this is a post about @VentusVoices on twitter/@venrva on instagram and how he groomed me. i'm not gonna bargain with myself and pull the whole "oh, it happened however many years ago, it doesn't matter anymore" because that would be discrediting my own experience with him and the experiences of my friend who i will not name because that is her story to tell and not mine. i will scream about this to the high heavens until i do not need to anymore.
i do not have receipts/screenshots for this because this was a purely IRL interaction.
we met at an anime club put on by our local public library. i was right about to turn 12 and he was around 18 or 19. i made it painfully obvious, in typical 12 year old fashion, that i had a childish crush on him. operative word in that sentence being "childish"; i didn't know any better.
the problem arose when he started playing into it. he confessed that he felt the same way about me and said, and i quote, "senpai notices you." how very painfully 2013 of him. he would hold my hand, hug me, kiss me on the cheek, all that cheesy ****. i want to note that we never went further than that, but it stands to reason that this was a 19 year old being all sweet on a 12 year old.
this went on for years, and the only reason it went on that long is because there would be large swaths of time where he just wouldn't show up to the club meetings. they were once a month, and every time i would psych myself up to see him just for him to not be there. i would only be held over by the few months out of the year he'd be able to make it. it was maddening. i'm not going to make the excuse of "oh he was busy, life is busy sometimes" because that would be cutting the man that groomed me even an inch of slack which i am not about to do.
every time i would see him at a convention i would break down crying because i was just so happy to see him. i would make a fool of myself in front of everyone every time because i was overjoyed that nothing bad had happened to him during the time he was gone. i lost friends, lost sleep, lost mental space for kid things because it was taken up by him.
put yourself in my shoes for a moment before you start typing "this sounds like a you problem, you were just obsessed with him." this guy was the only boy who had ever shown genuine interest in me. i'm not conventionally attractive in real life by any means and hadn't yet learned how to mask my autism, so i was often the target of bullying by a lot of my peers. it was predominantly in the form of asking me out as a joke, being nice to me as a joke, treating me like a celebrity as a joke, calling themselves my friend as a joke. that coupled with this experience made it so that even now, in my adult life, i struggle to be able to tell when people are being genuine with me when they even so much as compliment me on something. i am now in a committed long-term relationship and even still i find it hard to really wrap my mind around the fact that they like me for _me_ and not as a joke. so to finally find someone who seemed genuine in their adoration of me was like a dream come true.
the last time i saw him in person was pop con 2016 when he told me he'd be moving out to cali. i now look back on this interaction and know why i didn't cry that time. by then i knew what was going on, but i feigned sadness because it was the polite thing to do. good fucking riddance to him.
the worst part? my mom fucking endorsed this. i had come out as bi at the start of 6th grade, so about a month before i met him. when i cried to her about missing him, she comforted me and said "the first one is always the hardest." when i cried to her about my actual girlfriend breaking up with me in 8th grade, she tried to spin it as me not knowing what the difference between friendship and love was. let that sink in: she was so fucking homophobic that she would rather see me in the arms of a man 6-7 years older than me when i was 12 than in the arms of another girl my age (at the time i obviously still identified as a girl).
so yeah, that's basically the skinny on that. i don't care that he never touched me inappropriately. i don't care that it's been six years. i don't care that we're both different people now. i don't care about any of that because his effects on me echoed throughout the years to this day. i went through many a shitty relationship afterwards because i didn't know any different, one of which got me sexually exploited by someone who ended up going to jail for it.
i don't want him to go to jail, though. i want to keep him at the level of medocrity and obscurity that i have come to call home. i want to ensure he never achieves stardom just as i won't. i want all of his big dreams and aspirations of becoming a voice actor to crumble just as mine have. i want to usher new people out of his life before they enter it as much as i can so that they are not hurt like i was, especially if they are minors.
i've brought attention to this **** a couple times on my tiktok, but since i only have like 5k followers on there and have been on it since the musical.ly days, that ****'s not gonna get any higher anytime soon, so only a few dozen people saw it. apparently, though, it was enough to warrant his instagram going private, so that's something.
hopefully my bitter ramblings will fall on ears willing to hear them. keep your contrarionistic takes out of the comments because it took a lot for me to open up about this; if you wouldn't want it said about your story, then don't say it about mine.
