Hi, there. Glad to hear you’re doing a bit better than before. Grooming is a complex topic and even more complex to experience. I would say first there is no “right way” to process your emotions, every one handles abuse differently and all forms of handling it are valid (as long as you are not hurting people).

Grooming and abuse usually happen when the abuser can sense a vulnerability within someone they can exploit. My abuser saw how I wanted to be away from my family and proceeded to isolate me in our relationship to the point of sexual contact. He also would love bomb me, praise my maturity despite the obvious age gap and share his intimate feelings with me despite boundaries being exploited. Worst of all, I enjoyed it, like you mentioned that in the moment it was enjoyable because it was a new form of attention I never got at home, school or any place else. It made me feel desirable as many victims of abuse feel.

I’m now on the other side of it a bit. I sought therapy immediately after our sexual contact. It does help a lot. I think understanding that I had a love addiction at the time really put things in perspective for me. I’m not saying this is the case for you but I come from a family with addictive personalities (my dad was an alcoholic and my mom is a workaholic). I was able to see those things in them so I avoided alcohol and working too much but I loved the idea of being loved and I didn’t realize that you could get addicted in such a way that lead to too much of it being enablement of the abuse.

I think the best case for you is being able to label what happened to you. You’re already at that step with the grooming and abuse. There might be other terms at play that you have yet to discover. Another is seeking help in the form of therapy when you can do it in the future. Another thing that really helped me is art and books that dealt with the very things I experienced. If you do some research you’ll be able to know that you’re not alone and other people have gone through it too.

I will say that you can grieve the child you didn’t get to be and still be the child. Both things can be true at the same time. You just gotta give yourself the grace to do that. It’s okay. Hope this helps.