Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
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Since I was 7, I was bullied for being obese, so I didn’t have many friends growing up.
I became an introvert, and it was difficult for me to come out of my shell and talk to people.
I made my first Facebook account at the age of 13, and I friended this guy who was friends with my other friends on Facebook.
He was my first ever guy friend on Facebook. Our online friendship grew, even though we never actually met in person.
After about 3 to 4 months, he confessed that he liked me and wanted to be with me in a relationship.
I was thinking, why not just give it a shot and see if it actually works out with this person?
The start of our relationship was flowery, then things started escalating really quickly, and he started behaving a little bit weird.
He asked me to send him an explicit photo of myself.
He started talking dirty to me, then he asked me for nudes of mine.
He tried to justify it by saying, “I’m so far away from you, we can’t really meet each other, and I need something to make me attracted to you.”
I wasn’t comfortable at all, but this man kept harassing me, saying, “I’m your boyfriend, you can trust me, right? If you aren’t comfortable with it, does it mean you don’t trust me? If you don’t trust me, our relationship won’t work like this.”
I thought to myself, Oh my God, he’s gonna leave. If he leaves, I won’t have anyone. It’s gonna be so embarrassing if he breaks up with me.
He was way older than me, about 18 years old, and I was 13 years old. Basically, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
So out of the pressure of that, I decided, let’s just send a picture, like a semi-nude one.
And that was what I did.
I told him, make sure you delete it and do not keep it in your phone.
He told me, “I’m gonna just look at it and then I’ll delete it,” and I believed him.
After a few months, he said he couldn’t cope with not being with me, so we broke up.
The pictures got leaked online, and I started getting weird messages from guys
After about a month or two, the pictures got leaked online.
I started getting a lot of text messages from random guys. They sent me d**k pictures and were asking me horrible questions like, “How much is it for a night?”
The next thing I knew, the pictures went on Twitter and Instagram. I couldn’t even go to school, because somehow, all my school friends got the picture.
A lot of people would go around talking trash about me, saying, “Oh, she probably does this and that and everything else.”
I really went through really bad depression, and I started self-harming myself and had a couple of suicide attempts. I felt like it was too much of a heavy burden for me.
I didn’t want my parents to know about it, because I’m pretty sure they would have flown off the handle.
I was scared to talk about it, I was afraid of being judged
Whenever I think of that incident, I get so mad sometimes, because I felt that I should have done more. I could have gone to the police station, I could have got help.
But then I didn’t really do anything about it, because I was really young and I was really scared. A mistake you made long ago can actually lead a lot of people to think differently about you, even today.
I was afraid of being judged by people who’d say, “Oh she has this kind of past” or “She’s not the person who she says she is.”
Luckily, a parent of another schoolmate reached out to me to ask if I was doing okay, and I was able to confide in he, and she told me, “You know what, it’s okay.”
After hearing those words coming from a parent, I was able to slowly move on from it and not let it affect me so much.
I’ve decided to open about it now, so that others can learn from my experience
I’ve seen a lot of other women who actually go through this on a daily basis, getting their nudes leaked online.
We need to start talking about it openly, so that they can actually open up about things like this as well.
It’s a very serious issue, because it’s not something simple to move on from.
A lot of people tend to go into depression about it, and so many have already lost their lives to suicide, because they’re not able to open up about things like this.
I hope that this is actually a good move to help other people open up.
If you’ve had your pictures leaked on the internet, here’s what you should do
- Remember that you matter most
I think that once a picture is out it’s out, there’s nothing you can actually do about it.
No matter how much you try to tell people to remove it and help you report it, once it’s out there, it’s out there.
So at the end of the day, you matter the most.
- Make a police report
If you have had your nudes leaked before, if you’re going through it right now, I would say the safest thing to do is to make a police report, which is something I never did last time.
- Be careful who you talk to
It’s always important to have a positive circle around you or someone that you can really really trust.
When you talk about things like this, be very careful and mindful of who you talk to. Because once it leaks out, things can get really sour.
- Let it go and move on
The best thing I told myself is, do not repeat the mistake, and probably just let it go, you know? If it’s there, it’s there. It’s an old mistake you made, and now just move on.
For more stories like this, read:
My Supervisor Sexually Harassed Me But HR Said “There’s No Proof”
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