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Hi, I am writing this because I have been consumed by guilt and shame over something TERRIBLE that I did. Before I go into detail about what I did, I would like to share some information about myself that may be useful in understanding my situation here. I’m a straight male, currently 17, and in my senior year of high school. I was raised in an upper middle class family by two loving and supportive parents, (I’m an only child). I’ve always had a pretty great and care-free life, at least until the summer before 8th grade. This was the summer that my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I still remember the terrible feeling I got; that my world was being torn apart, when my parents sat me down and told me. I had never really had anything bad happen to me before this. Also adding to my stress, that year I got REALLY bad cystic acne that totally demolished my self-esteem, as well as any confidence I had with girls. As if it wasn’t bad enough, this was also the year I discovered internet pornography, I quickly became addicted. As time went on, my addiction grew stronger and my mother grew weaker. My addiction took up time that I SHOULD have spent with my dying mother. But no, I was too stupid to put aside my addiction. Then, my sophomore year, my mother died. I remember being picked up from school by my Uncle, they pulled me out of my 3rd period. I knew it was my mom before they told me why I was leaving. I got home and my dad told me her body was shutting down. I broke down and started sobbing. I walked up the stairs and stopped at the top trying to stop crying so I could be strong in front of her. I walked into her room and saw her laying in the bed. Her eyes were closed and I realized how weak she was. I hugged her and she held me, she was barely able to whisper “it’s ok.” I broke down in tears again, and as she held me I felt like a scared little kid again. After she died, I realized how short life was and how badly I wanted to stop my addiction. Unfortunately it only got worse. The only positive side of this story is that my acne has almost gone away, and I actually think I’m somewhat attractive now. I’ve grown more confident with girls and a some have even told me they find me attractive, but I still have never had a girlfriend. Now here’s where I REALLY fucked up. Toward the end of my junior year (around April) I started reading these fictional sexual stories online about adults having sex with underage kids. Let me say that I’m NOT attracted to kids and would NEVER accept behavior like this in real life. The only reason I could get off on these stories was due to the taboo nature. It was wrong, I knew that, and it made it exciting. Then over the summer, I did something even worse. I looked up pictures of little girls (usually around 10) and masturbated to them. I did this a few times. It WAS NOT child porn. Just pictures of young girls I found on images, not sexual in nature. I could never watch child porn and the thought makes me want to vomit. I knew it was wrong and yet I did it anyways. I stopped, and haven’t done it in months, but now that I reflect on my actions I am absolutely appalled that I did something like this. I feel like a total monster. I don’t deserve to be happy. I don’t deserve to be alive, and I would honestly kill myself but I don’t want to do that to my dad, he’s lost too much already. Even though I’ve never viewed CP, I feel guilt like I have. Even though I’ve never molested anyone nor wanted to, I feel guilty like I have. I don’t know how I was OK with doing these things, and am unsure why I am just now realizing how wrong it was. Not to mention I think one of the pictures was of a girl around 6. I’ve struggled with social anxiety and depression before I did these disgusting things , but my shame has exacerbated these issues. I’ve self harmed before as well, both as a release of emotion and as self-punishment for what I’ve done. I’m not a pedophile but have been comparing myself to them. I’ve been getting a LOT of instrusive thoughts and cannot stop obsessing about my mistakes. I’ve broken down in tears and have come close to a panic attack on multiple occasions due to my shame and guilt. Had I done these bad things when I was younger, (like 13) I would have been able to forgive myself, as I would’ve thought it to be sexual experimentation. But since I’m 17, this is not an excuse. I CANNOT move past this and whenever someone is talking to me or says I am a good person all I can think is ”if you knew what I’ve done you’d want to kill me”. I want to get a girlfriend, get married, and have kids, but I fear confessing these things to her someday. Had it been a “normal” porn addiction, I wouldn’t have as much shame, but because I read these stories and looked at these pictures, it’s not “normal”. It’s despicable. I’ve read a lot about OCD and obsessive/intrusive thoughts lately, and thought maybe that’s why I’m feeling guilty. Then I remember that I actually DID something, which is different than just having a thought. I want to die. Please help. PS sorry about the long post I just really had to get this off my chest.

When I was in primary school, I had never come to know any serious sadness. Looking back now and even then, my life felt like a Utopia - most of which I probably just made up in my mind. Of course I was extremely quiet and loved isolation - my parents recall that I would worry incessantly about the smallest things & that they would often find sitting alone in the dark. It was around the age of 12 or 13 that I began to experience guilt & regret. And here's the thing. It's like the guilt and regret is intrinsic to my essence - and occurs in me abundantly & independently of actual life events, and latch on to anything to make me extremely sad. If I were to address a situation that I am feeling guilty about - the guilt would simply attach itself to something else. It never goes away. Just moves from place to place. I didn't mean to pick on guilt, I worry, stress, and regret things that in actuality might be trivial, although some I admit are substantial. I can't escape from these feelings. I am DROWNING in every waking moment. Does anyone else feel this way? How do you cope?

I did something foolish yesterday — i looked at an ex-girlfriend’s Facebook profile. This is somebody i broke up with 28 years ago; you’d think there wouldn’t be any pain anymore. But there it was: i saw her picture, i remembered her face, i remembered the tears that i saw in her eyes back then. Tears that i caused. I did that. I broke up with her, I made her sad, I caused her pain. I want so much to reach back into the past, back to 1989, and erase that pain from her life. I don’t know; of course it’s possible that time has already erased her pain, possible that she’s been really happy from 1990 on. But when i thought of her sadness and hurt feelings, it still hurt me. So how do i know she doesn’t still hurt, too? This is what i was thinking. Sorry, everybody. I’m whining. This isn’t anything that’s going to help anyone with their issues. But i had this really intense sorrow when i saw her picture, so i wanted to unload this.

