This is a letter I wrote to the person I consideed my ‘boyfriend’ aged 12-13. I will never have the courage to send this personally.
Hi!
I don’t want to have a conversation with you. I don’t want a response nor your thoughts on the matter.
I would like to let you know that I think back to the time I knew you often, despite being 28 now. It makes me feel sick and desperately sad. I want you to know that I have a deep rooted aversion to going to the south west where I grew up because of my early adolescence. On the only occasion I could bring myself to visit Devon/Cornwall when I was 20 I arrived in Plymouth and felt sick with anxiety.
Why did you and your friends feel it was OK to hang out with children? I look back at pictures of myself at that age and I was a child who had not even reached 5 feet tall. Did you know I hadn’t even started puberty yet? We had absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. Your music taste was awful. You broke things off with me just before you turned 16 because you would have been classed as a sex offender in the eyes of the law. I was alienated by the girls in my class and as a result found it difficult thereafter to make friends or trust people. My virginity was taken painfully and forcefully by you in a small, secluded cave on the Plymouth seafront. I hadn’t started my period yet but my young and naive self went to the sexual health clinic alone in floods of tears explaining my situation to a rather severe middle aged woman who explained that it was impossible for me to get pregnant.
You undoubtedly ruined my adolescence and, as such, had a profoundly negative effect on my early adulthood too. I will never have fond memories of coming of age because of you.
There’s absolutely nothing you can do to make it better. Perhaps if you ever have children of your own you can protect your daughter or teach your son not to prey on pre-pubescent teenagers like you did. Just a thought.