Guilt of 2021
January 10th, 2023
I'll be honest, I'm typing this all up during a depressive slump, so some things here might not sound right, or I might get some details wrong, but I feel like I just need to, type this all out, have it on my blog, because it's something that I used to talk about on my Twitter, and something I've brought up a couple times on Fediverse.
I like being open and transparent about myself, I'm not sure why but I just feel like that's the way I want to live, so, in an effort to continue this, I want to discuss what happened in 2021. I've brought up this year a few times already in a vague kind of way, and I want to, define it so to speak.
To be absolutely clear here, a lot of the year is a blur, for a multitude of reasons. I won't get every detail right. I am also not stating names, since I don't think it's appropriate to bring up, and I doubt anyone involved wants to get reminded of what I did.
One last thing, this is not me excusing myself, at all. Anything I say here is not an attempt at trying to give myself innocence, or to imply I deserve people to accept my apology, or anything of the sort. As I said before, I just want to be transparent. If you view me differently because of all of this, so be it, I'm not one to stop you.
That Year
So, what happened in 2021? Let's put things bluntly. I put people into sexually uncomfortable situations, where they were not comfortable enough to tell me I went too far past their boundaries. I have also put people into situations where they don't know how to say I was making them uncomfortable.
This all stemmed from a lack of communication, sexual maturity, and most importantly, boundary setting. This created situations where people did not know how, or did not feel comfortable, to tell me that they were uncomfortable. This has lead to situations where things went too far, and one or the other person got hurt. This is mostly about the people I have affected, but this did also lead to me being hurt, due to a lack of boundary setting.
Something important I've come to learn is that for ANYTHING sexual, you need to make your boundaries set upfront and straight. There needs to be absolutely crystal clear communication on situations where things are going too far from either party. A system I eventually found worked for myself is the "stoplight" system, i.e. saying green, yellow, red, to indicate "it's all good", "slow down/it's too intense", and "stop everything, we need to talk". It is absolutely vital and imperative to talk this all out first and foremost, to make sure everyone's needs and concerns are understood well, and most importantly, so that anyone can say the magic word, and everyone knows to stop.
This is all a part of consent. Consent is the absolute most important part of anything sexual related. Period. Even after people have given their consent, it can be revoked at any time, due to a multitude of factors. It's not to say it's your fault when consent is revoked, nor is it anyone's fault at all. Shit just happens. That's just how it is. In general, just have a safeword. It's best way to get out of a situation making anyone participating uncomfortable. And if you're worry about the word being said during roleplays, just make it something absurd, like... I dunno, banana.
Unfortunately boundaries were pushed, and I was not someone who understood that it was being pushed. This hurt people. What would happen is when this would happen, the other person would... block me, without saying anything. In retrospect, I understand why, but for the time it just, happened every now and then, and it frustrated me that I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Something I am 100% ashamed to admit I did was, one time, when someone did block me, I looked at their twitter profile. I saw that they were subtweeting me, and directly mentioned how they were put into situations they didn't feel comfortable speaking out in. I hurt them, unintentionally yeah, but, they were still in pain.
That's what it took for me to realize any of this was happening. It's my fault this happened, and I hurt them. This took a lot of processing for me to wrap my head around. Even recently, I've realized I did this to friends who are still, well, friends with me, and as such I apologized to them. This is a seriously low point for me.
Knowing that I hurt people is something that sinks my heart every time I think about it. It's such a sore spot in my heart, especially knowing there's not much I can do to heal the hearts I've hurt. It doesn't matter that I didn't mean to hurt people, it still happened.
Not an excuse
I have set the title to this, specifically to make it known this is no way excusing what I did. This is simply to further help explain myself, and is not to absolve myself of responsibility. Please keep that in mind.
As stated previously, some of why this happened is that I was not well informed on how to communicate boundaries, nor to get the other person to tell me their boundaries properly. Another big part as to why this transpired is that, growing up, my sense of how to handle sexual situations was completely distorted. When I was a kid, I was sexually assaulted.
The trauma from that is still something I haven't completely processed, and has forever altered my perception of sexual scenarios. It's legitimately the reason why I do not feel comfortable being submissive. I don't feel comfortable giving control away of myself, it puts me back into that situation, and it also reminds me of another unfortunate situation.
I was also abused and groomed during my late teens to early adult years. Something that often happened is that I would get coereced into sexual situations, and sometimes I'd be put into situations I'd ordinarily not enjoy, often resulting in me after the fact... frankly, fucking breaking down.
Once more: This is not to absolve me of anything. I am still in the wrong for what happened, please bear this in mind! This set me up to not understand that boundaries... exist. It fucked with my head, really hard. And as such, I had to learn that boundaries not only exist, but that other people... have them. And that they are vitally important to understand, as to not have what happened to me repeat.
It took me realizing I was hurting people, and for someone else to help explain to me what boundaries are, and how to properly communicate them, for me to finally understand how to properly handle sexual situations.
To reiterate one last time: I am not trying to absolve myself of wrong-doing or responsibility, what I did still happened, and I ended up hurting people. I am just trying to explain how this snowballed into what happened in 2021. A snowball can easily turn into an avalanche that hurts people, unfortunately.
What I'm doing about it
I'm already trying hard to improve myself. It's a hard path, but I hope I can get there. With that said, there's no direct way to apologize to these people that I've hurt. And, even if I could, apologies don't fix the wounds I've left in people's lives.
Having your consent not respected, even when it's done accidentally, is not an easy wound to heal. I'd know. It hurts thinking about it, and to be frank, this has made me paranoid about doing sexual stuff with other people sometimes. I'm afraid that, even when boundaries are communicated and the such, either one of us could go too far and... that'd be that, we'd hurt either one of us badly. To be quite frank, this was something I was deadly afraid of.
But, even with that said, I have absolutely improved myself, and I will continue to better myself. I have tried to ensure that people's boundaries are known to me, and that mine are known to them. I let the know of the stoplight system, or have them tell me their preferred safeword. I try to make sure this is all known to both of us before we do anything sexual, for even as boring as it may be to the other party, it's absolutely vital information to know.
I hope I was able to explain myself well here. I don't think I'm a monster, I just... made awful, awful lapses in judgement that caused people harm in ways I did not want to happen. Legitimately, if I could change one thing about my past, it'd be making myself informed of setting boundaries, and knowing they exist.
And most importantly, I hope that this blog post, to whomever may read it, can serve as an important warning about how to approach sexual situations. Consent is number 1. It is the most important thing, above all else, to keep in mind. If it ever goes too far, always, always always always call your safeword. And if you don't have one, make one up, and tell everyone you want to do the Sex with about it. Burn it into your memory and burn it into theirs so they never forget.
