Sexually Abused at 8 and Confused

I am a 21year old male and for the past 13 years I have been hiding the fact that I was sexually abused as a child.

When I was 8 my cousin’s friend (I’ll just refer to him as “Andy”) used to baby-sit me and for the few times he did, he abused me.

I was always hard to put to bed so after my older brother was put to bed, when he was asleep, “Andy” use to come to my room to “check I was sleeping”. he would then come in and touch me and make me do the same to him.

This happened a few times until one time I acted up so badly and threw a wooden board at him. My parents just thought I was being “naughty” and he never baby sat again.

I’ve tried to forget about this sexual abuse and often have, but recently I’ve been thinking about it and started talking to other men in a sexual context. I have until recently had a girlfriend with whom I had been with for 6 years and she found these messages.

This was only ever through emails, but I just liked the idea of leading people on and playing with them saying I’d meet and stuff, in a sense I felt it gave me the elution of power.

I know it’s wrong, but I didn’t consider it to be gay, I just saw it as just sex whether I was talking to a man or a woman. I lied and lied about it not wanting to tell her it was down to me being abused because honestly I don’t really know what its done to me.

All I know is this has been buried deep down inside and I’m not sure what to do about it. If this had never happened I don’t think I would have brought myself to face what happened to me when I was a child.

I feel depressed and empty what should I do? I’m scared to tell people as I just think they’ll think I’m weak. What if they don’t believe me? And my mum, she’d be heartbroken and blame herself for letting him baby-sit.

-Harry