I've had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder all of my life, in various forms. Recently, in April 2019, I developed the most hellish form I'd encountered yet; pure 'O'. As I'm sure many of you know if you've experienced it, it's dreadful; you're constantly bombarded with cognitive distortions of previous - otherwise benign - events that tell you that you've done or said something that you find utterly reprehensible, and it takes a lot of perseverance to call your OCD out on its lies. Thankfully, since November 20th 2020, I've been taking propranolol which has literally melted away all of my previous worries/false recollections, and I've beaten it for good and am ready to forge ahead in life, I'm proud to say.
I can now see what pure 'O' as a derivative of the umbrella condition is; unmitigated anxiety that's about unsubstantiated worries, and that's it. Admittedly, it's quite hard to be that lucid about the situation when you're in 'the thick of it'. However, as a last hurdle, a 'worry remnant' of sorts has appeared in my head that chimes with the two OCD themes that I'd been suffering from; a totally irrational fear of being a p-word, and a fear of a misogynist and sexist. It's worth noting that both worries spawned from a deep, emphatic response I felt from both reading about these things in newspapers, as well as finding out about an ex-teacher's gross proclivities, in addition to witnessing the misogyny my close girl-friends had been subjected to. Unlike other instances that were distortions of actual events, this event in question did actually happen, and it's the potential moral implication(s) that I'm freaking out about at the moment, due to not having a '100%' clear recollection.
So back in February 2017 when I was newly-19, (I'm now 23), I was going through a - for the first time - phase of discovery of sexting online via textual 'roleplay' with (9 times out of 10) 18+ strangers in a virtual community on the 'Amino' app. During one of these sessions, I very awkwardly (as it didn't come naturally to me at all, sexting that is) asked a young woman how big her mouth was, she sent me a picture of her mouth, and I humped the bed to the point of ejaculation. That was it, I didn't worry about it at all beyond that until August 2019 (aged 21) by which point (as stated above) my newly-developed pure 'O' was crippling me; searching the annals of my personal history for anything potentially suspect that it could use against me as 'proof' that my theme was 'true', and this is the only thing that it found.
My worry here is (as I genuinely can't remember) about her age. I know intuitively that she was at least 15+ (as I never have, don't now, and never would want to/will talk to anyone younger). I've gauged from my faint memory that her user profile said that that she was either 15 turning 16 or 18, but obviously, I've no way of locating her to verify. I spoke to my brother about it (he's 27) and he said to me, ''Everything you've told me there is perfectly fine, man. When I was 13 and 14, I was 'sexting' 18 year olds on Habbo Hotel. You didn't do anything wrong, don't overthink it''. Close female friends told me, ''I was 13 sexting 30-year olds online'', and ''It's not like you forced her to talk to you, it's not even that bad, don't worry''.
I know on the face of it that this has all the hallmarks of pure 'O': a memory that was previously undisturbed, because there's nothing questionable about it, gets flagged and over-analyzed to death.
Furthermore, I know deep-down that my intentions at the time were fine; I was just exploring something I'd never explored before (I didn't know what a 'nude' was until I was 19), and I know that I wasn't attracted to her because of her age (regardless of which of the two options it was) - it was just that she was a young woman and I hoped to engage in (consensual, as it was) 'sexting'. I never asked for anything or sent anything. I faintly remember counting in my head the age difference and my rationale at the time was that anything below 5 years was fine. Was that faulty rationale?
Finally, I've always had a general tendency towards anxiety, and to overthink the morality of things, even more so due to having Asperger's Syndrome. For example, I remember over-worrying (long after the fact) to the point of suicidal ideation over whether or not the first lady I ever slept with (she was 20, I was 18) was intoxicated at the time, despite me knowing she was completely sober. After days of obsessively trying to recall all the specificity of the night, I remembered how I was standing in front of her literally shaking with nerves, as I'd refused to take off my shirt unless I had verbal confirmation that this is what she wanted. I'd then nervously asked her five times in quick succession if she she was sure this is what she wanted, and she had said, totally sober, ''I've only had one glass of wine, I want to do this''.
If I use the ''counting method'' to look at the worst case scenario of her being 15 turning 16, that's a four/three year age gap. If she was actually 18 all along, then, there's only a one year age-gap. I think I may be over-analyzing the possible moral implications of it as all of these ages seem much further away from the relative position of looking back now from the age of 23. Also, it was pointed out to me recently that at 19, one is simultaneously a teenager and a young person, and so lines are potentially arbitrary. This post links to the compulsion I once had when I used to watch pornography, where I would compulsively cross-reference the ages of the men and women in the video (as shown on the actors' profile pages) with how recent/dated the video was in terms of when it was uploaded, so as to assure myself that every performer was 18+ (as they were).
As a final, final, note, it has been pointed out to be by way of comparison that there are people out there that do 'much worse', and while that's likely undoubtedly true, I'm reluctant to use that 'matter of degree' standpoint as a rhetorical cushion as it can sometimes prevent people from being self-reflective (as I am, potentially to a fault). I think, perhaps, that I place too much pressure on myself to be 'perfect'.
So, what do you think? Did I do something awful, or am I worrying over nothing, and this is maybe
the last gasps of my pure 'O' trying to reassert itself?
Thank you for reading.
