My Experience with Sexual Abuse.
When I was younger, I had all this desire bottled up inside of me.
It might be an odd thing to say, because well, when you're just a child, you don't really know what your body is telling you. It never really occurs to you what your body might be asking for. And I guess I could not have known to put a name to those feelings, but I was aware if them. I knew it when I watched kid TV shows and instead of having dreams of saving the world, my mind wondered to frankly basic sexual thoughts.
My imagination has always been vivid if I'm being honest, and sometimes my desire to see these imaginings come through kind of outway normal thought to the consequences and fall-out of doing said things. And I guess sometimes that's okay.
It's good to live out your dreams and all that. Live out your fantasasies.
Sometimes it's not.
In any case, at the time I just really wanted to understand what I was feeling. I'd go to the dictionary and find out the meaning of the word sex. I'd read it again and again to try to understand what it meant, and how it related to how I was feeling. I didn't get it obviously. Why would I? I was so curious; I guess I really was a child in that. I wanted to know too much, too soon.
One of my dad's workers had started to take a different tone with me. He started to look at me different, talk to me different.
I was excited actually.
It seemed to me, that I I'd found it. I could finally get some answers to what it is i'd been looking for.
Eventually one day I went into a room with him. I pulled up my shirt and I let him touch my breasts.
Well, I wasn't up to 12 at the time, so calling those peanuts breasts might be pushing it. My parents got home before it could pass that. I was terrified out of my mind. I mean I didn't know why, but the fact that I could have been caught really shook me.
After that, I just pretended like nothing happened. When I would see him around the compound I'd just act normal. I'm really good at that.
As I got older I started to feel shame. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had let a man probably 3 times my age touch a part of me that he should not even had considered coming close to, especially at my age, and I kept asking myself "why would I do that?", "why?"
I felt like I had violated myself and I felt like it was my fault. After all, I'd gone willingly, I wasn't forced. Why would I have thought it was okay to do something like that? In a way I still think I'm to blame. I can't help it.
In recent years however, especially with the new wave of consent and age appropriation, my sense of self-shame morphed to anger because yes, I went into the room with him, and yes at the time it seemed like something I wanted to do, but why would an adult male put himself in that kind of position with a child? Why would you look at me, a little girl, and think it was okay to guide me into a private space and touch me?
Why would he have looked at my "peanuts" with desire in his eyes and touch me, when he knew that it was not okay and he knew that it was wrong?
I know that if my parents hadn't come home that I might have raped. I remember that he'd wanted things to go further. He wanted me to "lie down".
"Lie down?" I'd thought. Lie down for what?
I guess I was literally saved by the horn.
I can't say that I wished I'd been caught, that would have been a disaster. It would have been hell to go through.
I do wish it had never happened, because when things like this happen you can't really forget it, you just have to live through it.
I've eaten myself up about this for years.
I've never told anyone.
I've judged myself for those choices, because even though I'm telling myself that my curiosity and childish stupidity was taken advantage of, I keep asking myself why I was there, why I'd been complicit all the way up to that point and I just get so full of self disgust sometimes I worry that I might actually hurt myself.
This is a confession of some sort, this is me trying to let go of inner shame. I didn't think that I would say this once I started to type but I have.
I understand that writing is therapy and I might have done myself some good saying this out loud for the first time in forever, but I don't think this forgiveness of self comes just from telling yourself that it wasn't your fault. It doesn't just come from people telling you that it's not your fault either.
I guess I'm not the only one with a story like this to tell.
It's a sad reality that i don't believe it will be the last.
It's a shame that it is not so rare that young boys and girls are basically groomed by adults who should know better.
But I guess I'm just writing this to say that I'm here, and that even though it feels like it's you're fault, it's really not.
It's our responsibility as adults to protect and not exploit the vulnerability of those younger than us.
It's a God given job.
I hope we do better.
It might be an odd thing to say, because well, when you're just a child, you don't really know what your body is telling you. It never really occurs to you what your body might be asking for. And I guess I could not have known to put a name to those feelings, but I was aware if them. I knew it when I watched kid TV shows and instead of having dreams of saving the world, my mind wondered to frankly basic sexual thoughts.
My imagination has always been vivid if I'm being honest, and sometimes my desire to see these imaginings come through kind of outway normal thought to the consequences and fall-out of doing said things. And I guess sometimes that's okay.
It's good to live out your dreams and all that. Live out your fantasasies.
Sometimes it's not.
In any case, at the time I just really wanted to understand what I was feeling. I'd go to the dictionary and find out the meaning of the word sex. I'd read it again and again to try to understand what it meant, and how it related to how I was feeling. I didn't get it obviously. Why would I? I was so curious; I guess I really was a child in that. I wanted to know too much, too soon.
One of my dad's workers had started to take a different tone with me. He started to look at me different, talk to me different.
I was excited actually.
It seemed to me, that I I'd found it. I could finally get some answers to what it is i'd been looking for.
Eventually one day I went into a room with him. I pulled up my shirt and I let him touch my breasts.
Well, I wasn't up to 12 at the time, so calling those peanuts breasts might be pushing it. My parents got home before it could pass that. I was terrified out of my mind. I mean I didn't know why, but the fact that I could have been caught really shook me.
After that, I just pretended like nothing happened. When I would see him around the compound I'd just act normal. I'm really good at that.
As I got older I started to feel shame. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had let a man probably 3 times my age touch a part of me that he should not even had considered coming close to, especially at my age, and I kept asking myself "why would I do that?", "why?"
I felt like I had violated myself and I felt like it was my fault. After all, I'd gone willingly, I wasn't forced. Why would I have thought it was okay to do something like that? In a way I still think I'm to blame. I can't help it.
In recent years however, especially with the new wave of consent and age appropriation, my sense of self-shame morphed to anger because yes, I went into the room with him, and yes at the time it seemed like something I wanted to do, but why would an adult male put himself in that kind of position with a child? Why would you look at me, a little girl, and think it was okay to guide me into a private space and touch me?
Why would he have looked at my "peanuts" with desire in his eyes and touch me, when he knew that it was not okay and he knew that it was wrong?
I know that if my parents hadn't come home that I might have raped. I remember that he'd wanted things to go further. He wanted me to "lie down".
"Lie down?" I'd thought. Lie down for what?
I guess I was literally saved by the horn.
I can't say that I wished I'd been caught, that would have been a disaster. It would have been hell to go through.
I do wish it had never happened, because when things like this happen you can't really forget it, you just have to live through it.
I've eaten myself up about this for years.
I've never told anyone.
I've judged myself for those choices, because even though I'm telling myself that my curiosity and childish stupidity was taken advantage of, I keep asking myself why I was there, why I'd been complicit all the way up to that point and I just get so full of self disgust sometimes I worry that I might actually hurt myself.
This is a confession of some sort, this is me trying to let go of inner shame. I didn't think that I would say this once I started to type but I have.
I understand that writing is therapy and I might have done myself some good saying this out loud for the first time in forever, but I don't think this forgiveness of self comes just from telling yourself that it wasn't your fault. It doesn't just come from people telling you that it's not your fault either.
I guess I'm not the only one with a story like this to tell.
It's a sad reality that i don't believe it will be the last.
It's a shame that it is not so rare that young boys and girls are basically groomed by adults who should know better.
But I guess I'm just writing this to say that I'm here, and that even though it feels like it's you're fault, it's really not.
It's our responsibility as adults to protect and not exploit the vulnerability of those younger than us.
It's a God given job.
I hope we do better.
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