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Being a MAP is a large and constant part of the equation. Not a day goes by when I don't think about the fact that I'm attracted to children. If I weren't so active in online MAP communities, my attraction to children would weigh on my mind a lot more. An important thing for ordinary folks to consider, when thinking about us minor-attracted people, is that our status as MAPs is just sort of there. It's never not there. A day in our lives is always a day in the life of a MAP. Every curiosity of our existence is a constant fixture, and it's entirely normal to us.
Not a single day of my life goes by where I don't think about the fact that I'm attracted to children. I probably think about it 10 times a day. Maybe I'm out shopping and I see a cute girl. Maybe the topic comes up in conversation.
Usually, I'm just tuned in because I'm active in online MAP communities. But if I weren't so active there, my attraction to children would weigh on my mind a lot more, as it did before I joined up.
And that's really the point: either I'm holding back all these thoughts and bursting at the seams, or I'm living a true double life with a MAP identity and a normal identity. In both cases, being a MAP is a large and constant part of the equation. There's no escape.
A lot of MAPs struggle with this when they join spaces like VirPed. The idea of this attraction being a constant unceasing presence is very undesirable. I think it makes people shut themselves in mentally.
But being mentally shut in is worse for most people, and they eventually open up. Everyone I've seen find a balance with time. After that initial exposure, some people only need the community occasionally, and can keep their attraction in the back of their minds without thinking much of it. I enjoy being an active member of the community.
This broad idea goes both ways though. To me, a MAP, it's odd to consider the life of a person who has never and will never be a MAP. I lack that perspective, and so I find it very hard to understand a world and a culture that is built around that perspective. I don't really know what normal people want from relationships. I don't understand why such stretched and irregular-looking people are considered supermodels. I don't get why teleiophiles like shaved partners if they're attracted to adults. I don't know how they view children. I find the way they discuss people like me to be deeply offensive. You're all very strange to me.
Plenty of conversations sound like this, in the MAP community. We often jest that teleiophiles are weird. Even so, I never let this idea cloud my understanding that, in the grand scheme of things, I am the weird one.
I am a MAP. It's who I am, who I have always been, and who I'll always be. From my crush on a girl in my class when I was six, all the way up to today, and, no doubt, until the day I die, I am a MAP.
I am a MAP, every day, forever. | |
