I’m not sure about anything anymore

I’ve got personal experience with this, and I’ve had many friends who struggle with the same thing.
I personally was molested by numerous people over a course of a few years when I was very young.
Sadly, I think that a lot of it is that the generations that came before us were dealing with pedophilia that occured in their childhoods. And our generation, rather than promulgate that suffering choose to turn our pain inward. It’s more common than people care to admit. But it’s very brave of you to share your story.

I think that the best thing to acknowledge is that that person had a genuine mental illness. Targeting children is usually a symptom of that person trying to re-experience their own sexual abuse to learn to deal with those feelings. Luckily we can be more intelligent than those people and learn that we don’t have to do that. We can heal once we can forgive which is important.

But also, let’s not let it change our perspective of love. Sexual intimacy is a beautiful and neccessary part of human life. It’s how two people who are in love express intimate feelings. No child should have to experience that, especially with someone who’s mentally ill. It’s not fair to us. But we can recover and learn to see sex in a healthy way. It usually takes a lot of therapy and a lot of solid friendships. But it’s possible. Don’t give up on your life just yet. Your journey to recovery is still maturing with your understanding. Eventually you’ll be more wise, understanding, and compassionate than others who haven’t experienced what you have.

It’s not your fault that it happened. Find a friend who can support you. When it starts to affect your self esteem or body image let this friend know exactly why. And if you feel like, “Oh, I can’t open up to someone like that. I have that problem every day.” that’s not a good way to think about it. You don’t have to call them every thirty minutes about how it’s a problem.

Just let them know, “Hey, I’ve been having this problem and usually it lasts about five to seven days. So if you could just check on me, and make sure I’m doing okay every once in awhile until then, that would help a ton.” And you only have to do that every once in a while before they understand that it’s an ongoing struggle that you’re working on and they’ll get the message to be more involved. But it’s a process. Don’t expect everything to fall into place immediately. Sometimes it does, but in my experience it doesn’t usually.

From someone who’s been there, we can do this. History is history, and only we can navigate the future of our lives.