26, Australian, she/her. Minors DNI. I write, draw and design stuff.
Working on a commissions sheet.
Please do reach out if you're interested though, they're open!
So, it's been a long while since I've felt up to maintaining an online presence again. Thank you to everyone that stood by me and considered my health and wellbeing. I think I've worked through the majority of my trauma about the situation, but I won't know until I've fully exposed myself to the world again. I want to try to return to making content. It won't be the same, though. My interests have changed somewhat in the six years since I was at my peak.
For an explanation of the situation by which I left, I'll say this and try to keep it as unbiased as possible. This is in the interest of full disclosure to anyone that wasn't here to witness it firsthand, as I've privated most of my stuff about it.
The post gets very long after this, I'm so sorry. At the end I've included some things that have happened in my personal life.
CWs: pedophilia, sexual abuse, parental sexual abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, ocd.
When I was eighteen, I met and formed friendships with two minors on Wattpad. If memory serves, one was twelve and the other was fifteen. At the time, because I had no creepy intentions, I did not realise that the relationship was inappropriate. We had conversations about our personal lives and our fanfictions, and the topics were sometimes sexual. These sexual conversations were only about events that happened in our writing, so again, I was genuinely unaware that it was inappropriate. I would also share smutty pictures of characters with these people. Because the images weren't real photos, I thought it was fine.
I am not trying to make excuses for my actions by saying this--I am defending my character. I am not a pedophile, and I do not seek out minors to exploit them. Accusations made by strangers who had no interest in my side of events caused me severe distress and I lost years of my life recovering from the damage to my psyche done by it.
The relationship with these friends ended very badly, mostly for the youngest. Their mother found out about them talking to a (then) 19 year old, read through the messages, and was rightly outraged. I was threatened with legal action if I contacted her child again, and this was the wakeup call that actually, the content of my messages wasn't okay to share with minors, no matter how innocent my intentions were.
From there, I tried to recover, but the situation had hit hard. I was unable to do anything to repair it. All I could do was try to move on with my own life and avoid repeating it. I ended up abandoning the stories I had written with the input of these friends, as it became very triggering to write for them.
Over the next two years, I built something of a presence on tumblr. I began to write and draw again and made new friends. In 2020, the (then) fifteen year old opened up to another creator about what I had done, and the creator posted about it without attempting to confront me personally.
I found out about this when people began sending me asks that said I was a disgusting pedophile, which as you can imagine was great for my mental health.
My attempts to diffuse the situation made it worse. I came off as defending my actions and blaming them on autism. It was not my intention to do so, but I can't say it's unreasonable to think that it was. The autism probably played a part in how oblivious I was, but please know that I'm not trying to minimise the effects of my actions. I shouldn't have mentioned it to begin with.
I hurt people with what I did, and I changed their lives for the worse, and I wish that there was a way to reverse it or somehow compensate, but I genuinely don't know if there's anything I could have done or could do today.
I don't hold anything against the person that came forward. I royally fucked you over and I'm sorry. I do take issue with the way the creator saw fit to expose me without trying to talk to me first. According to some of the people that stuck by me in the aftermath, they're notorious for witch hunting, but take my words with a grain of salt. I'm not here to drag them. I don't want anything to do with them. I want to be left alone.
If reading this makes you want to send me messages just to harass me, I think that reflects more on you as a miserable person than on me. If you read this and want to have an actual conversation or make any real points, feel free. I don't want to run from this anymore. It never works and it makes me feel like I have something to hide.
I disclose this story now to everyone I talk to about sexual topics, or if I find out that the person has a history of being groomed. I don't want to cause harm again. I hate that it took something like this for me to learn, but I'm glad I know now to check in before I speak.
I will now talk about the effect that these events had on me. This is going to be a personal recount, and not take the other people involved into consideration. I do not mean to imply that my own struggles outweigh theirs or let my suffering diminish the weight of the situation.
I have very bad rejection sensitivity and OCD. I could be gaslit into thinking I shot someone in an alley when I was on the other side of town and don't own a gun. I don't trust my own memories. This, as you can imagine, is very stressful at the best of times. Some highlights of this in action include the time I convinced myself that my friends were all planted by my parents to report back to them about my personal life, and the time a teacher decided to make an example of me by telling me she was sick of me and demanding I go to the principal's office, leaving me in tears and spiraling before she revealed that actually I'd done nothing wrong and she was making a point.
Fuck you by the way, what the fuck.
So you can imagine that when the mother confronted me about sending sexual messages, my brain worked overtime to convince me that yes, actually, you are a pedo, you're just in denial.
I recently found out that this is a specific subset of OCD, which made me feel extremely validated.
What wasn't great was that afterwards, I couldn't so much as be in the same room as a child without my brain making it sexual. Instantly I'd be bombarded with feelings of guilt and shame, and I hadn't even done anything but acknowledge the presence of a kid. I became very uncomfortable being left alone with children or when they'd get close to me, because my body would turn it into a whole thing, and I'd relive all of my trauma about being labelled a pedo on the internet, and this just sucked. It really, really sucked. I'm still not over it. I probably never will be. But it's getting better, especially since I've discovered other people like me.
Immediately in the aftermath of the mother's confrontation, I began to abuse my prescription medication. The only times I wasn't thinking about my guilt were when I was asleep, so I tried to sleep through as much of life as possible. I dissociated hard from the world around me. I started to self-harm again, and would entertain suicidal thoughts. I began to look at knives and think about how easy it would be to end it all. I started to have urges and sometimes I acted on them. I managed to avoid causing any lasting damage, thankfully.
On top of all of that, I've suffered with anxiety and depression basically my whole life. I found out when I was 16 that my father probably molested me. Court couldn't prove it either way so he was given supervised visits until I was six, and then my mum cut him off.
