When I was around 13 or 14 years old I had my first real crush. She was a girl in my class, same age as me. I crushed on her for years before saying anything, but she wasn’t into me, so we just stayed friends. And I continued to be her friend for years because she’s a great person.

She ghosted me when I came out as a MAP.

Around the same time, 13 or 14 or so, I started to realize I was attracted to younger people too. When I was around 11 I started to look at porn and become interested in sex, and around the time I started to gain crushes was when I started to fantasize about girls as young as 6.

As I got older I started looking at lolicon and shotacon art, wondering if it made me a pedophile to enjoy it. Temptation crossed my mind for years about searching other material, but I never gave in.

I was a teacher for a private company at 17. I taught kids aged 6-14. A couple of my students I had occasional intrusive sexual thoughts about. I didn’t think they were wrong, but I thought they were innapropriate given our teacher-student relationship. I think I thought about a 12 year old and an 11 year old or something.

The 12 year old was my favorite student. To this day I don’t know if I had feelings for her or not, but she was special. I loved her. She made me a house in Minecraft, I always helped her with her work. I like to think we had a special relationship. Not to mention she was gorgeous, just immensely cute, and had a great loveable personality. Eventually I stopped working there for unrelated reasons.

For years I had thoughts about whether or not I was a pedophile, and what did or didn’t make me a map. When I was young I had my own thoughts about those with attractions to kids. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Didn’t see anything wrong with pride. But as I got older the world told me to hate these people, these people that I thought I belonged to, but I feared being ostracized by my peers for not agreeing with them, so I started to follow their opinions blindly.

When Turning Red by Pixar came out I noticed that I was erotically attracted to the main character Mei-Lin. The way society conditioned me I thought this was wrong, so I finally, after years of keeping my pedophilic thoughts to myself, looked online for pedo resources.

Last year I found my way to VirPed, otherwise known as Virtuous Pedophiles. An online community for anti-contact individuals. I met other peds here and quickly learned that my attraction wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It didn’t make me a monster, and it was normal. I learned that there was nothing wrong with attraction–my original opinion about pedophilia, that society changed my mind on. I learned that MAP wasn’t some evil word, it was an umbrella term meant to encompass different chronophilias. I didn’t even know before that there was more than just pedophilia. I started to identify as a hebephile because I thought I was only attracted to girls who’d started puberty.

I quickly undid the damage that society did to me, and then I found Visions of Alice through the mention of someone on VirPed. It was here that I was exposed to the pro-contact contact stance. I didn’t agree with it, but I didn’t want to discriminate against it. I talked to lots of pro-cs and head their opinions and views, and eventually the thought crossed my mind “why is love wrong if both people want it?” So I started to identify as contact-neutral.

Eventually I found my way to MAP Merch Shop. I was experienced in graphic design, so I hit up the owner Katie Cruz because I was interested in joining.

We did an interview over voice chat, and that was the first time I ever heard someone talk to me about being a pedophile, and that was a the first time I could actually talk about being a hebephile.

I joined and she introduced me to Matrix/Element. She joined me to her MMS Group Chat and I met other members of the community. It was there that they introduced me to the pediverse and Freak University.

I signed up and got rejected, so I reapplied and Katie put in a good word for me to get me let in.

I was surprised to see so many open pedophiles. People talking about their attractions to children–people like me.

Somehow I quickly gained a reputation, within a month I went from 0 followers and being unknown to having 450 people watching when I posted. I posted jokes, anecdotes, opinions, and, most importantly, my current experiences with girllove.

In mid June I met a girl at my apartment complex. I posted about her a lot because I had a crush on her. But the weird thing? She was 8, which was way below my AoA of 12+, and she certainly hadn’t started puberty. But she was attractive. She made me nervous, I thought about her everyday, I envisioned what we’d do together–she was just like any crush to me, only instead of an adult, she was a kid. But does that really make a difference? She was a person. What should age have to do with love?

Eventually shit happened. I sound like a broken record at this point with the amount of times I incessantly talk about the chain of events that led me to where I am today.

It’s crazy what all happened, and how fast it happened, but what’s even crazier is that these loves that I had, something that felt so normal to me, is discriminated against by our society. And this society doesn’t just hurt us childlovers, but the ones we love too. Pedos don’t want to hurt kids, but forcing kids away from them and filling their heads with lies about how close they come to being raped and abused by us causes way more trauma than true love ever could.

I’ve been in this community for less than a year, and I’m excited to see what the next one brings.