this is a post about @VentusVoices on twitter/@venrva on instagram and how he groomed me. i'm not gonna bargain with myself and pull the whole "oh, it happened however many years ago, it doesn't matter anymore" because that would be discrediting my own experience with him and the experiences of my friend who i will not name because that is her story to tell and not mine. i will scream about this to the high heavens until i do not need to anymore.
i do not have receipts/screenshots for this because this was a purely IRL interaction.
we met at an anime club put on by our local public library. i was right about to turn 12 and he was around 18 or 19. i made it painfully obvious, in typical 12 year old fashion, that i had a childish crush on him. operative word in that sentence being "childish"; i didn't know any better.
the problem arose when he started playing into it. he confessed that he felt the same way about me and said, and i quote, "senpai notices you." how very painfully 2013 of him. he would hold my hand, hug me, kiss me on the cheek, all that cheesy shit. i want to note that we never went further than that, but it stands to reason that this was a 19 year old being all sweet on a 12 year old.
this went on for years, and the only reason it went on that long is because there would be large swaths of time where he just wouldn't show up to the club meetings. they were once a month, and every time i would psych myself up to see him just for him to not be there. i would only be held over by the few months out of the year he'd be able to make it. it was maddening. i'm not going to make the excuse of "oh he was busy, life is busy sometimes" because that would be cutting the man that groomed me even an inch of slack which i am not about to do.
every time i would see him at a convention i would break down crying because i was just so happy to see him. i would make a fool of myself in front of everyone every time because i was overjoyed that nothing bad had happened to him during the time he was gone. i lost friends, lost sleep, lost mental space for kid things because it was taken up by him.
put yourself in my shoes for a moment before you start typing "this sounds like a you problem, you were just obsessed with him." this guy was the only boy who had ever shown genuine interest in me. i'm not conventionally attractive in real life by any means and hadn't yet learned how to mask my autism, so i was often the target of bullying by a lot of my peers. it was predominantly in the form of asking me out as a joke, being nice to me as a joke, treating me like a celebrity as a joke, calling themselves my friend as a joke. that coupled with this experience made it so that even now, in my adult life, i struggle to be able to tell when people are being genuine with me when they even so much as compliment me on something. i am now in a committed long-term relationship and even still i find it hard to really wrap my mind around the fact that they like me for _me_ and not as a joke. so to finally find someone who seemed genuine in their adoration of me was like a dream come true.
the last time i saw him in person was pop con 2016 when he told me he'd be moving out to cali. i now look back on this interaction and know why i didn't cry that time. by then i knew what was going on, but i feigned sadness because it was the polite thing to do. good fucking riddance to him.
the worst part? my mom fucking endorsed this. i had come out as bi at the start of 6th grade, so about a month before i met him. when i cried to her about missing him, she comforted me and said "the first one is always the hardest." when i cried to her about my actual girlfriend breaking up with me in 8th grade, she tried to spin it as me not knowing what the difference between friendship and love was. let that sink in: she was so fucking homophobic that she would rather see me in the arms of a man 6-7 years older than me when i was 12 than in the arms of another girl my age (at the time i obviously still identified as a girl).
so yeah, that's basically the skinny on that. i don't care that he never touched me inappropriately. i don't care that it's been six years. i don't care that we're both different people now. i don't care about any of that because his effects on me echoed throughout the years to this day. i went through many a shitty relationship afterwards because i didn't know any different, one of which got me sexually exploited by someone who ended up going to jail for it.
i don't want him to go to jail, though. i want to keep him at the level of medocrity and obscurity that i have come to call home. i want to ensure he never achieves stardom just as i won't. i want all of his big dreams and aspirations of becoming a voice actor to crumble just as mine have. i want to usher new people out of his life before they enter it as much as i can so that they are not hurt like i was, especially if they are minors.
i've brought attention to this shit a couple times on my tiktok, but since i only have like 5k followers on there and have been on it since the musical.ly days, that shit's not gonna get any higher anytime soon, so only a few dozen people saw it. apparently, though, it was enough to warrant his instagram going private, so that's something.
hopefully my bitter ramblings will fall on ears willing to hear them. keep your contrarionistic takes out of the comments because it took a lot for me to open up about this; if you wouldn't want it said about your story, then don't say it about mine.
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