You are not alone. Characterizing yourself as intrinsically evil is a core tenet of Calvinism, and my childhood church was a borderline cult. I still hide so many of my talents because I'm afraid of bragging or immodesty or causing lust. I think other people stayed sane by not taking it too seriously. It blew my mind to later find out that other teens from my church were smoking pot and having sex. It would have been social suicide to admit to such things. Friends would judge you for just having a crush on a non-believer.

I think I have pure O as well as scrupulousity, because I get obsessed with other people, especially if I'm attracted to them. Either way, I always feel ashamed when I receive compliments, flirt or joke around. My scrupulosity seems to be related to being viewed in a sexual way.

I have always wanted an excuse to dress up like Dana from Ghostbusters, when she turns into Zuul. My company recently got new nametags, so I thought it would be funny to make a nametag replica that says ZUUL and has a picture of the demon face. But I couldn't bring myself to buy the orange fabric and commit to an objectively hilarious costume. The dress wasn't very revealing, even by 80s standards. And it's a children's movie. But because of the character's sexual undertones, I was afraid of getting a "reputation" at work. I found an old pink dress and went as Eleven from Stranger Things instead.

I wrote a murder mystery party and played it with my friends last weekend. I have been looking forward to this for months. I designed the game so that a few characters would be omniscient, but I gave other characters multiple-choice motives. That way, even though I wrote everybody's secrets, I could still play without knowing who was trying to kill me. One of the omniscient characters, inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald, had two ex-husbands and a current lover. I thought a self-absorbed, publicity-hungry, heartbreaker narcissist would make a great villain. I built a lot of storylines around this character. But I got this crazy performance anxiety when it was time for the game to start, and I did NOT want to be such a sexual character. Ended up picking a sociopath who steals and murders for fun but is loyal to her husband.

I still acted more flirty than I'm usually comfortable with. A lot of us did, which is normal for a murder mystery party. Yet I have been in such a funk all week because of it. Did I put too many dirty jokes in the character sheets? Was writing a role-playing game with a love triangle a huge mistake? Do my friends all think I'm a weird whore now?