I used to stress a lot about this as a kid. I managed to read the full children/YA contents of my very small local public library by 14 then moved on to the adult side and finished that by 17. The librarians used to greet me and tell me anything new that came in.
Around 18-19, i ‘blossomed’ then one of the male librarians started giving me special attention that felt inappropriate and I could tell he had weird intentions so a lifetime at the library came to an end. Could have been worse, but I just got scared and stopped showing up.
I think the saddest part is that I used to take my two younger siblings every Saturday and Sunday, and I just stopped taking them and never explained why because I was too ashamed. I tried to switch branches but this library was already a 35 minute walk for us, it wasn’t possible for us to go anywhere else and, after being creeped out, being in any library at all gave me stress.
This was a long time ago and I was a super shy kid from a tumultuous home so I didn’t know how to address it. This man watched me grow up for more than 10 years. I went back and visited that branch a few years ago and he didn’t work there any more. I feel like he carefully toed the line, so anything he did and said could be just seen as ‘friendly’ but the leering, compliments on my appearance, and the sudden touching (hand on shoulder/hand on arm) really set off alarms.
TLDR: A weird trauma dump triggered by seeing that meme. Brains are weird.
I used to stress a lot about this as a kid. I managed to read the full children/YA contents of my very small local public library by 14 then moved on to the adult side and finished that by 17. The librarians used to greet me and tell me anything new that came in.
Around 18-19, i ‘blossomed’ then one of the male librarians started giving me special attention that felt inappropriate and I could tell he had weird intentions so a lifetime at the library came to an end. Could have been worse, but I just got scared and stopped showing up.
I think the saddest part is that I used to take my two younger siblings every Saturday and Sunday, and I just stopped taking them and never explained why because I was too ashamed. I tried to switch branches but this library was already a 35 minute walk for us, it wasn’t possible for us to go anywhere else and, after being creeped out, being in any library at all gave me stress.
This was a long time ago and I was a super shy kid from a tumultuous home so I didn’t know how to address it. This man watched me grow up for more than 10 years. I went back and visited that branch a few years ago and he didn’t work there any more. I feel like he carefully toed the line, so anything he did and said could be just seen as ‘friendly’ but the leering, compliments on my appearance, and the sudden touching (hand on shoulder/hand on arm) really set off alarms.
TLDR: A weird trauma dump triggered by seeing that meme. Brains are weird.