I think I’ll tell my story here in case anybody relates at all. I’m 20 now, but when I was a teenager I would watch cartoon porn, a typical thing for teens to do. I’d do most of my searching on google since it seemed safe and never thought much about what I was watching. Around when I turned 19 I learned that some of the stuff I had watched was absolutely vile, like animated cartoon children. This stuff would just show up in my recommended images and I wouldn’t bat an eye on the ages of these characters or think I did anything wrong at the time. I did this more than once. It is so disgusting how this stuff managed to just appear everywhere when impressionable people like me don’t know what they’re actually looking at. This sent me down a spiral of guilt and depression, and prior to this I also had undiagnosed OCD of various types, mainly relating to my health and fearing death. I don’t know how I saw that stuff and didn’t realize what I was doing, it seems impossible that I wouldn’t recognize that and now I believe I actually wanted to indulge in such awful media. It’s a part of me that I have to live with now and I feel soulless, like I committed the worst human act, even if technically no actual people were harmed. I would never hurt a real person, and this fear of being something I never thought I could be really drags me down. You can’t find reassurance anywhere on this topic because everyone simply says how awful this type of stuff is and that you’re automatically a pedophile for even watching it, and it just leaves me with a sunken heart. I would lock myself away in a box for eternity if it meant I wouldn’t ever hurt a child or human being. I even told my parents and they think it’s fine what I did since it was all fantasy, my OCD therapist said it’s fine and gave me a few ERP techniques which definitely help, but it never seems to be enough in the long term. I just wish I could go back and stop myself from looking at this filth, but I can’t, it’s ruined my life and I’m so unsure of how to move on sometimes. I feel like I deserve to punish myself eternally like this for the thoughts, the awful memories, and everything else that came from this. It feels like more than a mistake, it feels like what I did is a life ending event. Sorry for my rant, but maybe someone else has a similar story, I still believe things can get better in the future. Any advice would be nice.