Hi all. I’m a long time lurker, but have only just registered. I’ve used this forum and the responses here to get me through some rough times, but never felt I personally had much to contribute. I hope this isn’t off hand.
I’m 39 and I’ve known I’m a MAP for a long time. I remember when I was 14, I took tennis lessons at a local community college one summer. My doubles partner was 12 year old girl, that I considered the most beautiful girl I’d have ever met. In fact I still think about her often. Obviously she’d be 37 now, but I can still imagine that beautiful girl with the green eyes and how she smiled at me. It felt weird to me that even the two year age gap, was like… it’s like this, I was solidly a teenager, and this girl was still in elementary school. And it made me feel deeply conflicted. And suddenly my worldview kind of started unraveling. The older I got, the less my tastes changed, the worse I felt.
Eventually I was in my late twenties, and I made peace with who I was. It was not easy. I suffer from bipolar disorder and extreme anxiety and this period of my life was quite dark personally. I’m still not quite ever going to be fully comfortable with it. Sometimes it makes me almost physically ill. I try to cope.
I cope, as apparently many do, with Lolicon manga, drawn/animated images in general, and recently the occasional AI chat bot, though they’re often weird and break immersion. I specifically stay in that realm because for one anything beyond that, is 100% causing harm. But more than that, what I dream of is pure fantasy, Im never going to have a deeply intellectual, romantic and physically intimate relationship with a grade schooler, because like, they cant provide that for me no matter how much I would want it. They’re not emotionally capable of doing so. And even so, that girl won’t stay that age forever.
I used to live in the Midwest in a state where, as far as I could tell there was no legal issue regarding virtual materials. The state is deeply religious but also deeply values personal freedoms so I was never too concerned. My main sources for material are the usual, Sankaku, nHentai, Hitomi.la, and Pixiv.
I have recently moved to the east coast and have been unable to find solid info on the legality of any of these sites around here. And sometimes the anxiety begins eat away at my soul. I’m concerned visiting these sites could land me in jail I guess. I only visit them, and I don’t download materials to keep on digital storage. It would really only be my image cache and browser history. I feel like I’m losing my mind.
At work today one of my friends, a great guy, was telling me what he would do to pedophiles, and I just had to be like “Yeah man, fuck em” which I guess when I said it, I meant people who abuse children, which yeah, fuck em. But still, having to nod my head along and at the same time I’m this other… thing. I didn’t know how to square it. I felt shitty and gross. I felt I was living a lie. I try not to utilize the stuff too often but recently I’ve been very weak. There was a point at the end of the day where two cops came to my store to assist an elderly lady who was having an issue, and all I could think when I saw them was that I was going to jail, and I would never speak to anyone I know ever again.
I’m struggling to keep going. I’m not suicidal (anymore) but I just feel awful all the time. Duplicitous. I don’t want to betray my friends and family. I don’t want to go jail. But I do want to enjoy who I am.
But I can’t. We can’t. We’re not allowed.
Thank you for reading.
(Edit: I just noticed somehow my actual name must have autofilled in the username block. Is it possible to change that?!)