So, im still kind of in a rollercoaster of emotions about all of this. Im definitely better than i was at the start because when you hit rock bottom you can only go up (or stay rock bottom i guess, but thats too pesimistic even for me).

But i still feel like when the guilt is partially gone and i feel like what i did wasnt that bad or that uncommon i feel like i might want to go back to reading pedophillic hentai or fanfiction or i might not regret having done it and i start feeling guilty about that too. Though i hear urges arent uncommon with ocd or pocd or whatever, i dont know if id really call it an "urge". Maybe its more of a "but other people are doing it and not feeling bad about it so why should i?" which is a feeling i dont want to have because i want to be better than those people. Any time i came across something similar to guilt when i read that kind of content i thought something like "well, at least im not the person who wrote it". And i really dont want to have that feeling of "im not doing anything bad because theres people doing worse things". If i kept to that mentality technically id never be a bad person because theres always someone worse out there, and i dont want to have to compare myself to awful people to make myself look good.
Also, whenever i feel less guilty about the whole thing and i feel like i technically didnt to anything that bad it makes me feel like i mightve only felt guilty because i worried about what other people would think of me if they found out about it and not because i thought what i did was wrong. Which, of course, was (is) a huge part of my distress but i dont know if id call it the sole reason of it. I already knew people thought if you read fictional stories or comics about fictional anime kids in a sexual setting youre a pedophile. And it really did bother me but at one point i started listenting to them less and less.

To be honest, i have a double standard where i have an extremely hard time seeing women as predatory or disgusting/bad people. Which is a huge reason why i didnt think of my actions as creepy. I think i even used to think men who liked lolis where creepy gross pedophiles but when i found out women did it i thought it was another deal. And then, as not to have double standards, i started thinking it was ok for men to like lolis too. I know im wrong in this, because women can be gross and predatory but i still have a hard time getting rid of that mentality. I remember i even sympathized with this girl who had many tweets saying she liked zoophillic porn and many people said she raped her dog but i guess i either didnt believe she actually did it or something? Though i tend to side with marginalized people because i feel marginalized myself... Though i shouldnt have sided with her because obviously zoophillia is wrong and even if the animal isnt harmed youre still taking advantage of them for your own pleasure and thats disgusting. But like i said, i have a hard time seeing women as creepy or predatory, probably because even if women can be as disgusting and evil as men can, they probably dont act on it that much since we dont see that many female predators or female rapists or whatever. This isnt to say i think women can do no wrong, im aware my thoughts are wrong. But its a hard mentality to get rid of.
Still, i dont think most of the women i followed that also had similar problematic tastes in fiction as i did were bad people. I think it was a harmless way of exploring their sexual interests and they knew that kind of stuff was ok in fiction yet would be awful and unforgivable in every way in real life.

I also think the fact that todays society, particularly in social media is obsessed with labeling everything as pedophilia. Of course we should take awareness of it and not sexualize children in any way but this obsession with labeling everything as creepy or predatory really contributed to my pocd. I really wish they just called people attracted to real life children pedophiles and thats it.
Ive also been thinking a lot about the whole "just because youre attracted to something in fiction doesnt mean youre attracted to it irl", which i saw a lot online defending people who liked incest or pedophilia in anime, like me. I feel like id personally be doubtful of this argument and i still kind of am but despite all my pocd i dont actually think im a pedophile or attracted to my family members despite liking those taboo subjects in fiction. And i dont think most of the people who are into that are either. I mean, i cant fully know someone from what they wrote on twitter or instagram but the people i used to follow who were into that kind of thing seemed like totally normal people with normal lives who just happened to like that kind of stuff in fiction.

Ive also been trying to think why i even liked something like that in the first place and maybe im just making excuses for myself but it mightve been because i liked things associated with the genre rather than because i liked anime children. I think maybe i liked feminity in men and for them to be sexualized too rather than the girl being the spotlight of the whole scene, and i didnt really like BL manga because the lack of women there didnt make me feel wanted (and also many BL mangas are very misogynistic). I also really liked first times and sexual tension and hesitant experimentation and being oversensitive or overwhelmed, so maybe those tropes are what i found enjoyable rather than the genre itself. I know that even though i tried reading it and maybe didnt mind it a lot at times, i didnt really like stuff like full on rape. Maybe noncon or dubcon but i never really enjoyed just plain sexual assault and i even got really uncomfortable to the point of headaches and stomachaches when it was hinted at in a film.

Ive been thinking a lot these past few days and ive come to the conclusion that even when i feel less guilty i feel guilty about not feeling so guilty. Maybe im just miserable and this pocd and constant worrying about what i used to look up online or the bad thoughts i had are just fuel to make me feel even more miserable.
I dont know, feeling less guilt is a double edged sword. If i feel like what i did wasnt wrong i kind of get this feeling of "then why not go back to it?" even though i dont want to take a step back from the progress ive made and unlearn everything ive been drilling into my head for the past few months to try to make myself a better person. Even though i dont know if i could go back to that even if i wanted to given that im sort of uncomfortable with the thought of anything sexual right now.
But if the guilt is back and i feel like what i did was wrong and awful i get back into this feeling that no one would ever forgive me or want to be around me if they knew about it. So i end up feeling bad and overthinking anyway.
I dont even know if i truly miss reading that kind of stuff (because i dont want to think its some kind of fetish i cant live without) or if i just miss not feeling so guilty all the time or reading funny things in social media that sometimes those people posted or just being able to read anything that caught my eye without censoring myself. I dont know, i truly dont know what to feel.

I find myself wanting to go to my therapist like, 2 days after ive just been there and i start thinking about what im gonna tell her when i go next week, which just exhausts me. Im always exhausted of thinking so much because i havent stopped overthinking about this whole thing every thingle day for two whole months.

For me, writing here is incredibly cathartic when i need to put the tangled up thoughts that cloud my head all day into order and i still have a few days to go before i can talk to my therapist. I still dont think anyone reads these but i find this a lot easier than writing in a physical journal where i cant erase things as easily and writing takes such a long time and at the end makes my hand hurt. I could just write it on word and save it on my computer but for some reason i like it better here.