A Childhood Experience Left Me Feeling Sexual Shame for Years

I was convinced I’d committed an unforgivable sin

When I was 7 years old, I went next door to play with my neighbor in her backyard. We were always in each other’s backyard, playing as much as possible. Lexie was 9, with a strong personality. Between us, she was the worldly and wise one. And she wasn’t afraid to remind me that she was the gal in charge.

Despite the fact that we’d argue here and there, I had a lot of fun with her. We were at each other’s houses constantly, and both of our parents were used to having an extra kid around.

We grew up together, doing everything kids do. Playing dress-up. Running races. Creating sidewalk chalk masterpieces. Going on backyard excursions and pretending we were exploring the jungle.

But this time, when I went to play with Lexie on a typical summer afternoon, the game she had in mind was anything but typical.

A traumatic encounter

Even at 34, the memory of what I experienced as a 7-year-old is vivid. I remember heading into my backyard, sliding through the small opening on the side of our chain-link fence, and being immediately transported into Lexie’s connecting yard.

She happened to be in her garage, its yellow door wide open.

The family used their detached two-car garage for yard equipment and toy storage. Lexie and I had set up two lawn chairs the day before so we could sit in the shade of the cool stone walls and do some art projects. I remember we would pull the wrappers off of old crayons and shave them down with a pair of scissors. Then we’d sprinkle the colorful shavings on an Elmer’s glue outline on paper. Voila — crayon shaving art worthy of an abstract museum.

But when Lexie saw me arrive that afternoon, she immediately put our artwork away and patted the lawn chair for me to sit next to her. It was an old lounger that reclined all the way back, so there was plenty of room for both of us.

“I know something different we can do today,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, nodding obediently. This was par for the course for Lexie, who normally decided what we did first. Then, when we tired of that activity, I’d get my chance to voice some of my ideas.

As Lexie began explaining the new game we were about to try, she got up and pressed the button to close the electric sliding door. The overhead light cast a pale glow on the darkened garage, and I immediately got the sense we were getting into something we weren’t supposed to be doing.

My stomach was in knots by the time the door closed and Lexie told me I had to lie down in the lounge chair. I didn’t get in trouble often, but still, the possibility of an authoritative figure catching us doing anything wrong filled me with dread, and this felt like something we had to hide.

I seem to have been born like that. A natural rule-follower with a built-in anxiety mechanism. I wanted so badly to tell her to open the door and let me out, but I just went along and did as she asked instead of listening to my gut.

To this day I’m still not sure why I just didn’t get up, open the door, and get out of there. Maybe because she was older, and I looked up to her as the more mature and experienced one. Maybe I trusted her to know what she was talking about. Maybe I worried that if I didn’t play what she wanted, she’d throw a fit and get mad at me. We’d had those fights before, and I hated them.

Maybe I was just too confused to understand that what Lexie wanted to do was inappropriate for kids our age.

She gave me all the instructions before we began. I would lie down, take off my shorts and underwear, and she would put her mouth on my private area for a while. Then we’d switch places, and I’d do the same with her.

I had no idea why we needed to play this game. I didn’t want to do it. It felt like an invasion of my privacy. It felt physically uncomfortable. And I was sure our parents wouldn’t approve.

But I did what I was told, and went home feeling more confused than ever. I brought with me an incredible weight on my shoulders — shame and guilt.

Lexie and I never played like that again, but I’d think about it a lot for years to come.

Repression and sexual shame

I didn’t learn what sex was until a few years after that experience, when I was in the fifth grade. I found a book while playing at a friend's house — an illustrated book meant for adults to read to their kids about how babies are made.

Sometime after that, I started learning about sex in the eyes of religion. I grew up Methodist, so there was never a lot of hellfire and brimstone in our sermons. We were a quiet, tight-lipped congregation. But we followed the basic biblical rules about sex. And if we didn’t, we shut up about it.

So, the pastor was never all that direct about what not to do, but the implications were there in the subtext. From what my young mind could gather, it seemed that if you weren’t married, God wanted you to keep yourself pure and be completely non-sexual. Sexual discovery for an unmarried girl like me was dirty, sinful, and wrong. Masturbation was wrong. Gay sex was wrong.

