The little diaper hobby I enjoy is my most closely guarded secret. I have separate accounts and pseudonyms so I can participate online in anonymity. My diaper inventory hides in inconspicuous cardboard boxes in the far corner of the basement. I make use of opaque bags for disposal. And my most consistently recurring nightmare involves being discovered in dramatic fashion by people I respect.
That’s why I’m caught off guard when every so often I get the urge to blurt it out. When for whatever reason, my inhibitions step aside and I want the world to know now. That urge has yet to make the leap to impulsive action. And while that urge would cause the least damage to my reputation with a stranger, it usually strikes with respect to people who are close to me. Like most things diaper-related, I don’t know why it is the way it is. So the following thoughts are largely theoretical, though each is rooted in real experience.
The first human I ever confessed to was a therapist. Like a pressure valve, I felt stress leave my body in an instant. I’ve never felt as light on my feet as I did the day I left his office. Beyond that, he didn’t end up being that helpful to me. But just having told someone was immensely freeing. The weightless feeling that followed was almost addicting, and the desire to feel it again tempted me to reveal it to more people with reckless abandon.
Some secret-keeping is primarily an exercise of will. Secrets of thought, or secrets that belong to someone else require only that you refrain from blurting it out. The secret life of a diaper lover involves shrapnel — artifacts in the real world that require a lot of work to keep concealed: the damning trash evidence that sits in the bin for a week between collections, the suspicious additional private time you need for changing and cleanup, noises and smells, digital traces of online shopping and support-seeking, and of course the diapers themselves. It’s a lot to manage and the secrecy fatigue is real. Getting one step closer to a day when you don’t have to so vigilantly sweep up your tracks — and maybe occasionally walk around the house without pants — might almost seem worth the risk. But it’s entirely contingent upon the level of support you find only after the cat is out of the bag.
Least explicable of all, is the apparent embarrassment masochism that breathes on me from time to time. That somehow the thought of being caught or noticed in a diaper might actually be a little thrilling. I consider myself very far away from an exhibitionist on that spectrum — but why the humiliation of being caught in the act sounds the slightest bit fun is a complete mystery to me.
The unpredictability of the reaction I might receive is both terrifying and invigorating. It can go one of two ways, but the prospect of being met with love and acceptance despite my oddities is alluring — a reward that might outpace the risk. It is a, perhaps pitiable, bid for validation that might never be satisfied until the very last person on earth knows. Add to that the distant hope that maybe, just maybe, they might respond, ”me too.”
Looking back on the handful of people I have told, I wonder to what degree these factors played a role, or whether it was all actually quite rationally executed. I regret a couple of them. Maybe those are the ones I approached with the wrong motives. Hard to say. Either way, it’s yet another of the mind games battling it out in Diaper Arena.
The Recovering Diaper Lover 