Growing up and being raised catholic while being in the closet in the early 2000s - slash/femslash fiction was comforting to me knowing that my thoughts on having crushes on girls wasn't abnormal (even though at the time there were a few lgbt rep in media, it was next to impossible to find and I was pretty sheltered by family/school. Plus when it was even remotely brought up irl people would say that it was a 'lifestyle choice' and not something for kids to know about or just a unimportant teen phase).
Like, I managed to surpass feeling guilt like a lot of my other ex-catholic & queer friends - mostly thanks to finding about slash shipping when I was 13 years old and had fun reading/drawing/writing slash content. It felt freeing to create worlds where being gay was the norm or writing relatable angst or just having a laugh with over the top head canons.

Like it's maybe not the same thing as learning a lesson, but I feel like I was able to learn that there was nothing wrong with me growing up thanks to the online spaces that I had found back then.