Originally, when I didn't know what was going on and my little side was acting on impulses, I had a lot of adrenaline when I put on a diaper, especially the first time I wore one post potty training. I was afraid that someone would find out or catch me in the act of padding up, but I was so meticulously careful that it didn't happen until high school when a misstep lead me to be at odds with my parents.
When I put one on the first time I felt loved again because, by that time, love was more passive to my parents who saw my love for them as acts of service to them and nothing more when I was old enough to perform chores. They still put up with me, despite being a handful as an autistic person, however I felt the quality of love when I was younger was dwindling down from the place it was as I got older. Especially since I needed their love at that intensity even more after my first grade trauma that they didn't even consider trauma at this stage. I continued to act on impulse and since my little side was still in the closet (I was completely unaware of it, I only knew that I liked diapers and being younger than I really was) and stole diapers at every chance I got where I was sure that they wouldn't be missed. I was so paranoid of keeping the secret that I would only wear in my bathroom and when my parents were away from the house, but I grew more accustomed to wear discreetly in the same room as them when the diapers were not crinkly and didn't give me away.
As time passed, I wandered through the world that was the remains of my innocence garden which was trampled upon by that teacher from first grade and was miraculously rebuilding itself so that I could feel protected and loved again. As more years passed by, I took more abuse and punishment from various teachers, school administrators and students. All this punishment kept destroying the garden that I was rebuilding which strengthened my will to return to earlier times where I was loved and cared for.
I still had no idea truly about that side of me, but I had a rough outline of the persona that was slowly but surely returning back to my current persona from the time that I had discarded it in order to become more mature than anyone in my class. I discarded that part of me for my survival of what was to come. I devoted myself to the grind thinking that it was worth something to have high excellence in academic studies and also be on a conversational level with teachers. I thought that by doing so would give me powerful allies to hold back the bullies, however being a teacher's pet lion (in this case) had the opposite effect of my predicted outcome. All those who were envious of my achievements wanted to ruin me through bullying and even kill me as some form of vengeance.
Although I survived through all this, I was left a broken man with not much guidance left and with a highly pessimistic and cynical view of the world. I was a broken record, always in a diagnostic cycle, continuously bettering myself to damn near perfection. Since I set the bar too high, even for myself, I began unconsciously hating myself for my inability to perform at my best 100% of the time, even though I falsely believed I could do it. I punished myself, but relented by engaging in risky behavior such as binge eating and also finding alternatives to my little side (since by this time it was tabooed by my parents and I was forced to purge and suppress the side that I now knew about). I fell into a deep despair that lasted 2 years which almost resulted in me taking my life.
When I found this community during high school (before the purge when I was not of age to join this site) I was intrigued because the description sounded similar to my predicament, but since I couldn't be myself after the purge, I came here to seek an alternative form of my little self the summer of the second year of hiatus. I finally found myself again that I had lost through my new therapist. Moo, primarily, was instrumental in turning my outlook from rainclouds to sunshine by telling more about my little self than I myself was able to determine from experimentation and also stoped my broken record and put a new side on that was no longer scratched. In effect, he influenced a change in me that even I didn't think was possible at my current state, at the time, which was boarding on the edge of a precarious perch between life and death.
When I finally started my little space again late summer of this year (after cleaning off the dust bunnies), I found myself enjoying the experience even more, but because my parents knew and that my dad was retired, it meant that I couldn't enjoy it to the fullest like in the good old days. I never got discouraged and to this day I have kept up the padding and keeping myself in regressed form in more ways than one. My experience with this community has taught me many important lessons in life that I wasn't able to grasp for myself. Even though life may be hell at first glance, You just need to find the silver lining in what you do and a valued hobby of some kind to keep you thinking about the beauty of the world and not all of its problems.
