13 min read
This contains mentions of fetishes and sexual scenarios.
It’s been a few days since my last entry, and that’s mostly due to the fact I’ve been working on the site and doing a small overhaul of some significant parts. For some reason, my mind is not too into the idea of doing development work on the site AND journal entries in the same timespan. It’s kind of weird, but also an interesting observation, I suppose. In other news: it’s a very slow and not at all mentally engaging Monday at work, so I decided to take a break to do this.
Finally, I conquer one of my story ideas on the Welcome page of my online journal. These are all rather daunting to even think about writing, let alone actually sitting down and doing it. But I did have someone mention they were interested in reading about this topic and I don’t have any ideas of topics today, so it all works out, doesn’t it?
I’m not sure how many other parents snooped and invaded the privacy of their kids, but I can’t imagine it’s all that uncommon. It being somewhat common certainly does not make it any less frustrating and impactful on my later life. Now I know what you’re thinking: how could Sabin’s parents snooping around and finding stuff have an impact on his adult life? If you are thinking that: then buckle up for what I expect to be a long journal entry. I suppose if, for some reason, you aren’t thinking that you can just stop reading now and save yourself some time.
It all started when I was…you know, I don’t actually remember how old I was. I guess I was just on the edge of hitting puberty though, given some of the context clues when thinking back. The first time I remember my parents snooping around “my stuff” was around the same time I started taking an interest in hockey gear. I could probably write an entire entry about how I got into sports gear, but those are traumatic consequences for another time, I’m sure. Suffice it to say that I had the guts to sneak downstairs at night and grab some pieces of my ice hockey gear when I was a kid and sneak them back into my bedroom with me. As far as I knew at the time, I just liked how the pieces of gear felt against me. I don’t think I could specifically explain why in ways that I can today, but that didn’t matter at the time because I was an impulsive pre-teen with ADHD. I was able to get away with this for a while, but like all other good things, this came to an end.
It did not take long for my parents to realize what was going on and to this day I’m not quite sure what it was that tipped them off. I thought I was being pretty sneaky, after all. Regardless, this was the first instance I remember of my parents snooping around because one evening when I went to retrieve some pieces of gear from my hiding place, I realized they were gone. Boy, was I bummed out about this and kind of upset, too: it just didn’t seem fair and it didn’t make since to me. My brain pieced together that if the gear was taken away, then that must mean what I was doing was wrong. Unfortunately, this was something that was only reinforced as I grew up and continued to do this into my teenage years.
I continued to sneak pieces of my hockey gear up to my room over the next few years and without my parents saying much to me. Eventually, I even stopped playing hockey but continued to enjoy how the gear felt against my body. This was when things got bad, though. My parents were not sure how to handle this, I’m assume, and did what they probably thought was best. They didn’t want me to grow up abnormal, or at least that was my best guess. One day, my mom came to confront me about this and told me that I was “too young for sex acts” and really instilled in me that what I was doing was weird and wrong. I wish I could remember my exact age, but I was probably 14 or 15? And yeah I guess she may have been technically right based on a Christian upbringing, but that’s not logic that I cared about.
The game continued, however, as I found where my parents would stash the gear time and time again. I didn’t like that I was being told something was wrong when I was never told why it was wrong. In fact, I was never given any sort of explanation about anything related to what I now know as a gear fetish. I wasn’t stupid though, I had of course figured out why I liked certain pieces of sports gear. And then there was the sexual pleasure aspect of it, and I now assume this is what my parents were really not okay with. The thing is, I don’t think they had any proof of this piece of the puzzle. Then again, it’s possible I don’t give them enough credit. Regardless, it was their disapproval and the act of denying me any sort of explanation that really sunk in and still affects me today. I still fight this intense shame of my gear fetish as there is still a part of me that thinks it is wrong and weird. But I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s still more story to tell.
At one point, since I was no longer playing, my parents either donated or threw away all of my gear. I don’t think they told me this explicitly, but I had a strong suspicion because I could never find any of my hockey equipment after that day. I looked everywhere and felt all that more frustrated because I truly felt like what I was doing was harmless. I’m not necessarily proud of it, but I felt such a strong desire to feel the equipment against my skin (and combine that will teenage hormones) that I started to snoop around myself and take some of the spare gear my dad had since he was a hockey coach. These were in hockey bags on the top shelves in our garage, so I knew they were never used. This lasted a while because my parents thought they had gotten rid of everything I used to use. Eventually, though, my mom was snooping around and found some of the gear stashed deep in the back of cluttered drawers and in the back of the closet. Now, this is when older me today would have expected them to sit down with me and talk to me about it, but nope. My mom didn’t really say anything as far as I can remember. My dad, on the other hand, decided to tease me about it and all I remember is how much that hurt.
