I want to be Thwee.

I listen to the track by Queen – but I don’t hear their words. I misheard it as 'I want to be Three'. Part of me did want to go back to being three. When my mummy loved me. Was that where this began?

I want to be three. I liked being three. When I was able to wear satin and frills and I had curly blonde hair and I felt so happy. When I had a mummy. When I had a daddy.

Then things changed.

Mummy died, I think, that’s what people said. But I don’t remember her being ill. I just remember her smile when she said ‘I’m going away’.

Then Daddy became angry. About everything. And I know now that he lost his job, he started drinking heavily, he got into arguments, he was arrested but sort-of let off with a warning. But this didn’t stop him. There was family money – there isn’t any more. So he was able to keep things going for several years.

But me – I was not important in his life. I was sent away to schools for termtime. For holidays, I was sent to camps and to stay with friends – huh, strangers really. And I was a sad, lonely, hurting child.

Dad’s dead – not exactly of drink – but he fell and broke his hip – sepsis and complications. He lingered for a month or more but I rarely visited. What was I supposed to say to him. I was all too certain that he would have nothing of value to tell me.

Why can’t I go back to then. When I was little and my life was new and fresh and there was a future.

I’m 20 now. I’ve left school and I’m pretty much average everything – not too tall, not too fat, not too short, not too thin. Average results but not enough to make University a sensible option. I’ve done my time in the nasty, smelly fast-food joints. I’ve been a shop assistant, a bookie’s assistant and now I’m working at the newsagents. The boss has expanded to four shops and so, if I keep going, I could stay with this job and build up some savings. The idea of a girlfriend requires some spending money. A car, a flat …. Much further away. But I can hope. And I can plan.

And one day – I was drifting from porn-site to porn-site and I came across ‘Adult Baby – Is it for YOU’.

WOW.

Mega WOW.

What a strange question.

But it made me look.

And that was the beginning.

I kept looking. I spent hours that evening – looking at so many new and puzzling things. How could an adult want to do that. But then I remembered the too-many nights looking at other strange behaviours, yeah, you can call them fetishes if you want. But all I knew was ‘ain’t people STRANGE’. And this was stranger than most. And sometimes it was me too.

It didn’t take long. I started going into Mothercare – just to remind myself about all the baby things that real babies might need. In the supermarket, looking at the Baby aisle. Soon, I had to buy some of the pots of babyfood. They were almost all tasteless and ghastly. But then I realized how easily a baby’s tastebuds could be overwhelmed by salt or any of the other strong adult flavours. I got used to pap.

Soon I bought an adult-baby pacifier and feeding-bottle. I’ve read about addicts and how quickly they succumb to nicotine, cocaine, drugs of all sorts – including sugar. I’ve read about addictive behaviours too and how the dopamine and serotonin drive the brain chemistry to more addiction. But being a baby. I couldn’t be interested in that.

No.

NO. A thousand times NO.

But something was driving me on and on into more babyish activity. I bought a CD of baby nursery rhymes. Soon it was the only music I listened too.

The books I read … soon I was reading children’s books … then books for young children. I even felt at times that it was too difficult to do some of my work. I felt more and more alone.

I knew, somewhere deep in what was left of my working brain, that there must be others like me otherwise why would such material be available. There must be wannabe-babies, carers, helpers, manufacturers too wouldn’t make without a viable market. I wasn’t alone – I did know that – but by golly I felt lone. And I didn’t know what to do.

It’s hard to hide something that’s taken over your life.

I put NetNanny on my work computer to prevent me using it for baby-stuff at work. I know that sounds contrary – but it helped. At home, however, it seemed necessary to indulge more. A sort of compensation for ‘being so good at work’.

My brain became filled with baby Baby BABY.

It didn’t take long before I was looking deeper at the adverts – the professionals who wanted to take money so they could cater to my needs, wishes, desires … ?hopes … DEMANDS. But I didn’t want to go down that route while I felt I retained the capacity to separate Baby and Me. There was enough of the time I was an adult, able to make choices. I did love the time I was Baby – because then I felt that nothing mattered, all my needs were safely delivered. I did know that there might come a time when I would need to give that control away – especially if I felt that Adult-me wasn’t coping well enough. Or that Baby had become too demanding. Needed more than Adult-me could manage. If Baby was allowed to worry – and babies shouldn’t – that was a worrying flicker hiding at the back of my thoughts.

But as things were, I knew, I knew, I was coping. We were coping. A touch of deliberate schizophrenia – I don’t think so.

I looked at clothing – things that limited my control, made me more babylike. Those came first. Mittens so that I had no control of my fingers. Smooth satin and soft cashmere instead of ‘ordinary male clothes’. There was considerable time deciding whether to adopt a blue or pink style – even though I knew that all derived from a 1920s advertising campaign of incredible effectiveness. I obviously went for pastel – very few clothes for babies are bold colours. Infants get some bold – but not babies. Yellow and Green mostly.

After about three months, in a moment of adulting – that’s what I called it - I looked around my flat and realized how much Baby had taken over my life.

The big chair was surrounded by bright plastic – several pacifiers, drinking bottles, sippy-cups, bibs toys, cloth-books, mittens, my new baby-bonnet. The kitchen was a mass of babyfood containers and the new liquidiser – that Baby wasn’t allowed to touch. Even writing that sentence feels weird.

It wasn’t that long before I tried on a diaper.

Then again.

Then all night.

Then sometimes in the daytime.

Once at work.

Then again.

And I was sometimes using them. Mostly for peepees. But babies don’t have a lot of control – do they.

More and more often.

Having to make sort of adult choices as to whether I ‘enjoyed’ throwaway or washable.

I found myself in increasing turmoil while my remaining adult braincells tried to maintain control over this deeply strange ‘situation’.

Rather obviously, I didn’t invite anyone into my flat. Baby stuff all over a place without a Baby. Obvious much. Stupid much. But sometimes my brain didn’t think as well as it used to.

Then I found the hypnosis sites. Oh God. Or Oh Good – depends. Feminization sites – once you got past the anti-smoking, anti-drugs, self-help stuff. Sissy sites. Bimbo sites. At last I found a couple of Adult-Baby sites. Hooked – you’ve got to be joking. I went looking for the hook and impaled myself like the most willing fish ever. On purpose.

I wondered about how far I would go.

Were there limits I should set before I lost too much ability?

Hooked – addicted.

I got into real trouble at work as my spelling and grammar deteriorated. I was spenging all mytime in babymode.

Worse and worse.

Compleely Deliebwate.

Oh deeh.

Mumma – he’p.