Trigger Warning for sex and consent. Below age of consent is below age of reason (content note)
Trigger Warning for sex and consent.
Talking about some of my lived experiences may further increase understanding. This talks about the first of those experiences, a period of a couple of years. Although there were later experiences these are the ones which have affected me the most in relation to things happening.
Even now many people have said I have been protecting him by never saying who it was, but given his age and his own lack of maturity it does not seem appropriate to name him assuming he has not gone on to do that sort of thing when older.
He was 14 and I was 10 when it started. I am not sure what gave him the idea, I was often playing alone, or reading in my bedroom and he came in being a friend of my older brother.
Strangely one of the things that now bothers me most now was the lack of kissing. I don’t fully remember how the first steps happened; he was offering me his old toys if I went along with it. I do remember being held down on his Penis being made and actually taught how to suck whilst i was crying, later being up against my bunk bed ladder as he went in.
Years later I was surprised how much it hurt being taken there, I don’t know if it was as he was smaller or I was more flexible or resilient. I also managed to put two together on why I was bleeding so much from there from ages ten to about twelve.
At the time I thought I was consenting and in control, however after each time I would wash loads and feel something was wrong and dirty, something that remerged years later when I was in bed with boyfriends who I lashed out at from time to time or crawled into a ball. I was often upset and out of sorts with things at school and later much later a psychologist diagnosed me with Autism, this being an outside external influence that exacerbated it.
I finally totally broke down and began re-experiencing memories and reliving it whilst being with a best friend who was going through her arranged marriage memories that she had from just before going to University.
In that state my friendships all collapsed I became isolated, panic disorder began, confidence crashed, and a nervous breakdown began. Something I have never recovered from, and relapse into. Later diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder explained a lot of the reliving things and inability to get past it all. It has now been over 1 third of my life in a state of being affected by it so prominently, very much a case of the dangers of opening Pandora’s box and needing help and support at the time the box is open. Also however much I talk about the need to end victim blaming and campaign on awareness of the issues, it's hardest to end victim blaming of yourself.
I support consent being taught in schools, but as a precocious child, and as the educational tests showed above the average intelligence I do still think I knew enough about what it was, it was my emotional maturity that was lacking not my educational knowledge. The two were clearly at different stages.
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