[TW: SA] So when I was a kid, just before I turned 5, my family moved to kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Across the street lived a boy who was approximately a year younger than me. My parents made me go talk to him, and we became "friends."
Not too long after we had gotten moved in, he started wanting to play doctor. I didn't want to initially, but he eventually got me to participate. I've seen a lot of websites saying that playing doctor is normal for young kids. I don't know if I believe that; I've been super gaslit into thinking the abuse I faced was normal and I have a hard time with trust.
For context, we are both AMAB. I did eventually realize that I am a trans woman, however at the time this occurred I had never even heard of the word transgender. I mention this because I consider myself to have always had a female brain though I didn't realize that when I was a little kid. In addition to that I've also relatively recently discovered that I've had autism my whole life as well.
Anyways, he eventually wanted to do other things as well, some things I'm just not going to write because I don't like thinking about it, but he repeatedly forced sexual acts on to me over the next 5 years. It stopped when I was around 10 because his family moved to another state.
One common thing he liked to do was oral sex. I always initially refused, but he would try to coerce me by saying that it's a normal thing for friends to do, and that if I didn't do it he wouldn't be my friend anymore. If I continued to refuse and we were alone in the house, he would go and get a knife from the kitchen and threaten to kill himself if I didn't participate in whatever sexual act he wanted me to do. So I always ended up saying yes even though I really didn't want to.
I remember feeling absolutely miserable each time. Afterwards I would go hide somewhere and start dry heaving and crying. I've never told a single soul about the abuse I went through and it's been eating me up for quite a while, especially when I hear about rape on the news or somewhere else and it just destroys me. When I was younger I didn't know any better and he convinced me it was normal, but it's also just a really hard thing for me to think about as well and I was worried people would just brush me off and say I'm overly sensitive. I'm now sharing because I just can't endure it anymore and I can't afford a therapist rn. I've cried so much and I just want the pain to stop.
I don't blame him for it because he was just a kid and I'm pretty sure he was getting abused by someone else, specifically his mother. His father was an oil worker so he was rarely home, meaning he and his mother had a lot of alone time. He would also talk about his mother in a sexual context on occasion and she was the only person besides me that I ever heard him talk about that way, which is why I suspect her. Also I don't think a young kid could possibly think of the things that he did to me. There had to have been an adult abusing him.
Well, fwiw, that kid wasn't playing doctor, which is inherently a mutual event. That is a normal thing, a mutual exploitation of bodies.
That's not what you call what happened to you. What it was is called child on child abuse. It's a common enough thing, but using the normal for it would be inaccurate in any common usage of the word.
It is, sadly, not even that rare in the extreme nature of what you suffered.
Not only that, but chances are very high that you're exactly right about it being him reacting to previous abuse he suffered. Which doesn't make it any better, but maybe it can serve as another point of support for your feelings being validated. The cycle of abuse is a very real thing. Not that there aren't kids that have the ability to be horrible, there are, but it's more likely to have been something he learned.
Nothing anyone here can say will really make it better. The best we can offer is validation that your feelings, your pain is not you being over sensitive. There is no world in which what happened to you is anything but horrible. I would go as far as to say that anyone being dismissive of your experience would be committing a different form of abuse.
Being pressured into sexual activity is abuse, it is rape. No qualifiers. Being threatened with a knife, even when the threat wasn't to hurt you with it, is definitely rape.
Ma'am, I'm sorry you experienced all of it, and any of it. Nobody should have to go through that, much less a child.
All I can hope is that you getting this off your chest helps a little. I could wish it helps a lot, but trauma like that tends to be healed in small steps.
I'll repeat this again, because I think it is what you are seeking right this moment, from this post. Your experience, your interpretation of it as abuse is 100% right. Anybody that says otherwise isn't worth the air it would take them to say it.
Thanks ♥️♥️♥️
It has really helped to get this off my chest and to hear that my experience is not invalid. I feel like I can start moving forward with trying to heal