Hi all,

TLDR: eight years ago, at the age of 16, I was taken advantage of and possibly sexually assaulted. How do I ‘forgive and let go’, given I can’t do anything about it now?

I’ve recently been taking an online course as I’m about to take up a volunteering position supporting young people, and I’ve come to a module on consent. This has been surprisingly perturbing for me. Eight years ago, when I was 16, I had one crazy, drunken month going out with a 19-year-old and hanging out with his friends. Generally, I was very much a studious goody-two-shoes, and this was VERY out of character for me. This older group would get me extremely drunk, and then would tell me the next morning, ‘Oh no, you weren’t really drunk’ in order to persuade me to drink more the next time.

Two weeks into our relationship, the new ‘boyfriend’ started pressuring me to have sex. I was completely oblivious at the time. He’d tell me I was ‘boring’ and a ‘nun’, and I had no idea what he meant by that (that is how innocent/naive I was). But one morning, after a very drunken night, I woke up with all the buttons of my shirt undone. I had no idea what had happened. I don’t think we had sex but I can’t be 100% certain. In any case, whatever happened was clearly non-consensual, as I’d consistently made it clear that I found anything beyond kissing very uncomfortable.

After another two weeks, the boyfriend broke it off (by text – super classy). I sent him a long message saying how disgusted I was by his behaviour (mostly concerning the fact he’d created an online female alter-ego who pretended to befriend me and then bullied me throughout the month, telling me I wasn’t ‘good enough’ and threatening me), and he never replied. And that was it.

For eight years, I have been growing increasingly bitter about the whole thing (as well as resentful that none of the adults around me at the time helped or guided me). I feel like I never had any closure, and when I started to realise the sexual nature of his behaviour, I only grew more disturbed. Now I don’t know what to do. Maybe just venting on here is enough. But he’s abused other girls too and the thought of him ‘getting away with it’ is painful. Obviously, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing now. He may have changed completely. But I still can’t get these resentful thoughts out of my head, and have even had ideas of reporting him, even though I know there’s zero evidence of any wrongdoing now, so it would probably be pointless. Especially considering that, VERY annoyingly, shortly after it ended, I deleted all of the Facebook messages from him and his online alter-ego because I was so upset, not realising at the time that I was deleting evidence!

Sigh. I guess my real issue is putting all this stuff behind me. I know you’re supposed to forgive and let go, but I don’t know how to do that after what he put me through. And obviously, people do so much worse, and when I think about that, I feel pathetic, especially as it’s been eight years and I really should be ‘over it’ by now! Nonetheless, I can’t help how I feel.