#if my parents knew about cocsa. which they might not.

[error-core-animations]

I'm in a very interesting position of "got comprehensive and age appropriate sex ed at a young age" but I was also molested as a kid. I am walking evidence that seeing diagrams of penises and vaginas isn't harmful and the real thing that gets kids hurt and sexually abused is not knowing shit. Cuz like, I did get told what genitals were and how zygotes implant into the uterus walls and stuff, but nobody told me about sexual abuse and assault for a while.

This also illustrates something ✨extremely fun✨: CSA is treated like it is Too Yucky to tell kids about, even in technical terms, even if the kid is aware of what sex is, they simply cannot know that if their friend pressures them into touching their genitals, that's a bad thing and that friend is probably being hurt! It's so weird, there's literally a whole saying about how knowledge is power, but kids are intentionally denied knowledge that could save them so much pain.

[a-trauma-fox]

i’m thinking about not knowing if i want stuff, specifically sexual stuff, or knowing too late. it’s really explicit under the cut so tw for cocsa, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, (falsely directed) misogyny and proceed with caution.

some time ago i thought about my first time again, with my then-bf. i think we had sex 2 times. i was 11 and he 12ish, maybe 13 actually, bc he was 1.5 yrs older than me and it was close to my 12th birthday.

he did push me into stuff. like kissing, with tongue, for hours when i didn’t like it (and i told him i didn’t like it, but he was like ‘come on, i like it so much’ and continued anyway. and i let him). i was hesitant before our first time, and it wasn’t my idea. he said a girl had let him do it before, that she’d been even younger than me (9) and it had been fine for her. it took a couple of weeks for him to convince me i think. i didn’t want to disappoint him. so finally we lay in bed naked, i was unsure. he showed me his penis, in a way too large condom, and said come onnn, he’s already waiting for you! and i was like i’m not sure this is a good idea but fine. and it was a mess, it hurt a lot.

once we had started the sex i continued - ‘for him’ because he wanted it so much and i wanted to feel wanted and i wanted to feel grown-up. we stopped after a while. i think it was pleasant for him, but he was too young to ejaculate or anything. it wasn’t pleasant for me. i thought it should have felt good though and that something probably was wrong with me. i felt used.

but i agreed again at least one time after that. i thought the second time probably wouldn’t hurt as bad bc i’d lost my virginity after all! and even by that age i was a sceptic but willing to give stuff second chances, and also an experience seeker, and thought maybe the second time could be overall more pleasurable for me. i don’t explicitly remember how hard he pushed for a second time, but i know he did push for it. and i still wanted to feel wanted and grown-up and thought i could handle it. and i didn’t want him to leave me because of this. not very surprisingly, the second time was disappointing again, i felt used again even though i had more part in it this time.

i don’t remember if there was a third time with him. he became really religious pretty soon after that and said jesus cured his adhd, so we couldn’t play gta on the computer anymore (which was actually my favorite thing to do with him). so i said alright, but you know then we can’t have sex as well because you know what jesus says about premarital sex. he was all ‘but but but’ and we were interrupted when my mom came to pick me up from his place. we broke up after that. i think he broke up bc of the sex thing, and i broke up because at the time i had this burning contempt for religion and especially religious hypocrisy. (i thought jesus didn’t give a shit about me grilling a bunch of pixel elvis impersonators with a pixel flamethrower. but i digress)

after that i decided that sex categorically wasn’t for me. that something must be wrong with me for not getting pleasure out of it. i somehow couldn’t bring myself to touch a penis until ten years later in my early twenties. before, at 15, i had a sort-of relationship with a girl 4 years older than me who kept touching me even though i didn’t want it and i lay there dissociated. i told her it was fine and i was sorry i didn’t feel the same way about her. at 16 i got really drunk with a boy around 18 and we started making out, then i burst into tears and told him i was broken and didn’t really want this, and we stopped. he sent me a patronising letter telling me i didn’t know what i wanted. then at 16-17 i had a boyfriend who was 22-23 and we were both unintersted in sex so that aspect was chill. at the time i was in a psych ward for the first time, and one of the therapists somewhere down the line asked me if i was sure i’d never been raped or something like it. i said yeah no, my first time was pretty early but just disappointing (’most first times suck don’t they? lol’) and then i decided sex wasn’t for me, but i was okay with that and everything was totally chill. i don’t know if she actually bought that, but she dropped the subject. would have been helpful if she’d told me what makes a sexual encounter nonconsensual. at 18 i had a bf who was 32 and with him i actually had the first orgasm with another person, though he emotionally manipulated me into having sex.

