An Admission

When I was young, someone crossed a sexual boundary with me. It happened once, and I have spent years minimizing it because other people experienced worse. I still do not know exactly what language I want to use for it, but it happened, it affected me, and I am trying to become comfortable acknowledging it.

The event may seem relatively limited compared with what many others have endured, but the confusion it created in me has lasted a lifetime.

I refuse to let that lifetime be darkened by it. I choose to look toward the light—not by denying what was bad, but by remembering the better experiences, the people who loved me, and the good things that happened too.

I can also recognize that the person who crossed that boundary had problems of their own. That does not excuse what happened. It helps me understand that the event was not proof of something wrong with me. It emerged from something unresolved within that person—and those wounds can travel from one person to another, generation after generation, unless someone recognizes the pattern and tries to interrupt it.

I also have to acknowledge that I have hurt people through my own behavior. There is one person in particular who was already in a vulnerable position, and I misused the position I held in their life. I told myself I was helping, and perhaps some of my intentions were good. But I ultimately became more concerned with my own needs, and I may have made that person’s situation more damaging than I ever understood. Good intentions do not erase harmful effects. I will carry the knowledge of that, take responsibility for it, and try to learn from it.

One event in my childhood contributed to a string of later experiences, but my reactions became the recurring thread: my misinterpretations, my inability to express what had happened, my fear that other people would not understand, and my worry that they would somehow blame me.

I was not responsible for the boundary someone crossed. I was not at fault for developing responses I did not yet understand. But now that I can begin to see those patterns, I am responsible for what I do with them.

I refuse to define myself only as either a victim or a person who has caused harm. I am a human being shaped by what happened to me and accountable for what I have done.

I am here to learn. I am here to grow. I am here to become the best person I can while honestly recognizing that I have faults—and that neither my wounds nor my faults have to be the final definition of me.