with this forever and she went to an outpatient exposure therapy thing for a few weeks and it really helped her, the way she talks about it is incredible, might be something worth checking out

>>3mtohnoohkl2p
i've heard a bit about exposure therapy in the past. i've been kinda hesitant bcuz i was once told it's a subset of CBT, and i've heard lots of horror stories about that. but it seems to be the most frequently recommended OCD treatment and if it worked that well for your friend, then i'll definitely have to look into it more.

thank you so much for your response!

action-based sins aside i have a weird problem with envying trans men; grew up with a lot of them and they always seemed so put together and cool and self-assured in ways i'd never really seen modeled for trans women in person. and it also doesn't help that the men i was around were, like, good-looking. it all contributed to this feeling that it was easier for them, that there was way less baggage for them vs the other way around. its why i'm fascinated by the counterexamples of this; seeing transmasc angst, or like, reading about transmasc insecurities is really cathartic to me.

if i was 'born a girl' i would probably be a trans man? but it's not so much that i want to 'be a trans man' so much as that i want to be butch, and often trans men borrow a lot from that tradition. not familiar with the nuance myself. but i can see myself going to he/him again after a while in my transition. in a sense i'm probably nonbinary but i'm invested in anchoring myself within womanhood as the basis for any gender experimentation. i get that there's an uneasy subtextual conflation of trans men with being like, flavors of women or whatever which is why i'm personally embarrassed by this train of thought and i don't exactly know quite what to do with it. but like i pick up certain things, mannerisms, style, etc., from transmasc people i know and it ends up being really gender affirming. which yeah idk how to feel about

i know its maybe not quite in line with the letter of the topic but this is definitely something i wanted to get off my chest for a while but have been really embarrassed about (;ﾟДﾟ)

I am a pedophile. It's not exclusive, I'm attracted to adults too, but its been there for as long as I can remember.
I have never, and will never hurt a child(or anyone else), nor have I viewed any illegal content. I have less than 0 interest in seeing anyone being abused.
It's so depressing to know for a fact that most of the people in my life would hate me if they knew, even though I would never hurt anyone.
To hear otherwise progressive friends espouse killing everyone like me regardless of their actions. To hear them say say thought crimes aren't real, and nobody should be hated for something they can't control, and then turn around and deny the very humanity of people like me. It's painful.
The fact of the matter is I'm not a rapist, but because of these attractions I've felt my entire life and have no control over I'm assumed one by default. It sucks.

i wore the same trouser that hasnt been washed for a few months including to my class and my final thesis defense, masked by spraying perfume and room spray freshener

I really struggle with balancing/perceiving the balance between regular t4t attraction to trans women and other trans men and my hypersexuality taking it into the territory I or the people around me just will not be comfortable with, even in nsfw spaces

the mental pendulum swings wildly between compulsive puritanism and 'you should do the rapey intrusive thought for real' and either way it tends to only serve to paralyze me socially ending up doing nothing and isolate me from forming meaningful friendships around my sexual interests like so many others seem to be able to

>>3mtrawfg6uk2h
I find this a little confusing and frightening but I don't hate you and do want you to thrive. I was a victim several times as a child but I don't view online discourse surrounding this topic any more. You don't sound scary in this post and you dont make kid me scared. If you have never hurt a real child and dont plan on it, and don't ever want to, and don't consume real people media of this or desire to, aren't you not a pedophile? You haven't actually enacted any of the behaviours that would make me think someone is a pedophile. You sound like a normal person to me. Not trying to challenge your use of the term, I also think it would help everyone on all sides if being a "pedophile" wasn't treated like an irrevocable evil that condemns you forever; it stopped me from coming forward ever legally. I relate to your fears as a now-adult. I dont know how to express this well, sorry. Half of my favorite games are from atf.

>>3mttctexxpc2r
I'm sorry that my message was offputting, the last thing I want is to re-trigger any trauma. I'm very sorry to hear that you were a victim, nobody deserves that.
I call myself a pedophile because I am still attracted to children, even real ones, even though I would never act on it because I understand there is no safe, sane, or consensual way to engage in that, so it stays entirely in my head.
It's a shame that popular consensus has essentially merged the meanings of 'pedophile' and 'child molester' when I think that one doesn't necessarily imply the other. Maybe MAP would be a better term, but that has also already begun to be demonized and used by bad actors.
I think many molesters/abusers don't even have a particular attraction to children, they're just the easiest people to manipulate.
And I think there are probably a lot more people like me than it seems, since nobody sane would admit it in any identifying way with society the way it is.
Those two things result in the only time the public being exposed to this kind of attraction being the very worst cases of people unable to control themselves, or outright abusers manipulating the easiest possible targets. Thus the definition merge, which perpetuates itself with social stigma.
I hope you thrive as well, places like ATF are a good way to cope with, and engage with this kind of thing without hurting anyone.

>>3mttj64nnk22r
Thank you for replying both kindly and honestly; also, I am sorry if I put you on the spot by replying to a confession post so plainly. I am a single stranger so this holds no power, but if you had replied the other way around (as in, 'yes' to any of those questions) I would have still forgiven you, and that extends to relevant reading anons. Life can get really complicated. I agree with your arguments here, and think there are probably a lot more people on this spectrum that are unable to safely and honestly discuss it and thus get rid of shame.

>>3mttnvcx2ms2r
I really appreciate it, and no worries about being put on the spot, its an understandably incendiary topic and if anything having responses and being able to elaborate a bit makes me less anxious about how it will be perceived.

I'm from a country with a lot of political violence against those who oppose the government, journalists, hate crime etc. as result a lot of the people my parents have known are dead. Some of them you can find the picture of their dead body easily due to the internet culture of when it happened. I've gone looking out of morbid curiosity before, it's a really strange feeling

At the age I've had the capacity to fully process my sexual trauma (11) (I was too young to understand when it actually happened and then tried to convince myself I made it up for a long time) I took a quiet turn to becoming incredibly hypersexual which included the relatively normal behavior of looking for porn of course, but because I also had the not so subtle goal of sorting out my feelings my younger self's usual tastes were extreme lolisho content[which I suppose fair enough I was not much older than the characters], but the thing is that because that's what i was looking for and of when in the history of the given country internet it was, i did end up seeing like thumbnails and stuff for outright csam and while good thing that my preference was 2d and I never had any interest in clicking on it, the fact itself is pretty mortifying

>>3mtvwyprb5c2n
This is admittedly a good part of why my stances on child internet safety are what they are, I was clever enough to never make accounts or make my presence known, this is a vector for finding new victims with already eroded boundaries that exists, it's a little scary to imagine how many kids that sought the stuff out for similar reasons Did make their presence known in those spaces and got found by someone and retraumatized as result

>>3mtvw2ppank2n
The place i live was subject to a bout of government political brutality this year and its been really messing with me similarly. The way these things get captured online is insanely overwhelming, horrifying, and captivating all at the same time. it felt like constantly having to watch liveleak every day to get the news except all of the videos took place in locations i recognized. and then having to see the rest of the world voyeuristically comment on it too. Im still not really over it but my experience honestly feels mild compared to what your describing because nobody i knew was killed or disappeared. I hope you and your family are safe and will be safe