In the last day or so, I've realised how I should approach this "problem".

• I am not a criminal
• The only time I have ever harmed someone is in self-defence (such as when fighting a bully at school)
• I used to be addicted to pornography, and the addiction was damaging my life, but as of a few weeks ago I have quit pornography cold turkey
• I treat everyone I know with respect and kindness
• I am good at my work and well-respected there
• There are many people that value their friendship with me (as I do with them)
• I cannot erase the past.
• Even if there exists records of me buying S&M and fetish videos, so what? People have their kinks, and nothing I paid for is illegal
• I am not a pedophile. I know this because I do not have sexual thoughts of children.
• I watched some pedophile clips years ago when I was in a state of extreme self-loathing, depression, social inertia.
• I may not have been truly suicidal but suicide ideation was a recurring thought
• I am no longer that person anymore. That person lacked awareness and needed to be shocked back into reality. I got that shock and I never ever went back.
• To be clear; I didn't pay for the pedophile clips. I simply had a subscription to a binary newsgroup service through which I downloaded things of all kinds, including software
• Thus there should not be records of me having seen those clips, and I don't think the binary newsgroup service takes an interest in knowing who downloaded what
• But, if those records exist, so what? The past is the past. I cannot change it.
• I cannot live my life continually looking over my shoulder and worrying if someone or something from my past is going to destroy me.
• All I can do is be a good person now and continue with my life that best way I know how.
• The last few weeks have been torturous for me. I would be having a conversation with someone and part way through smiling or laughing through a joke a crippling sense of shame would invade me. It's like I could not even permit myself to enjoy the very basic elements of being alive. Guilt came flying at me no matter what I did. Even a bite of candy was an act plagued with guilt. A voice kept saying to me, "But you still watched pedo clips years ago and one day when the world finds out they will all shame you and everyone that you ever knew that loved you will leave you all alone and then you will commit suicide."
• But this voice of guilt is not the final reality. It is merely one aspect of reality.
• The voice of guilt has no function. It is ruining the life of a good man.
• I do not need that voice anymore.
• If ever it should arise, I will ask my self-awareness to arise as well, so that I may always remind myself that there is more to existence than this voice.