I've recently remembered something from my childhood and just need to get it out of my head as its been swirling around. Don't really want to talk to anyone about it in real life.
My DM worked with vulnerable children in inner city schools. When I was about 13 we moved cities, which meant my DM had to leave a lot of children who she knew were at serious risk of neglect and harm eg gang violence, sexual exploitation. One girl she worked with had been abandoned by both parents. She must have been 16 or so. She had been giving housing by the council but was placed in a home for vulnerable adults so was living in very close proximity to people dealing and doing drugs, women being exploited for sex. Just a really horrible and inappropriate place for a 16 year old girl to live by herself. To be clear, the girl was not engaging with any of these behaviours herself.
Anyway, my DM gave the girl her phone number to keep in touch when we moved. She had no other adults looking out for her and I think this may have saved her life in some ways. There were one or two weekends, when, for various reasons, the girl was homeless and my DM had her come stay with us, at our family home, in the other city.
She was only a few years older than Mr and so we were friendly on these weekends. One night, I can't remember how it came about, but she introdiced me to chat rooms. I remember it was really dark and late at night and she taught me all the acronyms. It felt really dangerous. We were talking to strangers.
I developed a sort of obsessions with chatrooms. I had a computer in my bedroom and I'd go on every night when my parents thought I was asleep. I had really inappropriate conversations with god knows who and looking back, with daughters of my own, it actually terrifies me. There were one or two times when people I was chatting to said theyd send a taxi over to my house so we could hang out together and rather than being scared, the idea really excited me. I'm really ashamed and maybe that's why I don't feel like I can talk about this in real life.
I kept a diary at the time and my mum found out what I had been doing because she read a diary entry that had been really explicit about one of the conversations I'd had. She told my Dad. They both spoke to me, they weren't cross but obviously both really worried about it and pressed how dangerous it was. (This was at the dawn of this type of thing so much less awareness in schools etc).
Loke I said, its just been swirling around my head for a while. I feel like my Mum's decision to bring this other girl into our home really put me at risk. I'm not cross with her but I find it quite upsetting.