Talking About the Past

One of my goals since I started writing was to get others to talk about sexual abuse. My opinion is that the more people engage in conversation about childhood sexual abuse, the more than we can end it. Although it is difficult, I firmly believe that the conversation must begin with ourselves

My biggest obstacle I faced was admitting that I had been sexually abused. My perpetrator didn’t live with me, I wasn’t forced to have sex with him, nor did my abuse occur multiple times under horrific conditions. It was limited, finite, and could have been perceived as pre-teen sexual experimentation. However, it was with a man who was an adult. A man who groomed me into thinking that I was his friend and I could put my trust in him. Then he betrayed that trust by subtly becoming more physical and sexual with me until I was convinced that this was something I wanted. Except that, I didn’t want it. I wanted an older man to mentor me, to father me, and to affirm my own masculinity as I set off into the adult world. None of which my perpetrator gave me, although it felt as if he promised those things from the beginning.

My hope is that if you have an feeling that an adult has sexually abused in you in the past, you would talk about it with someone else. Please take the time to work through your experiences, your emotions, and your memories to determine if an adult betrayed you by grooming you into a sexual relationship with them. I don’t want people to invent things that didn’t happen to them, but I also don’t want anyone to gloss over the fact that they may have experienced some degree of sexual trauma. If we are to stop this, we need to recognize and understand all of the forms someone can experience sexual abuse.