My sister and I were molested as young kids. We are close now and it was more traumatizing for her than it was for me and we have both mostly worked through it. But this kind of off-the-cuff theorizing about mental health by randos and pop-psychology nonsense is why I’ve made some major decisions in my life.
One of these pop-psychology “truths” you hear a lot is that child molesters where themselves molested as children. I mean, maybe it is true for some or even many but it doesn’t make total sense if you think about it. It had to start somewhere where their was an adult who never experienced it as a child and then did it. So it’s not necessarily true.
For this reason though I have extreme anxiety about this. I have never thought inappropriately about a child but that doesn’t matter. What if it is true? What if one day it suddenly clicks in me? And this deep seeded fear implanted in me by society altered my life. Maybe in another life I’d be a father. Not in this one. I was sterilized by choice. I married an older woman and she doesn’t/didn’t want kids. We are both past childbearing age anyways at this point. As much as my abuser stole this prospect from me so did this nasty little idea that because I am a victim I’m just one baby-sitting evening away from becoming a predator and I have never been able to shake it. Never will. There will never be a moment in my life where I can be comfortable being alone with a kid.
This posts hits hard.
My sister and I were molested as young kids. We are close now and it was more traumatizing for her than it was for me and we have both mostly worked through it. But this kind of off-the-cuff theorizing about mental health by randos and pop-psychology nonsense is why I’ve made some major decisions in my life.
One of these pop-psychology “truths” you hear a lot is that child molesters where themselves molested as children. I mean, maybe it is true for some or even many but it doesn’t make total sense if you think about it. It had to start somewhere where their was an adult who never experienced it as a child and then did it. So it’s not necessarily true.
For this reason though I have extreme anxiety about this. I have never thought inappropriately about a child but that doesn’t matter. What if it is true? What if one day it suddenly clicks in me? And this deep seeded fear implanted in me by society altered my life. Maybe in another life I’d be a father. Not in this one. I was sterilized by choice. I married an older woman and she doesn’t/didn’t want kids. We are both past childbearing age anyways at this point. As much as my abuser stole this prospect from me so did this nasty little idea that because I am a victim I’m just one baby-sitting evening away from becoming a predator and I have never been able to shake it. Never will. There will never be a moment in my life where I can be comfortable being alone with a kid.