feeling guilt

So, back when i was 18, i got involved in an online art/rpg community through instagram. We would make characters, draw them, join group chats and talk about our characters interacting with each other- if was chaotic, but fun, and i got hooked. Eventually, as the group kept growing, people started making different discord servers, each surrounding different stories with over-arching plots, and everybody would develop their characters and have them interact. Imagine a mix between DnD and a collaborative novel. I started dealing with severe OCD when i was about that year, in the depths of quarantine, and these servers became an escape for me. There was one in particular that was very involved lore-wise, and i was very deeply invested in because one of my characters had a romantic arc with one of the server hosts characters. It wasn’t until i started dealing with POCD when i began to have issues with the server. The issues begin with the fact that the age range of people on the server was very wide, ranging from high school to college aged. I believe the youngest person in the server was about 13, but i didn’t interact with her much. I was homeschooled and i have younger siblings, so i’ve never had a problem with having younger friends- growing up, i had a best friend who was 2 years older than me, and through high school until just recently, my best friend was 2 years younger. That friend was actually in this art community as well, i got her involved during quarantine. The point being, i never even considered that having younger friends might come off as creepy. There were definitely inappropriate jokes being made in the server, but i tended to roll my eyes and brush them off. As far as i recall, i never made any myself- i didn’t even dare to start swearing until i was 21, i’ve always been a bit of a rule-follower- but my best friend did make suggestive jokes on occasion, and i would laugh, and now i worry that i goaded her on. There was one specific occasion where the two of us, along with a few other people- i don’t remember all of them, but one was my age, 19, and another would have been about 16 at the time- ended up in a separate discord chat, and they were all cracking jokes about creepy discord mods, calling each other “kitten” and being generally icky for the shock factor. I remember being very uncomfortable at the jokes being made, and i believe i even said so, but in a lighthearted “omg stop” way, when i should have just left. There were a few similar instances where people got a little too comfortable, and i just put up with it and laughed along instead of leaving, which i very much regret. The community eventually started to fall apart. Drama between members was the main reason- the server owner called another adult member out, saying some of her characters had ships with characters belonging to minors that were too explicit. This whole thing was shocking to me. i talked to both of them, considered them both my friends, and didn’t know what to believe. Looking back now, i very much think they were both in the wrong- the server had a “NSFW” art channel that you needed a special role to access, but the owner had set the age requirement to 17 instead of 18 because a younger member whom she was close with had asked her to. I believe i was told this secondhand by my best friend, who always knew more drama than me, and i had marked it as strange, but shrugged it off because it wasn’t my friendship, and i wasn’t in charge. I also have a tendency to trust the judgement of literally anyone else over myself, so if i did have any doubts, i would have brushed it off as my overthinking things. The server died eventually- the owner disappeared, so the plot couldn’t progress further, and i’m pretty sure there was a lot more drama going on that i wasn’t privy to, which is fine by me. I was in therapy while a lot of this was going down, so i told my therapist a lot of it- at the time one of my main concern was another adult member about my age who had gotten too comfortable making sexual jokes with one of the high schoolers, and i did eventually message him and ask him to be more mindful- he did agree that he had been out of line and promised to be more careful in the future. It’s been about 3 years now since i left the community- i still keep in contact with a couple people, but i’ve parted ways with the majority. However, i’m still absolutely wracked with guilt over the entire thing- i was friends with some of the minors, too. There was one friend, 3 years younger than me, whose character was going to have a romantic arc with one of mine at one point. I remember warning them that my character was asexual as a way of warding off any weirdness, and i think they might have made some joke back about their character “not having time for that anyway” though i can’t clearly recall. They also really liked one of my other characters at one point, and would make flirty comments about them- i can’t remember what i said in response, probably some form of “they’re flattered”. I worry so much that i might have encouraged it, and that makes me predatory. Most of my guilt comes from the fear that i’m guilty by association, that being there at all makes me a creep, that i should have said something sooner or just left. Another part of me doesn’t even fully believe that the server owner or the other girl she was fighting with were bad people- i was friends with them, we were in the same online spaces for years! It’s so stupid, but i genuinely compared my own behavior to theirs, used them as a measuring stick to make sure i wasn’t doing anything wrong when my OCD started raising alarm bells. To this day, i still can’t tell if i’m blowing things out of proportion. I know i need to be in therapy again- this has been weighing on me so heavily recently, making me feel nauseous and doomed for literal days at a time- but i could really use some outside perspective. That RPG used to be such a comforting form of escapism to me, but now just remembering it makes me feel vile. i feel like i need to go back through all of my old chats and make sure i didn’t say anything gross to anyone, but i’m so afraid of what i might find, the thought makes me ill.

I’ve done things in the past few years that I’m not proud of - only a couple of things I can think of and they didn’t directly hurt anyone at least with is relieving (but maybe indirectly they sort of did or could’ve which makes me hate myself because why did I do that… *how* could I do that…) If I could back and stop those things from happening, I would. I may not have thought about what I was doing at the time, so I didn’t really recognize that they weren’t okay, but that doesn’t excuse them, and I would smack some sense into my past self if I were able. I feel like if anyone knew what I‘ve done, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me. They’d write me off as worthless. And maybe they should to be honest. Now yet another thing has come up - I haven’t done anything, but I had an intrusive thought pop up that made me *think* about doing something and this would be unforgivable in my opinion. Though, to be honest, the things I’ve done before are also somewhat unforgivable in my opinion… 😞 Regardless, I don’t want to do it because I don’t think it’s okay, but I worry deep down that I do. Or that I’m looking for an excuse to make it okay to do. I don’t know, it’s complicated. And I’m upset I even thought about it. I wish I had never seen the thing that triggered that intrusive thought. Yet another thing I would stop if I could. I’ve tried to not think about it or focus on it, but it doesn’t work. Even if it goes away, it just comes back again. I just keep thinking about it and it’s overwhelming. Anyway all of the guilt of this is killing me. I feel like an irredeemably terrible person and it makes me want to give up. I can’t get on with life because it’s paralyzing. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and at this point, it feels like I don’t deserve to just move on. I can’t live with myself and I feel like I don’t deserve anything anymore. I know a lot of this is probably OCD, but I’m not sure all of it is and I don’t know what to do… if I spoke to a therapist about it, I don’t think I could bring myself to say what I’ve done or what thoughts I’ve had. But if I was told to move on by someone who didn’t know the truth, I would worry they wouldn’t really say that if they knew. Agh, it’s all just a mess 😞

I shouldn’t have done this (trigger trigger trigger!!) So about a month ago..maybe I watched this video (as a compulsion to prove to myself) The video was called “interview with a p3d0” And basically it was what it says, I watched or more like listened to half of it…after I was disgusted by the person, but now all I can think of is every little thing I do, I feel as if tho I’m monitoring every thought/moment and feeling I have it’s torturous and I hate it..I feel disgusting, the person in the video has empathy and sympathy and had those feelings yk, I can’t explain it you’d have to watch the video yourself but please don’t it will ruin your journey…I feel more hopeless then before, my OCD is telling me so many things trying to convince me things that Ik aren’t true, I’m just really scared I don’t want to be that person I want to be a good cousin and person to my family, I’m sick of my head and myself, I’m so tired that sometimes I can’t even think straight, my head is always in pain and idek how to help myself..compulsions have been becoming more and more exhausting… I need advice or even someone to relate to, I understand I shouldn’t have done what I did but idk how to forget it.. I had made this post already but when someone replied I couldn’t see it for some reason so I’m uploading it again