I found out when I was 20ish that when I was nine, the guy my mum had been engaged to was a pedophile. That recontextualised a few memories that had stuck with me over the years, so that was fun to go through. We already knew he was a goddamn sociopath so at least it didn't shatter any expectations that he was a good person.
When I was almost 22, I had my first sexual encounter, and I didn't properly consent. The person was drunk and sharing my bed because she was helping me and my new roommate assemble furniture. She kept hitting me with the "but why tho" when I turned her down, and eventually I just went along with what she wanted. She's trans. That's relevant because the encounter made me realise that actually, this isn't the first time I've touched a penis.
Fuck that guy that fucked over my mum in 2009 even more, am I right.
All of that to say, as soon as I experienced/remembered real sexual trauma of my own, everything I'd ever said and done felt so much less harmful than it had been in my head. I'd been telling myself that I was evil. No. People that see a child and enjoy the idea of violating them are evil. I was just a fucking idiot.
I've cut contact with the person that assaulted me, but the smell of sweat is still triggering sometimes, which isn't fun because I sweat like a motherfucker.
Which brings me to a new development. Last year I went to hospital in critical condition because my body had decided it didn't need blood cells anymore. Turns out I have an autoimmune disease--warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia--and I have no idea how long I've had it, but that definitely explains how goddamn tired I always am. After a week at hospital I was discharged and given steroids to manage it for a time, but I came off them and we hoped it would go away for good. Pretty much immediately after stopping them, I got appendicitis. It's very likely unrelated, but the coincidence is too good to pass up mentioning it. So then I spent two months recovering from an appendectomy. And a month after that, my blood started being murdered again.
So I started immunotherapy, a month ago. I've now had my final transfusion. We're hoping it's now actually gone for good.
Aside from all that, I've been working to stabilise my life. I'm getting government support for my autism and I see a psychologist and psychiatrist. I've taken up cross stitching. I'm getting back into my hobbies, now that I actually have blood and energy and the trauma has become easier to manage. I gained a lot of weight on the steroids and it's distressing, but I try to work a bit of it off every day. I'm hoping things from here on will be better.
Writing out all of that and reliving it has made me extremely tired. I've gone through a lot. It took until last year for me to really take my health seriously. Now, I'm learning when to stop causing myself unnecessary hurt. Learning being the key word. I hope that I can come back here without trauma rearing its head too badly. I'm not sure how to end this post off. I'm gonna take a nap.
hey OCD havers. it can be a little hard to have OCD and be on the internet, right? especially in fandom spaces. the culture has become somewhat hostile to us. but i have good news! it is very possible to have fun online with your friends while avoiding the more inflammatory corners of the internet!
here are some tips for my fellow OCD havers on navigating life online:
you don't have to respond to every single message you get. if someone is trying to bait you into an argument that doesn't appear to be in good faith, you can ignore it. you should ignore it. this is especially true if the message includes a false or exaggerated accusation about you. you owe this person nothing. don't give them ammunition
moral OCD can trick you into joining in on discourse because it's the 'right' thing to do. don't do it. it is only going to make you feel worse and won't actually help anyone. if someone sends you an anon asking you if you support someone you've never heard of that has apparently done multiple terrible things, there's a 99% chance they are trying to trick you into joining a harassment campaign. turn off anons. block anyone who sends you messages like this, they're likely trying to get you to do their dirty work.
the block button is your best friend. you can block anyone you want. if someone is posting something that's making you uncomfortable or feeding your obsessions or compulsions, block them. even if it's stuff that you think you need to be 'aware' of. your mental health comes first. blocking people before they can start shit with you is also pretty handy! something i do occasionally is search names of the latest Main Character Of The Internet and block people posting about it who seem prone to joining in on online hate mobs in general. only do this if you're feeling up for it, this can trigger your OCD.
if you have real event or false memory OCD, online climates can make you feel like you have to "confess" to them publicly. confession is a compulsion, don't do it. the only person who needs to hear about your real event or your false memories is your therapist. you should only discuss these things with professionals who can help you deal with them in the appropriate way. strangers on the internet cannot do that for you. also, no one asking you about your real event or false memories is doing so in good faith. block them
responsibility OCD can also trick you into joining in on discourse. "oh, but if i don't also post about this, what if someone gets hurt because i didn't say anything?". listen. listen to me. posting very, very rarely brings about material change. OCD is so rotten because it correctly identifies you as a person with strong feelings about making the world a better place, and then tricks you into hurting yourself over it in a way that doesn't actually help anyone. joining in on posting about these situations will only end up hurting you. you can make a difference in the world, but not like this. responsibility OCD is lying to you
familiarize yourself with online privacy and internet safety, but be careful. these are real things to be concerned about and they should be taken very seriously, but also something that OCD can latch onto very quickly and create further obsessions about. no one's going to track down your home address from a text post you made about what you had for dinner so there's no need to lie awake all night thinking about that. but posting a bunch of pictures around your identifiable hometown in quick succession probably isn't the best idea, so deleting those is probably for the best. be smart, but try not to panic over what ifs. we can cross those bridges when we come to them
get a group chat!!!!!!!! seriously. sometimes you wanna vent about some stupid shit you saw online, but it's almost always best done privately. get a group chat with some like minded friends and vent there instead. you might find your friends are in need of a private space to rant instead of their public blogs too! this goes for everyone, btw, not just folks with OCD
honestly, every day i find it a little harder to exist as a person with OCD online. there's so much out there that can trigger us and make our OCD worse, without us even knowing it at the time. but this blog will always be a safe place for folks with OCD, and i will always share my tips and tricks for having fun online despite the evil gremlin that lives in my head! you've got this. i'm in your corner 🧡
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