Child’s Play … Or Is It Really?

This post was set to be published in the fall of 2021, but for some reason I didn’t release it. At the time I wrote this post, I was completing a series of posts related to the trauma I suffered from a sexual assault that occurred against me when I was nine and the anger and other emotions that resulted from the occurrence.

For whatever reason, I simply didn’t post this and decided that it somehow didn’t fit into that series. However, there was one post in which I did address the issues of the sister of the cousins involved in this post and background story to how those cousins were involved in my anger issues at the time. Needless to say, I decided to post it now.

***Trigger Warning: This post deals with child precociousness as it pertains to sexual abuse and sexual situations.

Child’s play? … or is it really?

As a child, I wasn’t allowed to play too often with the children in my neighborhood. My father, in particular, would select my friends. He’d literally get to know their parents, and if he deemed the parents not to be of good character, then I couldn’t play with their children. His attitude about this branded my family with the adage that “they think they are better than everybody else”, but looking back, I can see how this was just a way of a parent protecting his children. Now, I’d say it’s a must for parents to be just this protective, if not more so.

From time to time, my dad would allow me to play with two sisters because he deemed them to have a good upbringing and parents who felt the same way about protecting their own children, but other than those two sisters, I was not allowed to even play with my cousins who lived next door unless their grandmother or my mother was present. As a matter of fact, it didn’t take me long to realize the reason for this.

On the other hand, my mother didn’t really care about who my friends were, and when she was not working and was home with my siblings and me, she’d allow us to play with any of the neighborhood children who’d come to visit us. Frankly, she cared more about what others thought of our family, and if people had a negative perception of us, then she’d work hard to change that perception. So, even if she wouldn’t let my siblings and me leave the yard, she’d let anyone from the neighborhood come play with us as long as they were gone by the time my dad came home from work.

Anyway, my mother had no idea what forms of play that occurred with a lot of these children. She wasn’t very observant. The truth of the matter is that the child’s play wasn’t all that innocent. The play involved a lot of sexual situations that left me uncomfortable and completely unsure of my place in the world (if that even makes sense). The play was far too graphic for my comprehension, and it was a major reason I began seeking outside friendships less often as opposed spending most of my time alone.

The sexual games that some of the neighborhood children played involved a lot of adult situations and simulations of sex – perhaps what they’d seen their parents do or stuff on television. Many of these children had access to pornographic magazines and seemed to always having hiding places outside and throughout the neighborhood. I could only surmise that these magazines were where most of the children learned this type of “play”, but wherever they learned it from, they seemed to know a lot about it.

I was always the odd person out. I genuinely didn’t like these games but often felt forced to comply so as not to be out of place. Yet, everyone knew that I was dumb when it came to these games. I was far more sheltered than the rest of them. Although I wasn’t the traditional girl who loved playing with dolls and preferred climbing trees, reading books, exploring nature, and doing gymnastic stunts, I didn’t have a lot of sense when it came to their games of play.

Two of my male cousins loved playing these sexual games with a neighborhood girl from up the street. She was a girl my father absolutely did not want me to befriend or have any contact. Perhaps it was because she had been so exposed to the world of adult sexual situations that he didn’t want my innocence tainted; surely someone had tainted hers. She was only a year younger than me at my 7 years of life, and the things she knew about sex was mind-blowing to someone like me who knew absolutely nothing. In fact, I recall being forbidden to play with her since I was 5 years old!

Needless to say, when my mother allowed me to play with children in the neighborhood, my male cousins and the forbidden girl were the ones that I’d be around since my cousins lived with their grandmother right next door to our family. These “friends” were always in close proximity. So I think this might have put my mother at ease since they’d easily disappear before my dad returned home from work. I also believe the guess at that time was that I’d be safe since I was with relatives, but that was such a far stretch from the truth. I was never more safe with relatives than I would have been if my family had thrown me to a pack of wolves.

As a child, I was a bit of a tomboy. So my go-to was to climb trees, play games of chase, or play imaginary war games on the railroad tracks. It didn’t take long for my male cousins to vibe with me because I was active like them. Yet, I was also a loner. I’d much rather spend time alone than actually involve myself with other people. In particular, I had actually developed a reputation with children my dad did allow me to play with for being a party-pooper because I would immediately shut down when I was tired of interacting with others and go off to myself and sit in a corner to read a magazine or book.

Specifically, whenever I tired of interactions with my cousins, it was always my nature to disappear and hide by climbing to the highest point of my favorite tree. Looking back, I wish I could have avoided those childhood games of play that my cousins and other neighborhood kids made up. I would have been so much better off. I never expected my childhood to turn out that way, and I often ponder over how those same games affected the children who played them too.

When the girl from up the street came to play with me, the games she’d make up turned a little bit more uncomfortable for me because she liked to play “family” or “mamas and papas”. If my male cousins weren’t around, she’d always make me the “papa” and then want me to do illicit things that made me feel uncomfortable. When I realized this was her normal form of play, I actually hated when she came around because I did not like her games.

