Guilt is eating me

I posted about this on the OCD forum but that was a bit more POCD related, this is more centered around the event(s) themselves that bother me.

Essentially, when I was around the age of 13 (I could have been 12-14, I don't really know) I used to masturbate to weird things. Not as graceful as I'd like to put it, but unfortunately I don't think there's a real nice way of saying that

By "gross things" I specifically mean beastiality and loli/shotacon. I stopped looking at the beastiality stuff and I'm not all too bothered by it, the loli/shota is what's really been upsetting me for the past few months. I'm tearing myself up over it and it's really affected everything about me for the past few months.

loli/shotacon is, I'm gonna be blunt, drawn cp. No real kids (I may have been dumb but I'm pretty sure I knew better not to look at the real stuff). It was mostly anime (I say "mostly" because there was one image that was 3D which concerns me now and it pretty much kicked off this whole guilt spike) and featured "kids"/characters that were obviously not real. Because they weren't real, I didn't see an issue with it. I still really don't, it is gross but it's better someone look at the drawn things rather than real children being abused.

I'm very fed up with how this is affecting me. While I'm fed up, I'm also terrified. Terrified that I'll never get over this and I'll go into my 70s obsessed with the mistakes I made as a kid. I'm terrified that, as ridiculous as it sounds, someone's going to arrest me for looking at that stuff. I feel like a criminal that's just hiding from the law. I don't think looking at it is what bothered me, it's the fact that I got pleasure out of it that makes me feel like a gross criminal.

I know that kind of stuff is inappropriate and it genuinely disgusts me nowadays (I happen to stumble across it now and then) but is it something I need to be this guilty over? I've been suicidal over it and it seems very ridiculous. Am I a bad person? Am I a gross person? Did I do something super illegal/am I a criminal? Please ease my mind Is there anything I can do to make this stop? Any help is appreciated! I'm just very exhausted of feeling guilty, It's like it's the only emotion I've been feeling since last September.

As far as I'm concerned, you didn't abuse or exploit anyone. At the end of the day, drawings are just that, drawings. I can see why you'd feel queasy about having those images in your mind, but pen and paper / lines on a screen don't have human rights for a reason. They are abstractions. I don't like that such images exist since I believe they inherently "make light of" or sanction child abuse... but I know that for a lot of people anime girls are a species apart - they don't even directly relate 2D characters to real human beings.

I think the writings of de Sade are an affront to human dignity, but someone reading about torture (or even looking at images of torture) is a world apart from someone who commit torture themself.

Again speaking personally ~ occasionally I worry about the anime visual novels that some of my friends read since they often seem to involve scenes of sexual assault which the writers perhaps do not recognise as sexual assault. There seem to be a lot of "sex" scenes in which the girl is pressured or coerced. But, again, if this is strictly fictional and the player can tell the difference between fiction and reality, I'd hate to see someone jailed for playing a game like that.

In short, I don't think it's healthy or sensible to fill one's mind up with that stuff, but it's doesn't make you a "bad" person. You don't really have anything to feel guilty about - certainly not if you have left that material behind you.

P.S. My understanding is that the law on this differs a lot by country. Here in Britain we have the "Dangerous Cartoons Act", but only one person has ever been arrested due to it and he already had a prior conviction. You don't need to panic or feel like a criminal. Your story seems similar to that of so, so many people who were into anime as adolescents. Try not to worry so much about it.

I can relate with what you are dealing with in a slightly different way. I tend to try to watch anime/cartoons/3d versions of all sex because actual sex is so "in your face" sometimes and a little disgusting that its just easier on the eyes to just watch the animated versions. As far as the other thing, I've actually read stories that deal with that subject, like fantasy stories - I get disgusted watching it in cartoons and/or actual situations (horrible), but reading the fantasy stories allow me to come to terms with it in a different way, just for a moment, as the idea turns me on and lets me focus on that without the brunt edge of the gravity & full picture of it - but like you, I would never be okay with it in reality. Sprock mentioned already the non-social non-criminal aspect of what you mentioned but, like u said, and like how I feel, we still dont want it to be a turn on in any way, even if it's a little turn on & then u switch back to regular stuff, you just dont want it around, not even a story that fantasizes on it and I totally get it. For me, it all started when my Dad used to act a certain way towards me that prompted me to start thinking about what he may have been thinking when he would do those things or ask me to do certain things - nothing crazy, but just that there was that question of "what would he do", that just began to make me wonder why he would want to do that and then playing it out in my head what could've happened, all the open questions, and then now those thoughts have an affect on me. The sad part is roleplaying something like that with a guy would be a huge turn on for me, but would I ever trust him around anyone, absolutely not. I know it's crazy, but watching gay sex cartoon/reading about it, has the exact same effect on me, and I'm a female. I stumbled on it once which is how that got started. Wondering what do they really like about it and filling in all the gaps so I could start liking and getting turned on by it too. Of course knowing that its not socially acceptable also has an effect. I think to overcome these things we have to understand whats really driving it, because if you dont agree with it in real life there's something about it thats deceptively ######6 with the head in fantasy. Sometimes I think it has something to do with the loss of our own innocence internally. I wish I* knew what the solution was -- beating it out of you, a person coming to you with a real life story & telling you how it hurt them irretrievably, coming here to express remorse and finally let it out and releasing it from you. I wish I knew...it makes me want to puke. I wish I knew how to let these thoughts or whatever they are, go. I wonder too, how many others there are that are like this.

Thank you both very much for the replies! They mean a lot to me, it's nice to have some insight from people that don't really know me personally because then at least I know the response won't be biased and it's nice to know someone else can relate!

i used to feel very guilty earlier. now i dont feel guilty. just regret.
i guess the mind develops a scar to protect itself from sanity. it takes a lot of time, but it will happen.

i also realize that there are many people in the world who are ruining someones life or who take pleasure from watching others cry. i am not that person. yes i have a past. but the only thing i can do is compensate for it.

i used to donate blood until i realized that there is a scam n the hospital where i donate blood, would sell the blood.

so yeah... the world is full of horrible people. we just have to look after our family n friends.

another thing that helped me reduce guilt is not judging others. we all have a past and reasons for our behavior. as long as it doesnt affect me it's all right.

i dont think you have caused someone any major harm. we can never be all perfect. i mean we eat food and kill plants for that.

i would at times visualize my past as a burnt scar on my arm. that would help.