Anonymous Story: Me Too

At the age of 6 or 7 I was sexually assaulted or harassed I don’t really know what to call it it was so unusual so out of the ordinary that it took me almost 20 years to be able to call it abuse because growing up I didn’t recognize what had happened it wasn’t what I thought sexual assault was it wasn’t what my mother warned me about or what I heard people went through it was different and I pushed it aside tried not to think about it but somehow from time to time it came back to me the memory was always there. I was sexually assaulted by , an older girl she was 8 years older than me she was my friend or so I thought, I remember her saying she wanted to play a game with me which I thought was normal because we used to play games everyday but this one was different she took me into my cousin’s building ( also the building where she lived) pushing me in the elevator and blocking the way out tormenting me and pushing the stop button over and over, she took me to the last floor where everything was dark and no one was there I tried to escape but she blocked the way I tried another way and managed to escape but she caught me and brought me back in I had never experienced this type of fear in my life I knew this wasn’t normal and I knew something terrible could happen and I was really scared . She didn’t rape me but she made me touch her forcing my hand in the dark where I couldn’t see anything saying sexual things she also touched my breasts and I don’t remember if anything else happened and if I’ve blocked it out of my memory but I remember being stuck I couldn’t scream I was scared of what would happen next she threatened me not to tell anyone or else she would hurt me, in the end I managed to escape to get back to my cousin’s appartment.I was so scared confused and it didn’t know what to do but ai decided to never think of it again to forget what happened although I never did. I tried telling my friends once and they laughed at me maybe because they didn’t believe me or maybe because we’re not used to hear that women sexually abuse other women and the stories we know are about men abusing women and girls and therefore my experience would be invaluable and invalid because it doesn’t fit the criteria. I never felt like my story was legitimate I never felt like it could be compared to other abuse stories at the hands of men and maybe its not as horrible as other stories but I think it is still abuse and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this like me and doesn’t know how to identify the situation . I wonder if I’m not alone.