As the years went on, I guess you could say that I grew out of it, at least temporarily. There were moments when I was in my early 20s that I bought a cup and jock of my own. I honestly can’t remember if they ever did anything with this one, but that’s the less interesting part of the story. This really gets awkward shortly after I ordered my second bad dragon dildo. I won’t go into graphic detail about these, but for context I will say that the first one was a Small David and the second was a Medium Chance (the old style model). Well, I was most definitely exploring my sexuality at this point, spoiler alert: this started a while back when I was looking up pictures of guys in sports gear when I was 16 or something. So needless to say, being a furry and being bi led to me giving in to the fantasy of a bad dragon dildo. Like I said, I was well into my 20s and able to pay for my own stuff at this point, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.
Narrator: It was a big deal.
One day, after a particularly nice session, I washed up my toys and let them sit out to air dry. I had my own bathroom attached to my bedroom, so it seemed safe enough to leave them out on the bathroom counter, in my private bathroom, to dry overnight. And yeah this was absolutely fine. What was not fine, however, was that I forgot to put them away after waking up. My mom found them sitting out to dry. I can only imagine the horror and shock on her face, and it kind of makes me laugh if I’m being honest. Well, classic to the way my parents did things: no one ever talked to me about it or asked me about it. That is, until one day I had an upset stomach. My mom thought it would be hilarious to quip at me that maybe it was from “that thing in my bathroom.” We both knew what she was talking about, and I denied any existence of it. I didn’t owe her an answer and I didn’t appreciate how she brought it up.
Snooping around and lack of privacy continued with a variety of excuses from my parents, but there was never really any proper talks. Well, that is until I was told that I was going to a therapist to talk about my obsession with animals. Now, to be clear, I would absolutely never do anything with an animal. I guess I could see how parents would connect dots between catching glimpses of furry stuff and dildos from bad dragon to think that. And I suppose I can see how one can jump to the conclusion they did. So I was forced to go to a therapist that confronted me about this. I didn’t like it at all, obviously. At no point did anyone actually ask me what was going on or talked to me calmly about things. There were only accusations, assumptions, and bullying (yes, bullying) from my parents. If they did ask, I could have explained what it meant to me to be a furry, for example. So that toxic therapy thing didn’t last long because eventually I refused to talk about anything in the session. I wasn’t going to let them try to put in my therapy based on a false premise.
A few more years passed and I ordered myself another bad dragon toy. At this point, I had to be very careful of delivery dates lining up with when I was home from classes (I went to a commuter college). I was super careful and got away with a lot of purchases that I know my parents would question me about. And truthfully, very few of them were actually bad by any standard. Some of them were just video games for my PS2. But here’s the thing: I had been conditioned to hide things from my parents and to assume the worst reaction from them. I had been trained to be sneaky and it was easier for me to just hide something than have to explain it. And like I said, this applied to everything, even the most vanilla things. At this point I was uncomfortable telling them about any of my online friends or games I played. It just was not worth going into things because I feared that things would south. From my previous experience, these fears were not unfounded.
So back to the package that arrived: this was the one time, apparently, that the universe decided to screw me. The package either arrived early or late and I was not home to grab it before anyone else did. Just to clarify: at this point I was in my mid to late 20s, but still lived my parents due to various circumstances. My dad decided to grab the package and search the return address of a package with my name on it. He learned that despite the address looking unassuming, it was linked back to the bad dragon company. And you can bet that I got an earful when I got home.
I’m leaving out several other instances or periods of back and forth because I don’t feel like writing about each event and not all of them are worth describing. However, I’ll leave you with one last short snippet. When I was being dropped off at college as a freshman in 2022, my mom told me “don’t tell anyone about the stuff you’re into; they’ll think you’re a freak.”
To this day, a lot of these words stick with me and cause me a lot of emotional discomfort. It’s hard to really get over the sports gear thing and be fully comfortable talking about it openly. The learned behavior of not sharing details with them about anything they might find even slightly bothersome still sits with me today. The other day, my mom asked me why I never talk about my friends or even tell her their names. Well, I can’t really tell her the names I call my friends, let alone telling her about being a pup or therian, or anything else. The risk of rejection is too large and the change of a positive outcome is so small that there’s no reason to. She can be upset with the situation, but she brought it upon herself.
I want to close this out saying that I do love my parents very much. I know there are a lot of folks who were forced to go no-contact or low-contact with their parents or guardians due to bad situations. For most of my life, even through these tough situations, I still felt a lot of love for my parents once the initial emotional or psychological wounds healed. I’ve always been close to my mom, especially. I think at the end of this day, it would be easier for me if I wasn’t so close to my parents or if I wanted/was forced to go no-contact. At least that way, there would be a clear line in the sand. In my scenario, there’s an exceptionally large part of my identity that I just can’t share with them through fear or rejection. It hurts a lot to not be myself around them. It’s a hard spot to be in, but I just don’t see an upside to spilling the beans on my therian identity, the fact most of my friends are furries or into weird things like sports gear, or are in the pup community.
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