***How Are You Feeling Today???*** (may trigger)

I get how you feel about feeling like it’s selfish. But I also can kinda get how your family feels too. I had a dachshund a few years ago and it was getting hard for him to move around and he would constantly pee on the carpet and he was getting pretty grumpy and snappy. I was always the one cleaning up his messes cause my mom can’t because of her MS. At one point I was trying to pull a tick off of him and he bit me. After that I was ready for him to be put down, but I also felt so horrible for feeling like that. I was just tired and frustrated and feeling resentful. I miss the little guy. He was a sweet dog and he couldn’t help that he was getting old.

As for the rest of your post, wow. I would say it’s probably not a good idea to go on a paraphilia forum. Even if this person tells you you’re not you’re gonna start doubting it because that’s what OCD does. But you’re braver than I am. I would never even think to go on a paraphilia forum. Just the thought makes me queasy and idk if it’s the OCD or just me not liking the idea.

Snaga wrote: When you say client, do you mean one of the people you used to RP with?

Sorry about the confusion. I used to work with kids and I referred to them as clients. I literally took these kids swimming, and I felt nothing, no attraction, nothing! Why is OCD attacking this now? It makes it so much worse and honestly, if it had been someone I roleplayed with, I would have felt bad but not like this. I did not like this thought and it killed my mood immediately. I don't know if that makes it better but the aftermath has been my depression being 10x worse. Could that even count as an intrusive thought anymore?

As for our dog, I think I feel selfish because it seems like we are putting him down for convenience's sake. However, he will sit in his own feces because he can't get up and is in pain according to the vet. It is only going to get worse from here. He has not ever been the type to show his pain, so maybe he won't ever seem like he is ready. I think I am being selfish by trying to force him to continue living. We are waiting until the week to take him. I just don't want him to be alone when he goes but we are not allowed to be with him.

I relate a lot to what you said about the past, artninja. I think a lot about myself before this and just feel this sadness like I won't ever be the same again. I used to read these dumb imagines on Tumblr and get giddy about guys I found attractive. Now I think, was any of that even real?

Ah ok.

I’ve read that pets—dogs particularly—will often try to mask their pain so their humans won’t feel sad. I don’t know how much of that is true, but that might explain a few things. Yes, if he’s sitting in his own fecal matter because he can’t get up, he is definitely in pain. I know it’s hard. Trust me. I had a different dog years ago who struggled to get up and walk and she had always seemed to have a hard time breathing and I could feel tumors growing in a lot of places on her body. She slipped one day and had trouble getting up and my step grandfather said that it was time to put her down. My mom got very angry as she was convinced she had more time left in her and he just wanted to put her down because he was just sick of her, but I had to agree with him. She was old and she was suffering. It ripped my heart to pieces (I’d had her since I was very little, practically a baby) but I knew it had to be done. I cried for almost an entire day. Rest In Peace, Ezra, my sweet girl.

OCD is really popping off today. I was dwelling on wishing I had never looked at those shota comics again, and then I started thinking “well looking at them made you hyper aware to check tags in fanfiction. If that hadn’t happened you could be searching for and reading underage fanfiction”. I don’t think that would be true, but of course OCD does whatever the hell it wants. I had already been worrying about a visual novel game that I loved playing in HS and somewhat beyond. The guy I chose as the main one to romance was one of the younger options but he was still 18, and the story takes place over a period of years, and you don’t actually start the romance until mid to end of the game, and by that time he’s like 19-20. I never picked him because he was young. I picked him because I liked his mostly upbeat personality and he and the protagonist that you play as make an adorable and more realistic couple than the others, who are mostly much older, even though I did play their routes too and liked most of them. Realistically know none of this means anything, and I wouldn’t have been stressing about it before this spike happened (I don’t think). This also came in the wake of Twitter discourse over fanfiction and me stressing about that, and the scandal with the youtuber CallMeCarson in which he had been sexting a 17 year old fan (even though he himself is 19. She is still a minor, yes, and the power imbalance is huge). I never watched the guys videos, I’ve just heard other people talking about it. Like, I’ve never thought about all the technicalities and it’s driving me nuts, even though normally I would’ve never needed to think about it. OCD at its finest, huh? Or was it just me being naive and thinking there were just unspoken rules that everyone knew to follow and never strayed because everyone agreed that straying was gross and bad?

It’s funny. I’ve said before that my first post when this spike happened is the most true because I was the most confident, and I didn’t need to say much on what I meant because I knew people got it. But as I’ve let OCD gain more power and as my confidence in what I know gets weaker and weaker, I’ve noticed my explanations getting longer and longer because I worry people will assume bad things so I have to explain myself further and consequently get myself more riled up. And again, before this spike I wouldn’t really think about all these nuances and technicalities because the whole thing in general wasn’t something I really thought about a lot or cared to think about cause my mind was focused on other things. I always just thought of it as ‘if one party was under 18 and the other was like several decades older’. I guess I really am naive. I remember when I was a freshman in HS I had a friend (also a freshman) who started dating a senior and I thought they were a cute couple and couple goals but some people started getting concerned about what happens when he turned 18. I didn’t really see what the problem was (but then again I was a little 14-15 year old who didn’t think about that stuff. I was also dealing with my HOCD at its worst at the time and also crushing—I’m pretty sure—on a senior boy. That never went anywhere ofc because he already had a girlfriend that he was crazy about who was a junior). They broke up after a few years. I heard he was becoming a huge a-hole and that’s why they broke it off, idk. Never really heard from him again.

Sorry if this didn’t make a whole lot of sense and was very long. Just where my head is at

Aaaand last night I think I went and made myself worse. Dammit.

Yeah.

I’m sorry. I know you try to help and I probably don’t seem like I listen and probably am causing other people to spike :/