Originally Published and written by Jordan on Cinnamon Humanity
This will be the most personal story I will ever make public on the internet, but nevertheless I think this is something important to talk about. I’m not doing this as a way of getting pity or to feel sorry for myself, I just want other people like me to understand that they aren’t alone in feeling this way. You are not a monster.
Before I Noticed Anything Off
As a young child, I was never exactly social. In fact, I’ve been home schooled all my life. This naturally resulted in me being a pretty shy person from the get go. I only had a few friends when I was little, and some of these friends were kids who happened to be a bit younger than me, two of them in particular were young boys I had slight romantic crushes on. One of them would make a lot of inappropriate jokes for their age and it would make me feel uncomfortable, the other was a pretty normal, albeit hyper kid.
The fact that my social upbringing was like that may have had a pretty negative effect on how I’d end up developing in the future, but I’m not here to confirm nor deny the causes of why I am the way I am.
Realization Followed By Panic
When I was about 13 years old, I started to have sexual feelings for the very first time in my life, and that was when I began to notice that there was something very off about the way I felt about much younger boys. “Something is very wrong here” I thought to myself. At first I was under some kind of assumption that this was just a phase coming from puberty and hormones, but that wasn’t the case. As time went on, I began to worry a lot, and denied my attractions as a coping method. My worrying would eventually spiral into self hatred and anxiety, so I slowly started to isolate myself and bottle up how I was feeling. It became a toxic cycle of denial and self hatred that made my mental health worse and worse. The fact that my parents were fighting a lot during that time didn’t really help either.
I was scared. I felt like some I was kind of freak of nature. I felt isolated and alone because I didn’t know of anyone else going through the same thing. I was worried about my future, but worst of all, I thought this was a secret I’d have to take to my grave. The toxic mindset I had made it difficult for me to be around children, I would feel so anxious because of how deeply I internalized the “ticking time bomb” rhetoric. It also made me want to avoid going out in public as much as possible because I absolutely dreaded being around kids.
The most prominent part about this is how self-conscious I became about my attractions. I would think about it constantly because I just couldn’t jot down what I was feeling without admitting to what I truly was… A pedophile. The denial is what made it so hard to deal with in the first place, I constantly tried to excuse it by saying “I can’t be a pedophile, I’m only 13”, despite the fact that I felt attracted to boys as young as 5 years old (and still do)
Turning A New Leaf
My life slowly started to get better when I turned 14. At that point I had become used to these feelings, and was starting to learn how to live with them. At that age, something strange, yet very important happened.
I went on a camping trip with my family, and on one day I was just sitting outside while my parents were talking. I was staring off into the distance and noticed that some kids were playing. Instead of getting a lot of anxiety, I felt… Strangely calm. It was as if some part of me realized that I was not a danger to anyone, and never will be. Nighttime proceeded to roll around, and I sat on my bed thinking about my attractions (as I would do very often) “I can’t float around in denial forever, I’ve been this way for a year and it’s time to call these feelings what they are” is what I thought to myself.
For the very first time in my life, I came out to myself, and it was a choice that allowed me to undergo the first steps to self acceptance. This had allowed me to feel a lot better about myself, it was difficult at first but I knew it was helpful in the long run. My self hate began to go away, and I started feeling genuine happiness again after a long time. It was quite liberating in many ways if I’m being honest.
However, I was still dealing with lingering issues on a day to day basis. I still felt anxiety around children sometimes and would still dread going out in public for that reason. I was also still in the closet and not out to anyone I knew in real life. I still didn’t have anyone like me to talk to, so any kind of issue I had relating to my pedophilia would be something I’d have to handle on my own, and it was difficult.
Discovering People Like Me
Even at the age of 13, I had some (very slight) knowledge of these people known as “virtuous pedophiles”. From what I could tell, they were pedophiles who didn’t act on their urges. I wanted to know more, but never knew where to look or where I could find any support group for people like that, nor would I ever have the courage to find such a place or learn more. That all changed one day.
Somewhere around December of 2018 (after I turned 15), I saw a call out post on Twitter regarding these people who referred to themselves as minor attracted people, aka, MAPs. The person showed dozens of screenshots that had people identifying as MAPs. This shocked me, and regrettably enough, I had a knee-jerk reaction of hatred and disgust, even going so far as to make hate posts about them (Ironic, I know).
My overwhelming curiosity about them was strong enough to break through that hatred thankfully. For days I lurked through posts that members of the community made, and I agreed with a lot of what they had to say. Eventually I was looking through blog posts made by MAPs which detailed their experience finding out about their attractions and how they dealt with them. Some of them moved me to literal tears. My disgust quickly turned into admiration of these people, and I finally made my choice to join with them. I was officially done with living in silence. On January 8, 2019, I became part of the community, and it was one of the best things I ever did. I finally started talking to people who truly understand how I feel, and it was so surreal in the most incredible and strangely beautiful way.
Coming Out
Despite all the progress I made for myself, there was still one thing I needed to do, and it scared me. I knew that at one point, I would need to come out to my parents. This is something I kept putting off over and over and over. My heart would pound at the thought of telling either of them, to the point where it was borderline painful. Despite all of this, I managed muster up the courage and tell one of them, and that was my mother. I remember that I was legitimately shaking as I told her what was going on, and the quivering within my voice was very obvious.
The way she responded was quite shocking, my mom was surprisingly supportive of me. She proceeded to ask me a few questions, then had a very long discussion with me. I felt absolutely relieved by the end of it, like an entire weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
About a month later, I would ask my mom about seeing a therapist so I could learn how to handle the lingering problems I still had from my attractions. Seeking help is something that scared me to death, I felt this constant worry that they would report me to the authorities despite never committing a crime (I’ve heard horror stories about this happening), so to prevent this, I told my mom to be aware of the potential risks. Thanks to that, I managed to find a therapist who’s been incredibly helpful to me.
Where I Am Now
I am so much happier, and so much more at peace with myself than I was two years ago. In a lot of ways I feel lucky. I have a supportive family, I’m in a wonderful community, and I’ve made so much progress despite being young. I will be brutally honest here and say that I don’t consider myself to be a brave or strong person, but despite that, something about me wanted to keep going even though I didn’t know why, and I’m glad I did.
Nowadays, refuse to pity my own fate. I know that there’s still many people like me who are struggling with themselves, and I want to help them. I want them to understand that they aren’t inherently bad people for having an attraction that they didn’t choose, I want them to know that they aren’t monsters. If you’re one of these people, just know that my heart goes out to you, and I promise that everything is going to be okay.
This was a pretty long post, and I apologize for that. If you’re still listening though, I have nothing to say but this: From the bottom of my heart… Thank you.