WARNING : This post is a pretty long one. I apologize in advance. I'll get to the point, but before that, I'll introduce myself a bit. I'm 21 years old. I'm from India, and you can call me Hollow. I have OCD. With saying that, I'll get on with the story. It all started 10 years ago, back when I was in 6th grade. I would get repeated intentions to hurt, cause harm and even kill people who are close to me. Mostly family members and friends. However, every time I've made an attempt to do harm, I would either miss, or not be able to do it. The most common examples I can give is hitting a family member, but missing, or even push someone in front of incoming traffic and miss. Either that, or the person I pushed would move beforehand, thus making him out of my reach. The biggest form of this is stabbing. Whenever I see the kitchen knife, I get the urge to stab my family members with it. But as always, I'd fail to do so, either by missing or some reason or the other. This all has caused severe distress in me, and the feelings of guilt and self loathe would consume me. However, upon being diagnosed with OCD, I've taken prescribed medication since then and would visit the state mental hospital from time to time. Things have improved considerably, and though I've had low episodes every now and then, life was more or less normal. However, as of late, from 2014, that is, from the age of 19, things have gone towards a new, darker turn. Let me tell you the story of this as well. From 18, my testosterone level has shot up quite high. Generally, many people vent off by watching porn. However, for me, I'd vent off from virtual sex, or, sexual roleplay (rp). Roleplay refers to performing actions through words. The action you wish to perform is typed between the star (*) signs. For example, if I want to pat your shoulder, I simply type, *pats your shoulder*. So I'm sure you can imagine how sexual rp goes. I got into rp, and was soon addicted to it. I'd rp with anyone and everyone I could find. I'd rp with people as young as 9 to people who were twice my age. At that time, I didn't care. But then, I thought... Does roleplaying with such young people make me a pedophile..? That's where the worrying started. However, I didn't stop. I'd still rp with very young people. And my lust was so great, I'd even ask for nudes from them. Things have not ended there. The app that I used to rp is this app called kik. On kik, you can talk with and be friends with random people online. I remember that there were people who would post, talking about exchanging child porn and rape videos. I have memories of exchanging and trading such videos and pictures with such people. And for a long time, I have been, and still do feel remorse for viewing and pleasuring myself to child porn. I have memories of doing such things, and I've talked this out with my friends, family and therapist. They all said the same thing, that this all is a phase. My best friend, who was an avid viewer of porn, told me that child porn exists only on the deep web, and people like us can't access it. Along with all this, I have memories of involving in human and child trafficking via kik and other media. But when I talked this out with my friends and family, they all told me that these are false memories. But I'm not able to accept the fact that these are false memories, because I remember doing such things, and I feel sick about it. When I remember these things, I get 4 thought : 1. The memory. 2. The guilt. 3. Telling myself that these are false memories and that they've never happened. 4. Remembering the memory and telling myself that I'm lying to myself by saying that these are false memories, and I should be punished. And it sickens me. I've consulted my friends, family and even my college counselor about this. They all told me that I'm not a pedophile, as all this is on a virtual basis. They also said that I don't show the characteristics of a pedophile. They said that a pedophile feels no remorse for his actions, and try justifying themselves. And also, that they show this behavior from an early age. However, I'm the opposite. I've had none of these issues before the age of 19. In all aspects, I want to be married to a woman. Despite all this, I feel as if I'm a pedophile. I feel like a criminal. I feel that I should be punished, and I feel absolutely disgusted of myself. Self loathe has consumed me and I'm drowning in self doubt. I've been researching on this topic, and feel more and more like a pedophile/criminal. I feel like a misfit. The depression attacks keep getting worse. I can't bear to be with myself. I feel so disgusted. I'm desperate. I don't know what to do. I only get solace in sleep. I need closure. I have no idea what to do.

I'll try to keep this as short as possible. I'm emotionally aware of what's going on, but I don't know how to control it. (Trigger warning: Mental illness and self-harm.) I'll break it up into two parts, so it won't be messy. 1.) My OCD is getting worse. I'll get disturbing images relating with things I don't want to talk about. I don't really have a *physical* ritual that'll help me calm down. I have a mental one, but lately they haven't been working because the images will get worse and worse. Then there's voices that'll make me mentally say things I don't even mean to say, and they get in the way of everything! The voices makes me think I need to "punish" myself for thinking things I don't even mean to think about. I've tried exposure therapy for one of my bad thoughts, and it worked! But some of the things I absolutely cannot look up, it's beyond scary. Is there another way to not think these thoughts, without resorting to exposure therapy or medication? 2.) My guilt is eating me up. I have a horrible time dealing with it, because the only way I cope with it is to cut myself. (Especially if I end up offending someone, that's when I'll go into a frenzy!) I try my best to be good and not hurt people, but sometimes it's unintentional, and I'll apologize, and they'll forgive me, but the guilt feeling won't go away even after the situation has ended. It'll only go away if I hurt myself. I don't know how to handle it. I don't know how to forgive myself, because I don't really like myself at all. I'm sorry for any grammatical/spelling errors- it's 12:50AM here. (Some people can stay up longer I don't know how they do it. :0 )