Feeling Hopeless

I was sexually assaulted as a kid though at the time I didn’t realize what was going on. I believe it was when I was around 9 or 10 when it first happened and I think it continued through my 11th and maybe even 12th year. It was my older brother who did it, who is four years older than me. So at the beginning he was probably around 13 or 14, and then 15 or 16. I remember what happened around the event, but the event itself as far as what he actually touched is blurry. He called it “Tickle time”. He would pin me down and he would tickle me, and I believe he went up my shirt, though what he exactly did back then is a blur. He would say, “You know what time it is!” and he would chase me around the house before pinning me down. I remember I was pretending to have fun and just went along with it; and when he would catch me and tickle me, it didn’t really make me laugh; he tickled me so hard it just made my armpits and whatever else he would touch hurt, and made me uncomfortable. But I just laughed because I didn’t know what was going on. I thought, “He’s my older brother! He’s just trying to have fun with me. This is our special bonding time.” I thought he had good intentions, and I didn’t think anything nefarious was going on, so even though it made me uncomfortable I either 1) cooperated not wanting to hurt his feelings or 2) wasn’t really cooperating; maybe I actually was trying to run away, and just played it off like a game. I think at the beginning I didn’t resist, but after one day I did. One day, I was on my bed and he shut the door, pinned me down, and started tickling me. Mom walked in on us with a smile on her face, and I, despite the blurriness of everything else, remember vividly how she screamed, how her face fell, how she immediately started crying when she saw us. That leads me to believe that he probably was making some motions that were not appropriate and was probably tickling me up my shirt. I was brought downstairs and I remember hearing mom crying. I remember my brother saying he was just tickling me, and I remember listening in when I wasn’t supposed to and hearing mom say that she thought he was having sex with me. After that I had negative association with our “tickle times”. But even after that talk, whenever mom and dad would leave the house my brother would say, “You know what time it is!”, and so on. But this time I resisted and really actually tried to get away, though still playing it off like a game. My brother said that was part of the fun. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I don’t remember if I ever tried to tell mom and dad, or if I was too scared, or if I was too uncomfortable—I don’t know. I believe I eventually started telling my brother that I wasn’t in the mood for it or that I was too tired, which only sometimes stopped him; but eventually it did stop, and it faded. My brother and I formed a regular older-brother, little-sister relationship. We got really close, and he became one of my best friends. I basically forgot about everything that happened; I simply remembered it as a one-off misunderstanding, that he was just tickling me and mom thought it was something else. We moved on and trusted each other; though I wasn’t perfectly okay after all. I had some issues later on that I think stemmed from that, but I didn’t make any connections. Fast-forward to 2018. I was 18 years old and I was going through a hard time because we moved away my senior year. I was dealing with anxiety and panic attacks in the middle of the night, and my room was in the basement next to my older brother’s. When my anxiety was really bad I would go into his room for support. Sometimes it would be so bad that I would collapse on the floor and just ask him to help me. He would bring me water and cold rag, and he would pat my back until I calmed down. It was very helpful, and most of the time that’s all that happened. Except for one night, the last night I sought his help during an attack. I had a panic attack and I asked him to help me again, and he did the regular stuff: brought me a cold rag, brought me water while I was laying on my bed. But this time instead of leaving and going back into his room, he sat down on the bed next to me. This was fine. But then he laid down. I was laying on my side, and he laid down right against me from the back. At first he just patted my back again to calm me down, and everything was fine. Then he started massaging me, which made me a little uncomfortable but I was still okay. And then he reached under my shirt and massaged my side, and then my chest. This crossed the line. So I moved his hand down and he said, “Oh, sorry” and then eventually went back into his room. The experience ended up sending me into another panic attack, one I couldn’t go to him for help with. Since I was older this time, I tried to talk to mom about it the next day. I said, “I know this is weird and it’s hard to believe—and maybe it was just an accident, I don’t know—but he did this to me last night and it made me really uncomfortable.” Mom replied with all confidence, “Oh, I’m sure it was just an accident.” She moved on, and so I moved on. I stopped going to my older brother for my anxiety issues and everything was fine between us again. I moved away two years later, in 2020, and everything was okay. I even forgot about that moment in 2018. But recently, this year, the family visited. My older brother and my younger brother and I were getting nostalgic and rehashing