A couple days ago, while browsing upon social media, I stumbled upon three posts of victims exposing the predators who groomed them as children, who all happened to be popular internet artists. My thought should of been “glad those creeps got exposed!” But me, no, I can’t think like that. I can’t think like a normal decent human being, not with my lifelong moral OCD that I barely understand and was never given coping strategies for. No, whenever I read something like this, I always think either “how unfair to the victims that I got to avoid the pain they couldn’t” or “what if I’ve committed the same abusive act without knowing?”
I try to tell myself that something as heinous as grooming is not something one can do unknowingly or accidentally. It’s an act that one has to be conscious of in order to do, right? It’s done with intent. You can’t just accidentally groom someone, that’s why predators who get caught saying “oops, I’m sorry, I’ll do better next time!” are so revoltingly pathetic!! But that logic isn’t enough for my OCD. It’ll say “maybe you did and just convienently forgot?”. If I argue with that, try to point out how unlikely it’d be for someone to develop amneisa for just that action, and that if even if I did have amneisa it’d make no sense for me to suddenly go against my morals and become evil, it’ll just respond with “why are you being so defensive?” I’ll obsessively think about past interactions I’ve had with people and fearfully wonder how many red flags I committed.
As for the other thought…Ever since I was a kid, I’ve operated under the belief that if I can’t rid someone of their suffering then I need to suffer with them. When adults would say “starving kids in other countries would love to have that food”, I’d think “I should starve with them”. I have yet to shed this thought process…When I see someone talk about how they were groomed, I can’t help but think how unfair it is to them that I get to experience a life without that trauma, a life they’ll never experience…I think that I should of been the one who got groomed, not them. I think I deserve abuse. I think the world is divided into abusers and abused, and that if I’m not as abused as possible I’ll be an abuser. It gets especially bad when it involves something that brought me joy instead of pain. Media I loved as a kid and still love as an adult being what led other kids into the hands of predators who used said media as bait. Websites I have fond memories of browsing as a kid being the sites they were groomed on. How dare I gain joy from the things that caused them pain! I make myself sick…And I have suffered. A neglectful and emotionally abusive father, a super religious aunt who instilled the fear of hell in me as a child, strict teachers, cruel bullies, abusive neighbors, a mother who I love very much but can’t deny that her PTSD has led her to harshly lash out at me my whole life…All led to some trauma that I’ll probably never recover from. Probably all responsible for my OCD too. And I’ve seen some truly disturbing stuff online as a kid that no kid (honestly no adult either) should have to see, which has traumatized me, gave me a phobia, and irreversibly altered the way I see myself and my body…But I don’t know. I feel like I’m whining. I was never beat, I was never starved, I was never groomed. Most of my trauma was my own fault anyways. If I just did what my dad expected from instead of dissapointing him, if I just didn’t scroll to page 11 of Bing Images like an idiot, maybe I wouldn’t be traumatized now…What they went through is so much worse than what I went through. And they didn’t have a choice