Growing up I was always a small kid. I come from converging family lines of below-average height and had an overdrive metabolism — I could eat huge amounts of food and burn it all off with ease. This carried through puberty, and I was always somewhat self conscious about it. I assumed my penis size was average at best; I had no reason to think otherwise.
So when the time came for high school gym class, I was incredibly hesitant about the locker rooms. I was fortunate to not sweat or stink much at all from even vigorous activity in my youth, so I was able to avoid the showers or even changing my underwear during those times.
I was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of public nudity. Thinking back on it, it's probably a good thing I was oblivious about my size growing up. I had a pretty big ego about myself (I was too smart for my own good and I knew it), and adding "probably has the largest cock in this entire school" to the list would've made young me absolutely insufferable.
But the signs were there, I just didn't know how to interpret them. I was confused by my friends that mentioned tucking their erections into their pants' waist bands; I never said that it seemed weird, but I definitely thought that it was — after all, multiple inches of my penis would've been exposed doing that.
After graduating from high school I joined the military reserve, which required going through boot camp training. That was my baptism by fire in getting comfortable with my nudity and that of others. Despite seeing dozens of flaccid dicks in the open bay showers, I never really processed how much bigger mine was. And it never clicked why I got the nickname of "Big D" despite being short and scrawny, or why the guys would joke "watch where you swing that thing!" in the showers.
Post-military training I started my college education, both in artistic skills and sex. It took a while to come out of my shell and finally hook up with a girl. She was much more experienced than me and remarked about how big my dick was. The sex was bad; she'd never had any guy nearly my size, I had no clue what I was doing, the condom she provided barely fit on, and we both lacked an understanding of the importance of lube and foreplay when having sex with such a large penis.
I assumed that her exaltation of my supposedly huge cock was just her pumping up my ego and that was something that all women did. I assumed that condoms were just painful to put on and that sex was simply a lot more frustrating than how the low bitrate pornography of my youth made it seem.
My second partner was equally shocked and humbled by my endowment. "Fuck you're huge" was her frequent statement through our struggle with sex that night. We eventually got it in, but it was a lot of fumbling and work to get there.
Not long after I was hanging out with some male friends. We were unusually close and open with each other, and at some point the conversation turned to dicks. We got to the point of stating our sizes: the first guy said 6 inches, the second 5, and the third said 5-6 inches. I answered honestly: I hadn't measured, but 6 inches seemed about right. The conversation moved on; we are all pretty normal sized, but in the back of the head now I was curious… how big was my penis?
Later that evening I was back in my apartment and the curiosity got me. I pulled out my cock, grabbed a ruler, and whipped up an erection. I laid the ruler on top of my boner and found myself in disbelief: 8.25 inches. I grabbed another ruler, the fancy one I used for my art classes, and it too read 8.25 inches.
I was still in denial. I knew nothing of penis size, but I did understand statistical probabilities. Which was more likely: that my dick was average and all my friends were small, or they were average and I was huge?
So for the first time in my life I Googled "average penis size" and found out that roughly 5.5 inches was the average dick length. Cue my utter disbelief at my newly realized monster size. Not only was I above average, but I was bigger than 99.99% of all men.
So much stated to make sense. The girls weren't pumping up my ego, and the sex was difficult because I needed to dramatically improve my foreplay game. Condoms weren't meant to be painfully tight, and I needed the biggest condoms I could find.
I would be lying if I said I didn't let it go to my head initially. But I learned rather quickly that most women aren't interested in a man that brags about his huge cock, in fact they'll more likely think you're full of shit.
Though the realization of my size came later than it does for many guys, it was still a revelation. My struggles with sex and blowjobs and condoms and underwear made more sense.
It took me a while longer to fully grasp my reality and the trade offs that come with being extremely well-endowed. I learned a lot the hard way, so I'm doing what I can to pass on my knowledge and experience to those that are dealing with the same struggles of having a huge cock and no idea the implications it holds.