This girl’s games were based on elements of body exploration. I was a late seven or an early eight at the time I was initiated into her games, and although these may be perceived as childhood exploration games, I did not like them at all. I was dreadfully uncomfortable. I also felt dirty. Yet, at the same time, I felt like was getting some type of forbidden education that I knew I’d never receive from my parents.

I was learning about my body in a way that made my body seem surreal in its functioning, and this surrealness led me into my own forms of exploration in an effort to understand my body’s functioning. Not long after the sexual assault attack against me, I came upon a book my aunt had from nursing school, and she later gifted it to me because I read it so much. Nevertheless, I always found a way to get myself out of this girl’s adult-like games by either faking sick or claiming that I needed to go into the house. I had a knowing instinct that something wasn’t quite right about these games.

Plus, I was an introverted and consciously aware child. If I felt uncomfortable about something, my own guilt over what I perceived as wrong doing would overtake me, and I would shun it and run from it. In retrospect, this particular form childhood exploration is now for me a visual red flag that there were issues that should have been looked into by adults responsible for us, particularly with the childhood friend, and a lot more monitoring should have taken place by adults when their children played together with other children.

Now, I know that my father was right to be so selective of my friends, but I don’t even think that neither he nor my mother realized what was going on with these types of games. I honestly believed that if they had a clue, they neither would have allowed me to play with even my cousins, but I know that parents don’t always catch everything or might not even reason that children of that age are that curious about the ideals of sex. Yet, this wasn’t what I would have called the good side of sex. Children should have had no parts of this.

It wasn’t until my male cousins expected more game participation from me than I was willing to give that my parents and other neighborhood parents become aware than something was wrong. More so, it became more of an awareness that I was scapegoated into believing that0 something was wrong with me. Needless to say, I eventually found ways to avoid playing with the girl and my cousins since I only saw them during the summer months. During the school year, they were not around as often, and when they were, my dad was always home, so playing with them was never an option, and I was more than happy about this because I didn’t like playing with them anyway.

However, after I’d return from my horrible summer with my aunt, I was noticeably different in psychological ways. I was also physically different. My body had developed in such a way that it was obvious I was growing into a young woman, but I had just turned 10! So, I was still very much a child, and I was a child who had experienced a horrific sexual assault. Yet, my cousins saw me and decided they wanted to “play” and and explore my changes. If I hadn’t experienced my own bouts with vigilante justice before leaving my aunt’s city, I’d definitely raise a cause against someone else taking charge of my body at this point.

When my cousins suggested “playing” with me, I could already discern their intentions, and I immediately declined them. Whenever I’d be outside in the yard alone, my cousins would attempt to cross over past the fence to coerce me into playing with them, but I would always decline. I didn’t want to talk to them. In fact, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I had become more of a recluse, and nobody knew just how much I was stewing wiht anger.

Eventually, my cousins grew tired of me turning them down to play, and what they perceived as my “changed attitude” towards them. They’d always say things like, “Who do you think you are? You think you’re better than us? You went to the city and came back different, and now you don’t want to play with your us anymore. [The girl up the street] would let us! You think you’re better than her too.” Yet, their attempts to gaslight me didn’t work. I wanted nothing to do with them, and little did they know I was a raging bull ready to attack.

I knew my cousins’ form of play, and their games hadn’t changed from before I’d gone away to the city with my aunt. I didn’t like their games then, and I surely wouldn’t like them in my dissociated state of mind. For some reason, the older cousin of the two, who was either 11 or 12, stepped over the fence into the yard and tried to forcefully touch my body, and I yelled a resounding “NO” and “STOP IT”, and when he demanded that he be able to touch me wherever he wanted to, I immediately saw “red” and kicked him so hard in his groin area that he doubled over and cried out in pain.

The younger brother was surprised and became so angry that he ran towards me, only to be met with a swift kick and punch. I remember them both looking at me with gleams of surprise in their eyes. It was that look of “how dare you do this to us” kind of look. My body kept a score and lashed out on my behalf. After they were both on the ground, I yelled at them, “Get out of my yard and don’t ever come back!” Afterwards, I knew that I was somewhat too angry for the circumstances for the event, but I wasn’t sorry. I had no remorse for defending myself from being touched at all. They got up like I had wounded their spirits more than their physical being, but I instantly saw that as a form of manipulation.

Both my cousins went home, but it wasn’t until their mother picked them up that they told her what had happened, and I was made to look like the violent one. They lied about everything! They never explained why I reacted towards them the way I did. They made it all out to be me being a mean bully when they just wanted to play with me. I can’t believe their mother brought their lie of a story. Surely, she had to know her sons!