And even though my family never pushed any of this on me verbally, I was a good study. I went to Sunday school. I read the Bible. I just knew I was damned for all time because of this thing I’d agreed to do with Lexie.

Talk about a dramatic kid, right?

Somehow, my young mind could wrap itself around the complexities of sinful acts of lust, hell, and the moral importance of chastity and purity. But, I didn’t get that children often acted out sexually out of curiosity or as a way to process or mimic observed adult behavior, and it was nothing for either of us to feel shame about.

No one ever told me that.

Even after Lexie moved away, the guilt didn’t leave me. Around the time I hit puberty, I started studying how different Christian denominations interpreted certain passages on lust and sex. There were contradictions everywhere, and I became all the more confused, anxious, and guilty.

For years, as a developing young girl, I’d have flashbacks of what I did with Lexie and feel absolutely certain I’d burn in hell for it. I eventually started praying about it, asking God for forgiveness nearly every day, to the point that it became an obsessive-compulsive habit.

The feeling that I’d committed some horrible, unforgivable sin ate me up inside — but I never told a single soul. I confessed it to God in my head often but otherwise kept my emotional turmoil locked up inside.

Eventually, after I began working with a therapist to manage the generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis I received when I was 12, I was able to forgive myself and let what I’d done with Lexie go. I never actually told the therapist about it — I was still so ashamed, and that felt like too dark of a hole to climb down with her — but she left me with the tools I needed to coach myself through some of my most difficult emotions.

Soon, the sudden flashes of that day in the garage stopped. The sudden panicked episodes of guilt and fear left me.

It wasn’t until later, when I became more psychologically mature and sexually aware in my teenage years, that I truly understood there was absolutely nothing to forgive, for either me or Lexie.

Advice for parents

I know I’m not the only one who has experienced something like this with a childhood playmate. The worst part about it, for me, was feeling like I couldn’t tell anyone.

Children are super curious. They’re curious about their own bodies, and also the bodies of everyone around them. Acting out on this natural curiosity (or “playing doctor” by observing each other’s private parts) is normal for kids of every gender, and it’s mostly harmless.

But when does acting out become problematic? What crosses the line between harmless and harmful? It depends on the type of behavior, and whether or not any child involved experiences physical or emotional trauma.

While my parents took incredibly good care of me and my sister, they taught us from an early age that we don’t talk openly about sex stuff. They were pretty close-lipped about sex, bodies, and even basic human biology, so I never felt like I could open up to them about what happened.

I wish I could have. That way, they could have offered me some gentle guidance and talked with Lexie’s parents about doing the same for her.

For the parents who do catch their child expressing sexual curiosity with another child or learn that something has happened after the fact, there are certain characteristics that should raise cause for concern and possibly the need for treatment, according to the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth:

• The behavior occurs frequently, even after talking with the child about appropriate versus inappropriate touching
• The behavior takes place between children with a large age gap (such as an 11-year-old who acts out with a 4-year-old)
• The behavior is initiated with strong, upset feelings, such as anger or anxiety
• The behavior involves coercion, force, or aggression of any kind
• The behavior involves inappropriate or harmful use of sexual body parts, such as oral-genital contact, intercourse, or the insertion of objects into the body

Don’t just offer to listen — initiate conversation

Problematic sexual behavior among children is a difficult and uncomfortable thing to deal with as a parent, but it doesn’t have to be.

There should be no stigma involved for the parent or child when seeking help for the child’s inappropriate sexual behavior, and such encounters should never be ignored or covered up just because it’s a difficult issue to face or talk about.

And parents should speak more openly and more often with their children about sexual health and inappropriate behavior, tailoring the talk as the child hits different levels of maturity.

Remember, just because your child hasn’t come to you about something that’s happened, that doesn’t mean nothing has. Based on what I’ve experienced, I know it’s not always enough for a parent to just be there. You also have to check-in.

Initiate conversation. Ask questions. Ask your child directly if they’ve ever been touched in a way they didn’t want to be. And let them know that they can always talk to you, about anything.

More stories by Holly Bradshaw: