(Trigger warning: Sexual assault, grooming)

I was 16-years-old when a professional child sexual assault advocate explained to me that my whole childhood was a lie.

She told me that the things I had explained to her were what is called "grooming," which meant that over the course of my whole life, I was being set up to accept the coming sexual assault.

Apparently, kids don't go through what I did, and thank God for that because what I endured was all kinds of fucked up. I reported it, but nothing happened (shocking, right?). It's been over four years now and I still can't accept or get over what happened to me and it's because the people around me don't acknowledge that it did.

At the beginning, the person I told was in denial. I went to holiday gatherings, then came home and cried for hours every day. But then a time came where I couldn't function, and I told a therapist who reported it. I thought my life would get better, but boy was I wrong.

The people around me refused to even acknowledge it. They bring my abusers up in conversation, go visit them for dinner (more than they visit me), blocked me on Facebook, or haven't spoken to me. My abusers truly believe they did nothing wrong.

Here we go again with my feelings not mattering to anybody, but what happened isn't okay or normal. It isn't okay to ignore what happened to me, act like everything is fine, and move on. Because it invalidates everything that happened to me, so how can I forgive myself when the people who are supposed to support me do the exact opposite? I can't.

It wasn't normal and they don't even see that, nor are they forced to realize it.

While it wasn't traumatizing for them, I constantly analyze every single move I make. I would never want to make someone comfortable, period, let alone make them feel how you made me feel. My fiance can barely touch me in public, and I go through waves of intense physical affection and none at all.

I honestly cannot move on and I find myself asking if they ever even loved me. Because they were supposed to, but how do you do that to someone you love?

But no matter how I feel, a majority of the people I'm stuck with support them. They "don't remember" or "don't think anything was wrong". I'm just "trying to fuck up the family" and "air out private family business".

There are periods where I think I can move on, but then their names come up in conversation like it's business as usual. But it isn't business as usual for me, and I seriously wonder how many more years and years of therapy I'll need to heal from not only the assault but the years of trauma the people around me are putting me through by ignoring that it happened.