She was a year younger than me

(Warning for sexual assault and COCSA, self blame)

Hi everyone, I wanted to share my story. It’s been a journey of healing and I’ve only recently unblocked these memories. I’m almost 21 now.

I was six years old when I was in this situation, the girl who did this to me was five. I feel like because she was younger its not a cause for concern. Most stories are of people getting taken advantage of by someone older, but I should have known better if I was the older one. For the record, I don’t blame this girl because of how young she was and I suspect she was being abused herself.

I also don’t know if this counts as assault because I wasn’t directly touched. I was basically threatened into touching myself in front of her multiple times (something she had done to other girls before) otherwise she would stab my vagina with a very sharp pencil. Now, that never happened, but the threat was always there. My mother found out around the second or third time and stopped us from hanging out pretty quickly after that. This traumatized me I think, and on top of this I was further victim to COCSA at ages twelve and thirteen by groping on my behind and then groping my breast in front of a group of boys to humiliate me. I think these experiences further served to instill fear and trauma in me.

And again, both times the assaulters were up to a year younger than me. I feel really upset about it all for not only the obvious reasons, but also because them being younger makes me feel so pathetic. Like I was the adult in that situation and should have acted better or avoided it. Or that I can’t be upset because it wasn’t as bad as most other stories. I’d love some reassurance please.