The world expects everyone to grow up, get tough, and leave childhood behind.
Like childhood is a room you walk out of one day, shut the door, and never go back.
I don’t think the door ever locked.
I don’t even think I properly left.
For as long as I can remember, there has always been this little part of me. A softer part. A younger feeling part. A part that looks at the world and thinks, “this is too big, too loud, too heavy, and I dunno how everyone else is doing it so easy.”
Not because I can’t do grown up things.
I can work. I can pay bills. I can drive my car. I can make decisions when I really have to. I can put on the grown up mask and pretend I know what I’m doing.
But underneath all that, I think my normal setting has always been the same.
A bit more fragile than everyone else seems to be.
Like everyone else got given a grown up instruction book and I got given a blankie, a plushie, and a confused little brain going, “umm… help?”
And I think some of that is just how I’m built too. My brain gets overloaded easy. Too much noise, too much pressure, too many things at once, too many feelings, too many steps, too much having to be a proper person. Sometimes it feels like everything in my head is buffering at the same time and someone has opened 47 tabs and one of them is playing music but I can’t find which one.
My body can be a bit wobbly too. A bit clumsy. A bit awkward with fiddly things sometimes. Especially when I’m tired or stressed or already all used up. So the world can feel big in more than one way.
For a long time, I hated that about myself.
I felt out of place around all the heavy adult stuff. Serious voices, pressure, big decisions, scary phone calls, work things, money things, life things, all the sharp grown up edges.
i always felt more easily overwhelmed by it than I thought I was meant to be.
I felt younger than people around me, even when I wasn’t.
More needing gentleness, reassurance, help, and care.
And I didn’t have the words for it.
I just knew there was something in me that didn’t seem to grow out of needing softness.
Something that still wanted to be spoken to gently.
Something that still wanted to be comforted like a little one.
Something that still reached for plushies, cartoons, blankets, bottles, nappies, cosy routines, nursery feelings, and safe make believe worlds when everything got too much.
I know some people call that being a permakid, or permalittle, or always being connected to a younger part of yourself.
I don’t know if every label fits me perfect.
But when I read stuff like that, something in me goes really quiet and really loud at the same time.
That’s what I’ve been trying to say.
Because I don’t just “act little” sometimes.
I don’t just like cute things.
I don’t just like plushies and cartoons and soft pyjamas and babyish comfort things because they’re cute, even though they are very very cute.
It feels like part of who I am.
Part of how I understand myself.
Sometimes my regression is not really a choice. Sometimes I don’t sit there and decide to feel little. It just happens.
The grown up mask slips off.
And suddenly I’m not a sensible adult doing life properly. I’m just a tired, scared, overwhelmed little feeling thing who wants safety, softness, cuddles, and someone kind to say, “you’re okay, I’ve got you, you don’t have to be so big right now.”
Sometimes I regress because I’m anxious.
Sometimes because I’m sad.
Sometimes because I feel lonely.
Sometimes because I feel unsafe, rejected, embarrassed, or ashamed.
Sometimes because my brain and body are worn out from pretending I’m fine.
Sometimes because I get so overstimulated or scrambled that being big just stops working properly for me.
And sometimes it happens because something soft finally lets me stop fighting.
A gentle “come here, baby.”
A moment where I don’t have to explain myself perfect to be loved.
That’s the bit people don’t always understand.
Regression, for me, isn’t just play.
It’s my brain finding the safest little corner it knows and curling up there.
It’s the part of me that didn’t always feel safe trying to build a tiny nursery inside my own heart.
And yes, nappies are part of that for me too.
Not as some random seperate thing that has nothing to do with the rest of me.
They are part of my comfort language.
Part of my little language.
Part of the way my body and brain understand care.
There is something about being padded that makes me feel held in a way I can’t really explain properly. The softness. The bulk. The crinkle. The way it hugs me. The babyish routine of it. The feeling of being protected and ready and allowed to need looking after.
And if I’m honest, when my body feels tired, awkward, achey, tense, or not fully on my side, that feeling of being protected means even more.
It tells a very deep part of me:
You’re allowed to be small.