Their mother called the house and spoke to my parents, and my father had me explain the situation. As ashamed as I’d felt about being touched, because it seemed to conjure up a trauma that I couldn’t readily face, I’d found a new courage to stand my ground about my body. I could only recoil and flinch in silence as a freeze response took over during the sexual assault that had happened to me, but somewhere inside of me there was resilience, and I wasn’t going to allow that type of violation to happen to me again without a fight.

So I told my dad exactly what my cousins did and how their games had originated from the past. He was not only mortified, he was angry and silent. I could see a look in his eyes that seemed to trail past those present circumstances. It appeared that he realized he was not as watchful as he’d thought. Yet, unlike what I expected, he wanted me to get on the phone and apologize for what I’d done. Supposedly, I should not have been violent.

Me: [angry beyond words] Why do I have to apologize?

My dad: You kicked your cousin and you hurt him badly. [Their mother] claims he might have to go to the doctor. You also hurt his brother.

Me: I don’t care! They deserved it. Are they going to apologize to me?

My dad: You shouldn’t have kicked him. You should have come and told us.

It was at that moment that I felt the same hollow feeling within the pit of my gut that I’d experienced when my aunt blamed me for the sexual assault that was perpetrated against me. She wasn’t there for me when I needed her. Instead she seemed to rally against me and support the attackers. According to her, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She even said I should have taken another route even though that current route was a route she’d always taken with me.

The disappointment I felt in that moment when my dad expected me to apologize to the mother and the cousins who violated me was so tangible that I had to hold myself together to keep from collapsing in a heap of tears. I didn’t feel sad. I felt the most fit of rage I’d ever felt. To me, it was incomprehensible to even feel sorry for defending myself. It felt brutally wrong for me to apologize when I was not the guilty party.

It was then that I realized that even my own parents weren’t going to support me or even protect my own body. I had come to a surreal realization that I was going to have to protect myself. It was just going to be me, myself, and I from that moment forward, and this was not even a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was just a realization of being a scapegoat. So I took the phone and did the only thing I knew and wanted to do.

Me: [talking into the phone to my cousin’s mother who expected an apology]: If [the older son] ever touches me again, I’ll kick him again, but the next time it’ll be a much harder kick! I’m not sorry and you and nobody else can make me feel sorry, especially when he’s not sorry for what he did to me.

My cousin’s mother: You’re a lying child and so disrespectful! Nothing good is going to become of you!

My father immediately jerked the phone away from me as if he were in shock by my response, but I could still hear my cousins’ mother yelling that I was basically a bad child … that my parents needed to do something. After my father hung up the phone from her, he threatened to spank me. So in a fit of rage, I turned around as if to wait to be hit. I folded my arms in direct defiance. Both he and my mother walked around to face me. The looks on their faces were of astonishment. My mother wanted to know what had gotten into me. My father looked a little proud and even satisfied, but at the same time, he was a bit concerned.

When my eyes locked with my dad’s eyes, I discerned that he knew I hadn’t been lying about what my cousins had done to me, but he had chosen to support them instead of me. In the days to come, I was forbidden to play with my cousins ever again. They were also not allowed to set foot on our property, and I was not allowed to set foot on their grandmother’s property. From that point on, I was branded with the scarlet letter upon my forehead as if I’d done wrong when I was simply defending myself.

It didn’t take long for this situation to spread like a wildfire of gossip. Before long, I was the child who no one should play with because something was wrong with me, but years later I’d come to realize that everyone involved didn’t want to address the destructive game of child’s play. They were silently dismal to not disturb a game that held young victims as hostages. It’s too bad that this was the end result, but I hope that it served as a cautionary tale for some parents that they needed to pay close attention to who their children kept around them as friends.

Needless to say, the mother of my cousins kept up a strong hatred of me, and she smeared my name all over town to anyone who’d listen. I was 10! I was 10 years old, and she was supposed to be a mature behaving adult, but she was instead behaving in a cruel and destructive manner towards a child. Her sons would later go on to be shielded from other troubles, but it wasn’t until her own daughter was sexually assaulted by a family friend that the mother eventually settled her smear campaign against me.

Instead of holding a grudge against the mother, I rallied in support of her daughter and forged a silent friendship with her. My body had kept its own score even if my mind couldn’t remember the sexual assault against me. Although my female cousin was several years older than me, she eventually grasped that I had an understanding of trauma and that I could identify with her in some way. She realized that this trauma had nothing to do with me being molested by her brothers and more to do with a trauma I never discussed with her.

Although the brothers remained distant towards me throughout the years and I was still branded with a scarlet letter of being the troubled and mentally unstable girl, I believe everyone knew the truth. I’d been scapegoated for the purpose of keeping a destructive child’s game a secret. That situation would never be mentioned again after the sister’s assault, but I would still think about it for years to come. Was it really child’s play or something else? I mean, when does childhood exploration become something else? That’s why I’m adamant that parents be careful who they have around their children, even if it’s other children.