When I was in elementary school, I was raped by the older boy from next door. I don’t remember everything that happened, that’s how bad I’ve been repressing it. I can only remember some insane details, for example he forced some sticks into me that were laying around. It happened after school, in a small forest next to the school. I remember that I thought the attention he was giving me was interesting and that I looked up to him. That is why I went with him to that forest.

I have always blamed myself for going with him, but realise now that as a child I couldn’t have made a different choice and that I had no idea. I told the story to my parents afterwards. They talked about it with the boy’s parents, but it was swept under the rug. My parents never talked to me about it again. That experience made me completely lose touch with my own body. I thought I was worthless and felt that I had to use my body to receive attention from boys. I had a screwed up take on sex and intimacy. During puberty, even more boys abused this. I got caught up in a vicious circle and kept piling on trauma.

When I finally got into a relationship with a very sweet boy, he pointed out that it really was not “normal” to carry so much pain with you and that I didn’t have to do it all alone. At that point, I’d been reliving some images during sex for years, even with my boyfriend whom I felt safe with. That’s when I started looking for help and started dealing with my trauma. This was not easy. There were very long waiting lists and when I finally got EMDR therapy and had a nice psychologist, he suddenly quit and I had to go back on a waiting list. Maybe that was my lowest point. If even a psychologist didn’t want to help me, who would? That is how that felt back then.

There really is a need for way more education on sexual abuse, from a young age. Maybe it could have prevented my neighbour from doing what he did. And otherwise I could have discovered 10 years earlier that it had not been my fault.