I can't tell this to anyone I know, I know they will judge me, so I'll write here instead. It's something i've been bottling inside for a while, it's very long so feel free to skip this. I've been feeling an intense guilt for something I didn't do and would never do. It's been a week and sometimes the guilt reappears and tortures me. I'm afraid that people are going to start unthinkable rumors about me and that nobody will believe me when that time comes. I'm afraid that I will be reported and that all my friends will leave me. Since I was in middle school, because I didn't have friends, I used to chat with strangers on a telegram group. Some of the people inside were messed up, but I stayed because most of them were funny. One day the EU announced a policy called "chat control" (I can't write what it is it about because only writing the word triggers me) and the people in the group started joking about them being reported to the police for having hentai videos on the app. I used it as an excuse to finally leave the circle, I wanted to severe my relationship with them and finally delete once for all my telegram account. I wanted to move on and actually live real life. I didn't want to be associated with those people anymore, because I feared of being cancelled in the future on the internet and everything . I deleted it, but once again I've found myself re-downloading telegram and re-entering the same group. I initially played around like if I were a new member, then I revealed myself, and someone asked, I guess jokingly, if I had deleted the account because I had **** (I can't write it) and I started panicking. I tried to tell him that it wasn't true but I wasn't able to communicate it well (my communication skills suck) then I proceeded to delete the account. What if they misunderstand? What if they really start believing what he said? What if they report me? I still regret it to this day, if only I could have explained better. After that I had anxiety and an immense feeling of guilt to the point that I didn't feel worthy of eating or feeling happy. I couldn't sleep because I felt like everything was over for me, I cried a lot. This lasted for 2 days until my mom noticed my behavior and talked some sense into me. Now I feel better but I still replay the conversation I had with that person in my head over and over again trying to fix the past in my head. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over this feeling. I try to not think about it, but it doesn't work. Why do I keep feeling like a monster, when I didn't really do anything?

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.

so, i’ve talked here before about the discord community i used to be in. they were rpg servers, there were adults and minors both in the community, and while there were rules against NSFW, jokes were definitely still made and lines were crossed. i was 19 at the time, and though i’m fairly certain i never made and explicit sexual jokes or remarks, i was still there when others did. my best friend did make suggestive jokes, and i still laughed. i didn’t leave. i feel guilty and tainted and like this is the end of the line for me- i have a following and an online career, and it feels like all of that is going to go up in smoke, because i didn’t realize that being friends with young teens as an 18-19 year old could be weird, or risky. i feel like this is proof of every bad thing that i’ve worried i am. if i could be there, and be okay with all the things that were said and joked about and just ignore them, what else am i capable of? i love my life, and my family. i don’t want them to see me as a monster. my mom thinks i’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but i don’t know if i agree with her. i’ve looked at other cases of people who have been cancelled for being inappropriate around minors online, sending inappropriate photos or making jokes and their entire lives go up in smoke. Is that me? they’re labeled every horrible thing under the sun. did they just not think? I don’t know what i’ll do if people believe that about me. my worst fear feels like it’s coming to life before my eyes after lying dormant and tugging at the back of my mind for almost 4 years. I fought the urge to re-read old chats for that long, but i finally gave in, and while i still haven’t found anything i said or did that could be considered incriminating, i remember new things every time the last worry starts to settle. I tried to log back into old instagram accounts to check old chats there, and remembered i’d already deleted them in a panic, so now i’ll never know, and it feels like the fact that i felt guilty enough to delete the accounts at all is incriminating enough. I don’t think i can ever move past this. i don’t deserve to be here- i’m actually a monster, and i ruined my life before it even started.

i feel like i have been posting a lot about this and i will try to stop since now but i just don't know where to start or what to do, and i can't take therapy right now either. my event is about something that did actually happen; i had a boyfriend and we had a 1.5 age difference (i know this sounds stupid) but the thing is that we both started to sext a lot since he was 14 and i was 15. we shared audios videos pictures ect and i don't know how to just let this go, even when i know that i never really forced him into anything and i was always constantly worried about him being comfortable, when to stop and ect. the memories keep coming back to my mind and the guilt is eating me up slowly because i keep thinking that i'm a predator or a groomer or something like that. i don't know how to deal with the what ifs either, lately i haven't stopped thinking what if i sexually harassed or sexually exploited him or something like that. how do i deal with the cycle of guilt and constant what ifs if i also feel like my event is worse than others i've seen? please help me with this. it's getting a lil tiring and even if somedays i know how to deal with this, i still get really triggered sometimes. this wouldn't even bother me before, i wish i could just get back in time before this theme popped into my mind. my life has been a hell since then and i live constantly scared and suicidal.