A secret that I've been ashamed of for a really long time

Destin, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to go through this...and at such a young age. It's just depressing.

You are a brave individual. To keep that secret mostly to yourself for so long was a heavy burden, I'm sure. I don't think anything will ever fully get rid of the pain it caused you, but talking about it is a great first step perhaps in easing the troubles it has brought on. And you know I'm always here for you as well, if you ever want to chat.

 

If it were me starting a thread like this one, I wouldn't come back to it and read comments--that's just how I am (I do that a lot, anyways, when I respond to threads, just so people know). So, I understand if you don't, or do but don't respond.

But the thing I always think about when people try to connect being gay, bi or lesbian to having been molested is how common being molested is. I really would estimate that all of us know at least one person who has been molested or raped before turning 18, and the majority of those people are straight or identify as straight. We hear stories from celebrities, or read them, and most of them identify as straight.

When I was a kid--about 9 years old--my male cousin tried to have sex with me. I came from a family that was really weird about what we could and could not do--I could never go anywhere, could never do sleepovers (go to them or have them) or any "normal" kid stuff...but I could listen to the raunchiest rap music, drink alcohol, look at Playboy magazine and watch porn on TV. Point being...I knew a lot about sex at 9 years old, which is probably more normal now than when I was growing up. When I read stories about young kids being molested or assaulted, a lot of the time they say they didn't know what was happening. But I knew, and it probably saved me. I was trying to go to sleep but wasn't asleep yet, and my cousin was trying to take advantage of the situation. So, I pretended to be asleep and came up with the idea to just jump up and run to another room in the house, kind of to catch my cousin off guard so he couldn't stop me. And I did, and my sister was in the other room. So, I told her about it.

Other than maybe my closest friend and maybe one ex, she's the only one who knows. The last time I saw my cousin, which was a few years ago, I think, he looked at me funny...like he was checking my body out. He did like this "Whooo" thing and looked from top to bottom, like guys do when they think a woman is hot and has a great body (yes, he is from Mississippi, while we're on stereotypes). And he did it in front of my parents. Ugh! So gross. I can't remember if I told my closest friend this story, or if I told her the next one (I only told her one of these stories, I think)...

Before that situation with my cousin, my parents had me going to this babysitter that would babysit a lot of kids. I don't know how old I was, but I think I was 4 years old. I don't remember very much at all about it, and I wouldn't know anything about any abuse if it weren't for my family. The babysitter used to beat kids, apparently. I had classmates in school who went to this same babysitter, and they remembered it. My sister (same one from the other story) went with me one day when she was sick and couldn't go to school, and she saw the lady hit me...and she took me and we left and she told my parents.

I mentioned in that thread about "useless" degrees that I got a psych degree. I remember in one of my psych classes, the professor was talking about "repression" and how she doesn't believe people really repress memories. I remember just sitting there like......??? I mean, I don't remember anything about the physical abuse and don't want to. I remember silly, pointless stuff about going to that babysitter. I repressed a lot of bad memories from childhood (my cousin, being bullied in elementary and junior high school), but they all came back at some point--except for the physical abuse that other kids remembered, which means I was old enough to remember it, too. I remember the thing with my cousin in another psych class, actually, about cognition.

I really don't know how these things, other than being bullied, affect me today because--unlike with most things--I don't want to think about it. I think everything to death and analyze everything, but not these two incidents. I told my last girlfriend about one or both of these, and she asked me if I wanted to talk about it and I said no. That was the end of it. I do know that if I had told my parents about my cousin, nothing would have happened except for me getting embarrassed and their making excuses. My parents are sexist, and at the time he was the only boy in our family (or in the part of the family we saw with some regularity), which was and is full of girls/women. Any time he came for a visit, they were all about him. I'm so lucky I don't have brothers. My cousin is garbage today; the whole time I was in grad school, he was on house arrest (3 years).

But yeah, I liked girls well before that ever happened--it has nothing to do with anything.

 

Destin, you have nothing to be ashamed of and I hope you feel somewhat better that you shared and it's no longer a secret. Many people, I think, are raised that that kind of stuff is bad and somehow the victims fault. Hopefully you're sharing will help others realize that if it happened to them that it's nothing to be ashamed about.

 

You are amazingly brave for sharing your story. While I don't know what it's like to have personally experienced what you've been through, I know there are others here who have, and I can tell you that nobody on here (or anywhere) who's worth a damn will judge or blame you for it.