My Uncle was My First Kiss
It took her a decade of struggles with insecurity and anxiety, blaming herself for what happened between her and her uncle, before she finally felt worthy of love again.
“I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you, okay?”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I love that book. But I’m not here to talk about my love for fiction. I want to talk about my first kiss.
But before I start, let me introduce myself. I’m a 27 year-old woman. I have a loving family, a wonderful boyfriend, and an awesome job. My friends find me friendly and sociable, my better friends see me as this twisted-but-funny woman, who tends to make dark jokes and not afraid of terrible stories.
Ok, now let’s move on. Where was I? Right, my first kiss.
I never had a proper first kiss. You know, the kind that you tell everyone over and over again, because of how beautiful the experience is. Nope. My uncle (my aunt’s ex husband now) was my first kiss, and my first for a lot of other sexual things.
You might wonder how it all started. Let me give you a brief description. It all started when I was 11. I remember one day, when me and my family visited his house, he told me to come with him because he wanted to show me something “I would like.” Then he took me to his room, where he kissed me on the mouth and slipped his tongue.
I didn’t know what to feel at the time, let alone what to do.
Then he showed me a movie that I actually liked, and asked my siblings and cousins to join us. As soon as they came bursting in, I got distracted.
It happened again and again, every time we visited his house. I even remembered kissing him first, because I saw it in a movie and wondered what it’s like to do it. And at that time, it seemed like the perfect thing to do.
Nobody knew what happened.
You might wonder what kind of adult I ended up as. I grew up to be an insecure, anxious, and worried woman. I didn’t grow up to become someone who wanted to do it to other children. I know it was wrong. And the most important thing: there is no way I would want that to ever happen to others.
Up until now, I blamed myself. Because, instead of focusing on what he did, I focused on the fact that I once started it. That I once kissed him first. And it’s always easier to blame myself instead of other people. Especially someone I didn’t know how to blame. Because he divorced my aunt a few years later, and disappeared.
After spending almost 10 years blaming myself, I came across an article about adult survivors of child abuse. And how there are other people out there like me, with issues, but they managed to survive and moved on with their lives.
I learned that when it comes to survivors of child abuse, one of the biggest issues is to feel worthy of love. When we started to realize how wrong it was, the first usual reaction would be to feel deserving. Because we’re a part of a wrong incident. And we didn’t do anything back then.
My friends, it’s not our fault. We didn’t know any better.
I wish I could tell you who I am. But I’m protecting my parents’ feelings, because if they had found out, they would never feel whole again. They would blame themselves, or hunt that man down. I could also picture them feeling like a bunch of failures, and I love them too much to let that happen. Either way, it won’t help. Talking to someone I trust is me helping myself. Or to constantly remind myself that it’s not my fault, is another way. Maybe going to the shrink would also help.
So, here I am. Writing anonymously. Letting you know you’re not alone. We are not.
Thallula M. works at a non-profit organization and would consider herself a workaholic/sleepoholic. She reads fiction, obituaries, and articles related to psychology and relationship. She is an outgoing introvert who tends to fool people by seeming sociable, but deep down, she is just a lazy cat who hates being around people. Thallula is definitely not her real name.
