TL:DR: My abuse was not worse just bc I happened to be a kid at the time
I was abused when I was 11-14. I will not talk about the details or type of abuse in this post as that is not a conversation I am ready for.
I hate the fact that if the exact same events happened to me today or when I’m 40 they would be considered “less bad”. I hate that there is people out there who have simlar expriences to mine but their’s is consider “less bad” than when they were older.
It feels insulting that part of the pain I feel is put down to the age I was at the time. It’s insulting to adult victims to say there expriences are lesser than mine due to age. That is my fellow surviours, they have felt my pain and I theirs.
Drawing lines like that between surviours hurts our ability to build community and solidarity. It also encourages unhealthy coping mechanisms like trauma comparision. (Trauma comparision is when you compare you’re trauma to others to put yourself down due to the idea you don’t have a right to be in pain bc others have it worse. Its an unhealthy belief a lot of surviours struggle with).
The age I was at the time has nothing to do with my pain. My abuse caused my pain, not my age. I would feel the same pain if it happened at 19 or 30 or 40 or fucking 96.
Disclaimer: This is not to put down survivors who feel their age did play a part in their trauma. My anger is not with any one indvidual’s story. My anger is with the idea that the abuse of children is always worse than the abuse of adults.
I totally agree with you. I was involved in unwanted sexual activity from an adult (well he tried but mostly failed) when I was 9 or 10 and I don’t feel it was traumatizing at all. I thought it was weird that everyone I talked to said it would emotionally damage me for life, while I just thought it was a bit weird, and (darkly) humorous in a way. On the other hand, I was in an abusive, but basically consensual relationship when I was 19 and it has absolutely left me with emotional scars, but I felt like I didn’t get a lot of support because “I’m an adult now” and “I chose it”. I also had a close friend of mine sexually assault me when we were both 15. That was awful as well, but my parents encouraged me to keep being friends with her because she was just “a sheltered curious teenager” and we had been friends for a long time. I feel like the most traumatic and emotionally difficult times of my life were when I was 18-early 20s, because there’s such a huge shift in expectations at that age, but a lot of the sympathy and support one gets as a minor is taken away.
hugs
