I’ve always been a bit odd, especially when I was a younger girl in grades 3-5. I loved anime, dinosaurs, Pokémon, catching frogs, and especially drawing, which I still immensely enjoy doing. This meant I didn’t have any girls for friends until 5th grade, because apparently I wasn’t allowed to like dinosaurs AND play with my own gender, who did crafts and played with Barbies, mostly. Thankfully, my family is very liberal and understanding and encouraged whatever it was I was interested in, especially my dad. Because of my so-called ‘boy’ interests, I often spent a lot of time playing with my male cousin, who is about 6 months older than me. We’d do stupid stuff like jump off of his bunk bed onto a pile of pillows, run around the house in socks to see who would slip and fall first, etc. Around maybe age 8 or 9, something… happened. I can’t recall the exact occasion, but he started telling me things about his body, then asking things about mine, which I still believe was just confusion and curiosity of developing. This is hard to confess, but his questions turned more into light demands, like if I’d show him my breasts or pull down my panties. I had no idea what was really happening, but him being 9 and knowing he could get me to do pretty much anything meant he was getting sexist ideas from somewhere. I don’t know precisely when it became definite incest. I performed oral sex for him, but I’m thankful that when I complained of it feeling gross, he didn’t ask for it again. We sometimes made out, and still, I saw it as just showing our familial love in a different way. I think he knew it was wrong. As we grew older, our physical contact lessened, and eventually stopped. After turning 11, we never spoke about it. Ever. Now I’m still trying to figure out if it was sexual assault or baiting, but I agreed to everything before doing it, so I’m not sure. I’m also worried he may be in another incestuous relationship with his older brother; they often sleep in the same bed when coming home from college, make lewd comments complimenting each other, and my older cousin will joke that he doesn’t need a girlfriend when he’s got his brother. I’d talk about it with them, but I don’t want it to lead to revealing what I did with my younger cousin. Still trying to figure his advances out.