i ‘confessed’ that i had sex with him one night, maybe one or two years later at most, to my mother. i remember feeling a deep shame and i couldn’t stop crying. i think she stayed and tried to calm me down, but she didn’t really say anything that made me feel better. i expected her to be shocked or to say she was sorry that happened and she didn’t notice or something. but she sort of just... noted it? i had the feeling she didn’t really want to stay, she actually would rather go to bed than comfort me, but leaving would be too much of an asshole move so she stuck it out.

i actually don’t know why my parents never said anything to me and my first bf when i was 11. they must have known that we were lying in bed, kissing, for hours, sometimes only in our underwear. but they only gave us space to do whatever. i don’t remember them asking questions about what my boyfriend and i were doing. if i had an 11 year old child i definitely would ask that stuff to make sure they were okay? to make sure they knew it’s okay to say no if you feel uncomfortable for any reason at all? to make sure they didn’t do anything that’s really inappropriate for their stage of development, physically and psychologically? isn’t that what a parent should do?

i don’t know if my first time was cocsa. i don’t know if it was that bad. it certainly had some pretty unhealthy elements. it’s even harder to decide now in hindsight, because it happened during a time where i was deeply unhappy. i was bullied at school, which definitely was traumatic, robbed me fo sleep for years afterwards and screwed me up even more. i was really numb most of the time back then, and i suspect it’s the time i started dissociating (idk maybe i learned it earlier but i definitely knew how to do it when i was 11). i thought i was broken and a profoundly bad person, but at least had the decency to feel bad about it in contrast to the other children who i thought were even worse than me. i was really lonely and that boyfriend at least gave me closeness and attention, even if it was mainly to get in my pants. at the same time i was so numb that i didn’t care about a lot of things, and it took strong stimuli like video games to make me feel excited. i had a lot of anger inside me and got a punching bag because i thought i might lose it in school and kill another kid. at the same time i thought i was really grown up and could/had to handle everything on my own. i had mainly contempt for feelings and vulnerability, especially my own, so that didn’t help with learning self care.

anyway, back to that first time - i don’t remember if i just didn’t know what i wanted and went one step further, or if i wanted it to work and went one step further. i feel like if i wanted it to work, that makes it not sexual abuse, because i consented right? also if it really was so bad, why would i try it a second time? i know i wasn’t as opposed to the second time because i didn’t want to judge sex in general based only on the first time, and then there was the boyfriend who kept going on about it.

it’s actually a bit similar to my most recent affair that went really bad. it definitely involved some emotional abuse from him, and then we also had sex once. this time we’re both adults at least. i was falling for him hard and wanted it to work, but then he seriously crossed a line during sex and i couldn’t say no, i sort of froze and stuck it out. he definitely should have asked before what was okay and what was not, but he didn’t. and i chose to see where it would go, i even initiated the sex. my therapist asked me if it felt fitting to say “i felt raped by him”, and i didn’t know. that would depend on if it actually was rape, i thought. he didn’t even know what he did until i told him that part wasn’t consensual, that it hurt and gave me flashbacks and new triggers. i still don’t know what to call it, but am starting to make my peace with it anyway.

but i still wonder if that first time was sexual abuse or just poor boundaries on my part...

if you’ve made it this far, i’m sorry. since this is my place to dump stuff anonymously, please give me your two cents on that last question if you want. i tend to go around in circles in my mind with this stuff and could really use some input.

[traumabrained]

(1) TW COCSA? im pretty sure i ever initiated sexual stuff with my sibling when we were children and i have always been pushing the issue far back into my brain but seeing your blog made me realize maybe i deserve the chance to come to terms with the past. i never knew it was something common enough to be a named issue that brings related google results when you search it up. it pains me to read any article. its hard to even write this to you. i dont want to carry this burden forever.

(2) i feel guilty and embarrassed to the extreme, i think. i never took the time to try to understand how it made me truly feel. i don't know what to do. google only brought up advice for victims but what if you are the perpetrator??? how do i deal w this? what am i supposed to do? i don’t remember how / when it stopped. did my parents find out and made me stop? i don’t know but i’m terrified. there are so many things i don’t remember from that time.

(3) i wish things had gone differently. i don’t think i meant to hurt anyone. i wish someone had taken the time to speak to me and explain how things work but maybe someone did and i just repressed it? which was my goal? what do people remember? just how embarrassed do i need to feel? how can i be forgived w/o speaking about it with everyone involved, without asking a single question? how do i... i need to move out

i am really not the person to ask. you definitely do need to move out. i don’t think you can be forgiven without speaking about it--you need to talk to your siblings, because this might have (as in, there’s a high chance) traumatized them. but if you try to bring it up and they dont want to talk about, then leave it alone.

no idea how to make this better, but i advise that you see a therapist, who should be able to help you. just remember that you cant make amends just by feeling guilty, it comes from fixing things.