the past, talking about the good old days: the stuff that we watched, the stuff that we did; we were all just kind of hanging out and talking about the past, and it was fun for a second. Then my younger brother said he had to go to the bathroom, so I stayed there thinking he was coming back up soon, not having even the slightest clue of what was about to happen next. Unfortunately my younger brother took a shower, so it was just my older brother and I for a while. We were sitting on his bed playing a video game, my even younger brother sleeping in the other room, my room, so the door was shut. I told my older brother I had to go to bed in a few minutes because I was really tired. So I got off the bed I told him goodnight. I gave him a hug goodnight, and there were a few seconds of peace before panic struck me. As we hugged, he suddenly said, “Do you remember the good old days when I would pin you down and tickle you?” I said, “Oh, yeah, I remember those days. I did not like that.” I straight up told him that I did not like those times. I started to feel anxious as I realized he wasn’t letting me go from the hug. And then he started tickling me. He was restraining me all the while so I couldn’t get free; he would restrain me with one arm and tickle me with the other arm, and switch. But what scared me even more was how he was acting. He was shivering, breathing heavily, and saying things like, “C’mon, fight back” and “Aren’t you gonna resist?” The way he was talking didn’t even sound like him; his voice even seemed to go up an octave in pitch. I laughed and told him, “Okay, I have to go to bed” and “I’m really tired, we need to stop. I need to go to bed”. I didn’t fight back right away because I knew that’s what he liked back then, hoping he’d get bored and just let me go before it progressed. It got to the point where I had to start trying to get out of his grasp but I couldn’t. He then picked me up and he put me on his lap so he could restrain me with his legs as well. He started tickling me and once again he reached up my shirt and touched my chest. That’s when I pushed his hand down and said, “No.” He just said, “Oh, sorry.” He kept doing it until I somehow maneuvered us onto the ground; he held me there a little bit, and then finally I was able to slip out and stand up. He was still on the ground holding onto my leg. I told him we “need to stop because I need to go to bed” again. Finally, he said, “Well I bet you’re good and tired now for bed.” I laughed and said, “Oh, I already was!” What hurts the most is that I forced myself to laugh throughout this whole experience. Once it started, I went into shock and felt like I wasn’t even in control of my own body, fake-laughing out loud and calmly telling him to stop and let me go, all the while I was thinking, “No, not again! No! How could this be happening? How could this be happening again!? I thought that this was over! How!?” Later on I thought, and still think, that basically nothing changed between back then and now. I still couldn’t get out of it. I couldn’t make myself scream and get angry with him, I just basically cooperated with some light pleading to stop until he crossed the line and I finally threw myself to the ground and slipped out. I told him goodnight one more time…and, feeling like I was going to puke, I gave him one last hug. Then I went into my room, shut the door, took maybe a couple steps, and then fell to my knees, immediately shaking and crying. I then looked in the mirror, looking at all the red marks on my body, and even a little bruise on my chest. Then I laid down in bed. My littlest brother was in the room sleeping, so I couldn’t talk on the phone without waking him up, and I also didn’t want to chance my brother hearing me from the other room. So I just texted my sister and told her to pray for me. I couldn’t put into words what happened over text so I just told her to call me after my older brother and my dad left the next day. The next morning, as I was having a regular conversation with my older brother, he suddenly said, “Oh, and sorry about getting so hyper last night.” I just waved it off, and then he and my dad were gone. I called my sister, and she told me that that was sexual assault. I started crying again in the realization. Then I had to go about my regular daily life until I could finally tell my mom. She said she was so sorry that that happened and that she loved me and was there for me. I asked what I could do about it, and she told me that I should tell dad. My older brother has highly functioning autism; he’s also been going through depression. He’s always had a rough time connecting with dad, and they just recently repaired their relationship. So I said I just needed to talk with my older brother myself. But later on, when I was visiting them in their state, and it finally came time to talk to him face-to-face, mom didn’t encourage me for some reason; she even said that maybe now that everything‘s fine again, I shouldn’t talk to him about it. So I didn’t. And now here I am, still dealing with the consequences of what happened and having nowhere to go. I’ve already talked to my sister about it twice so I don’t wanna talk to her about it again; I’ve talked with mom about it two or three times, so I don’t wanna talk with her about it again; and I have researched a bunch of therapy options, but they’re too expensive for me. So here I am, not knowing what to do l, drained from crying all day, and feeling utterly hopeless.