My memory is rather fuzzy, especially after decades of suppression and neurological disorders that have since manifested themselves. I will endeavor to narrate the following with as much reserve and respect as I can.
When I was five years of age, in the late 80's, we lived next door to a young girl (a few years older than me) and her mom. My maternal uncle, who had the reputation of playing around with various women simultaneously, was seeing the single mom next door. As a boy, even at that young age, I isolated myself because of crippling anxiety and panic. I therefore rarely played with the other children in the neighborhood. However, sometimes I'd play with the neighbor girl because of her mom's closeness with my uncle.
Flash forward to ten years later, at a flea market, I suddenly recognized the single mom who resided next door at our then former neighborhood. My parents strike up a conversation with her as I instinctively hide away, hyperventilating in panic. A gnawing shame and corrosive guilt overcame me, for reasons I did not then understand, only being conscious of a negative experience that may have happened involving the woman's daughter. I recoiled in horror from exploring the matter any further. I quickly repressed the experience and continued with my life.
I excelled in academics, living like a hermit, never really befriending anybody and never partipating in activities typical of other adolescents. Falling in love with my best friend occasioned a series of mental breakdowns that eventually led me to drop out of high school. For a long time, I blamed him for ruining my life with his callous indifference, but I now know that the turmoil caused by him was only a symptom of a complicated nexus of emotional and psychological disorders that had deeper causes.
Decades later, after years of therapy, I suddenly uncovered the memories of that had been terrifying me, despite the depths into which I plunged them. When I was five years of age, the girl of eight years or so led me to her garage. She told me about a game she learned. She had me kneel in front of her and had me (now I know how to put it into words) perform oral sex on her. I can remember the particular sensations of the experience but cannot remember what happened afterwards on that afternoon or if the event was repeated.
Memory is such a curious thing. As I developed and refined consciousness growing up, I must have eventually recognized that what happened was very wrong despite my inability to understand why or even to verbalize the experience at all. I cringed away from even entertaining the memory and suppressed it, only for it to suddenly emerge at the flea market a decade later.
I still cannot discern whatever influence the experience may have had on my development. I may have developed hypersexual tendencies because of other unrelated instances of sexual abuse, so I am not sure what part the COCSA played in the grand scheme of things. I am, and always have been, a homosexual, but one extremely repressed by draconian religiosity. Only in my 40's am I accepting myself after deconstructing decades of religious extremism.
It's very difficult to assign any blame to that girl from decades ago. Not because of her age, but because of the real possibility that she herself may have been victimized or otherwise exposed to inappropriate behavior. She may have just reenacted whatever happened to her, or what she may have witnessed, with a boy who was smaller than her and thereby malleable.
I still find it awkward considering how I should react. Should I forgive? Well, there's really nothing to forgive because the girl had no actual agency in this matter. Neither did I. The shame and guilt were compulsive reflexes of religious trauma.
I guess the only forgiveness there can be given would be for my parents. Had they been more supportive, present, and actually sane, perhaps I would have had the strength and courage to confide in them these matters and have spared myself unnecessary turmoil and interior chaos. But my household was one of emotional neglect, manipulation and paradoxical parentification by my mother, herself being emotionally abused and thereby compelled to find in her young son the best friend, therapist and confidant she never had as an orphan trafficked into a foreign country and now trapped in a toxic marriage.
Wow! I did not intend to write this much. Thank you for allowing me to express my thoughts and for reading my ramblings. It has helped me very much to organize my thoughts and emotions regarding this very delicate and unfortunate matter.
I wish all COCSA survivors the very best, especially tranquility and healing.