Feeling guilty

This is very cringey, but I would like to get it off my chest.

Primarily when I was in high school and between the ages of 14 and 19, I used to draw fetish cartoon art and post it online, discussing and sharing art with other similar individuals (most of which were adults). The drawings I did were honestly horrendous, they looked like a kindergartener drew them, but I did actually get a pretty big following.

Some of the individuals I met and interacted with were lolicons and I sort of accepted lolicon as just another fetish thing. The primary fetish I drew were silly situations in which a character's pants fall down, showing their underwear and embarrassing them. Some of the characters I drew were underage, however, and this drew some criticism. At the time, I felt it was ok because I could cite situations in actual cartoons and anime where this happened to similar characters. After a while though, I decided to only draw adult characters or at least make sure that character resembled an adult in my drawing.

I haven't posted anything in almost a decade now. I decide to step away when some of the individuals I mentioned earlier ended up getting arrested/called out for committing crimes (you can probably guess what they did.) There's a whole argument about lolicon being just drawings/ok because they're not real people, but I feel bad, especially having been talking to actual predators and possibly inciting anything with my dumb drawings.

I've wanted to talk about this with my therapist, but I'm afraid I'll get in trouble or something/told I'm a pedophile. I think I may have POCD, but I'm not sure. I'm hoping I can get some feedback here about whether I should keep beating myself up or not. I feel like a lot of my friends would be disgusted/disappointed if they knew about this. I told myself that if I ever did draw fetish art again, all the characters would be drawn as 18+ and that I would probably just keep them to myself.

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

BurnerAccount wrote: I'm hoping I can get some feedback here about whether I should keep beating myself up or not.

It's the past, it's drawings. you were yourself a teenager...