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Today, someone commented to me that they wish they were as 'out' as I was. This came as no small surprise to me, actually, as I still feel that I'm somewhat closeted about my AB side. To be fair, yes, I did kind of tell a fair few of my friends about it, and yes, there are photos of me wearing romper suits, dungarees and onesies on facebook of all places, a place that my own family frequent...But still, I feel that last one at least is somewhat of a cheat: I'm at/going to costume events in each of the photos in question, and as for my family, well, they either don't check their facebook pages that often or, frankly, are doing equally questionable things on their pages and shouldn't really be commenting on me, really. It's not like I pasted a picture of someone giving me a handjob whilst changing my nappy onto my grandmother's wall or anything.

Still, the point remains, I am actually still quite 'out' compared to a fair few ABDLs out there. 'Out' in that I actually involve myself in the community at all. Or, at least, I am now only just beginning to. But this is after years of not really exploring my AB side, so I can very much understand people still going through feelings of trepidation, thinking how daunting it can be to actually involve oneself in this community at all. For years I too only really had the occasional fling with the online side of things (to be fair, this is perhaps equally the fault of the way certain online AB communities are set up, but that's not what this post is about) and would have been hella nervous about actually talking to someone about this stuff in real life.

And the truth is, I still get nervous and full of trepidation when talking about it. I'm not a perfect human being by any stretch, and I admit to getting really quite defensive and weird when my girlfriend asks questions about my AB side. This is because of a worry that, if she's not getting it, that must mean that she's against it and therefore judging me. It's a kneejerk reaction, equal parts understandable and yet wrong. I really should be encouraging her rather than getting defensive, yet it's hard to get over several years worth of training yourself to think that people really are going to stigmatise you because of this kink. And frankly, there is some truth in that; ABDLs are often stigmatised even within kink communities. My girlfriend - in another amazing showing of how she's earnestly trying to get all of this - was reading a book about people's experiences with ageplay today, and she was telling me of an example where an individual was severely frowned upon by people in the leather community for their ageplay leaning. So it does, anecdotally at least, seem to happen.

My girlfriend and I are lucky in that we have a circle of very kinky, very open-minded friends, many of them literally San Franciscan, so take from that what you will. However, not everyone is like that, hence some people, especially those without the aid of an obvious kink or ageplay community around them (except for the online one) can seem to struggle. And yes, a real, physical community that have munches and meet-ups together is incredibly important, but more on that in the next post.

If there's a point to this post at all, I guess it's just to help me process the mixed feelings I have today from speaking with both my girlfriend and this other friend that I mentioned (let's call her 'Em'). Oh, and I should be seeing Em and her 'daddy' for coffee this week and having a big ol' chat about ageplay, so stay tuned to see how that goes, I guess.