You’re allowed to need care.
You don’t have to be embarrassed about being vulnerable.
That doesn’t mean ABDL is simple for me. It isn’t. There can be grown up feelings around it too, and I’m not gonna pretend it all fits into neat little boxes.
Nappies connect to the same place as regression does.
The same place as plushies.
The same place as bottles.
The same place as being tucked in.
The same place as being checked on.
The same place as someone noticing I’m wobbly before I have to ask for help.
The same place as someone understanding that sometimes I need more patience, more softness, and simpler gentler things.
It’s all part of the same soft map.
A map that points toward comfort.
Which is probably why Plushveria exists.
Plushveria isn’t just a silly fantasy kingdom I made up because I like cute things.
Although, yes, I do like cute things and I will defend plushie goverment as a very serious and valid system. The council has badges. There are forms. Probably written in crayon, but still.
Plushveria is what my inside world looks like on the outside.
It is what my heart looks like when it’s trying to feel safe.
Castle Cuddlekeep is the part of me that wants somewhere warm to come home to.
The Plushie Council is the part of me that wants to be watched over by soft loyal little creatures who take my wellbeing very seriously.
Meltdown Marsh is the part of me that needs a protected place where big feelings are allowed and nobody gets cross just because I can’t cope.
And honestly, it makes sense my brain made somewhere like that. A place with softer rules. A place where being overwhelmed isn’t treated like being difficult. A place where needing extra help, extra rest, or extra gentleness doesn’t make you a problem.
Bottle Brook, Milk River, blanket nests, tiny royal decrees, comfort quests, sleepy missions, and emergency cuddle rules are all silly, yes.
But they’re also real in the way feelings are real.
They are how my brain turns overwhelm into something softer.
How loneliness becomes a kingdom.
How shame becomes a story I can survive.
How a tired little prince can be wrapped in blankets instead of being told off for not being big enough.
That’s why all of this matters so much to me.
Because my little side isn’t just an aesthetic.
It isn’t just cute posts.
It isn’t just crinkles and bottles and sleepy faces and nursery dreams.
It’s the part of me that still wants to be loved gently.
The part that wants to be picked.
The part that wants someone to see all the softness and not decide it’s too much.
The part that wants to be cared for without being made to feel broken.
The part that wants to hear, “you’re not wrong for needing this.”
I think some people imagine age regression as something neat and occasional. Like you put on cute pyjamas, watch cartoons for a bit, maybe cuddle a plushie, then pack it away.
And sometimes, yes, it can look like that.
But for me, it goes much deeper.
I can be adult and little at the same time.
Silly and very emotional.
A grown man who can talk about work, money, family, scary life things, and the future… but who also has a very real little boy living close to the surface, clutching a plushie and hoping someone gentle won’t leave.
A person who can seem fine on the outside, while inside my brain is buzzing, my body is tired, my hands are fumbling, my feelings are too big, and all I really want is to be somewhere soft and safe.
For a long time, I thought that made me strange.
Now I think maybe it just makes me me.
I don’t want to spend my whole life fighting the little part anymore.
I don’t want to keep treating him like an embarrassing secret shoved in a cupboard.
He’s been trying to keep me safe for years.
He’s the part of me that still reaches for comfort when things hurt.
The part that still believes softness matters.
The part that can turn a bad day into a blanket nest, a Plushie Council meeting, or a tiny royal decree from a kingdom made of cushions and hope.
He deserves to exist without being laughed at.
So maybe I am a permakid in some ways.
Maybe I’m age regressed sometimes, age dreaming sometimes, ABDL always somewhere in the background, and naturally soft and childlike in a way that has followed me my whole life.
Maybe I don’t need one perfect label.
Maybe I just need honesty.
And the honest truth is this:
I have always felt little inside.
I have always been drawn to care, softness, babyish comfort, plushies, nappies, cartoons, safe routines, silly worlds, and the idea of being lovingly looked after.
I have always needed more gentleness than I knew how to ask for.
And I am trying, slowly, to stop being ashamed of that.
Because this isn’t me trying to become someone else.
This is me finally understanding the little boy who was there all along
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