i hate when i Remember™

⋆ ₘₐᵣ𝒸ₕ ₈ ₂₀₂₅

This entry contains discussion of child abuse.

i've been forced to look back at my experience of being groomed online as a kid and how it impacts my self esteem as an adult. there's always these new documents and seminars for parents about what parents should be doing about their kids online. i don't really know how i feel about parental restriction as an adult. on one hand i really like the freedom i had because i feel like there's a lot about the world i wouldn't know without the internet. i've seen a lot of great art, and i think if i didn't grow up on the internet i would have been limited to my local avenues of education which growing up in the bronx are immediately not the best. then i come back around to a memory where i was crying over an adult man i called my "big brother" threatening to kill himself.i really liked him. i felt grown up even if i thought it was unrequited. but now i look back and realize there was a possession there, and there were sophisticated levels of a power play. the images he'd sent of his open wounds and his narcissistic rants linger in my mind

there's a lot of talk about the prevention of these kind of situations but no resources to help us young adults who have already gone through it. and i feel no modern psychology is apt at doing so. my self esteem is corrupted and i live in this constant unrest that makes codependency alluring. just replicating a trapped feeling. there's this underlying feeling that something or someone is always after me. and as someone who looks like a woman this is not untrue and when looking back, i think the issue was more so if i had a nurturing home growing up i wouldn't have felt the need to seek a savior online, which i rarely hear about these parenting resources admitting to.