do i have a right to move on after my sin?

Hello, I want to speak up about something that poisoned my life as long as i remember(especially true if to take to an account of my memory problems which i'll address further too).
So, I was an abuser in child-on-child sexual abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child-on-child_sexual_abuse
I was around 12-14years old, i don't remember, really, because most of my school years are least to say blurred in my memory(probably guilt?). I have a long time friend(we are both female) who was 5 years younger than me and we used to play doctor and stuff like that, barbies making out etc. i am disgusted to even think about it, but i must, because it affects how i see myself too much. most play was innocent, but few times( i really do not remember, but i think i quite fast i understood it is wrong(i wonder how i was able to understand it even?), i actually remember feeling guilt even then) we got to real action. to the point of french kissing and i pretended i have a penis with some kind of sticky toy, we pretended to do it under blanket. pretended is a wrong word because only recently, since none of us brought it up all those years(we are still best friends but i am starting to get worried if maybe she lies to me because of how i changed her life, hmm). so she told me that one of those times i actually took her virginity which i didn't know about. she did start her sexual life really early and with wrong guys, now she is an adult legally(since recently), attention seeker type of female who cares about number of likes on facebook. she genetically got to puberty too fast (10 years or so), just like all females in her family. in my case, my puberty hit when i was around 15 or so( i think it was year or more after these plays), until 18 i didn't masturbate, kissed(since then), hated everything that has to do with sexuality and acted as if i was raised by Christians in a bad meaning of the word. sure i had some influence from my christian granny, but it was to the point that i made every belief absolute - i didn't do make up or dressed up, did everything to not be seen as beautiful and attractive(didn't work though, i must look like a goddess cause i easily get attention when i look like $#%^, the older i get the more i get the damn attention). so, my friend is such an alpha female, dominatrix style, she had rough years, drinking every friday-till-sunday, trying drugs, being complete teen with all those crazy experiences, now she is into sports and looks like happy with her boyfriend, but since we do not communicate much lately i am not sure how much she can hide inside even from her own self. i had no experience like that, drank few times only and each time only bad things happened and i acted desperately and obviously not healthy, complaining how i hate myself(weirdly enough before i told so drunk i thought i was happy and okay, but i lie to myself too good), telling how i hate everyone and getting into bed with a guy i barely know just to end up with my virginity(i was adult by then) which ends up like a date rape(me was victim but i cannot see it this way since even though i was drunk i was sober enough to understand where it is going to) but since then i actually started to address my sexuality problems and lol masturbating, exploring my body which i didn't do. before that guy all those years i didn't even hold a hand of a boy, not even to mention trying to date anyone. not that i do it after him, though.
for a long period of time i thought maybe i was raped when i was a child or so, because as a teen i was very weird. i was always smarter but when it comes to social interaction i was (and still sorta am) imbecilic. i probably looked like a shy awkward girl but nobody knows that i truly didn't understand a lot of things and still do. though of now it is because a lot of years i spent on my own(being smart and sensitive to criticism made me shut from the world and keep my opinions even from myself for a long time, now i am fixing this).
anyway, since i lost my virginity as an adult i couldn't be molested as a child, i guess. but i remember a bit before this story with my friend a girl older than me( she was 12 then or 13? so i was 11-12??) showed me at sleepover porn channel, i vividly remember even now how later i told days after some female friends, jokingly, about the scene of the action. the truth is i didn't understand that time what exactly was going on, i just knew it is something i shouldn't see, something sexual but i didn't understand meaning of the sexual or sex words themselves. so those girls looked at me amazed and i felt shame, i understood that what i spoke about it wrong buy i didn't know why. since then i started gradually move away from all the people who could be my friends by now.
i know i influenced my friend a lot, once she actually admitted it(we talked about this only once and she was a bit drunk and was really sad that day, so she sort of blamed me in her problems with men and her urge for sex). and once before that, when i was drunk and really lonely, sad etc, i tried to continue her talk we had when we were sober before when she asked if we could have something more than friends half-joke -half-serious way. i was sober then and i pretended she was joking, so i replied with something like haha no we are friends etc.
also, for school years i had weird idea that i want to be a guy and i should've been born as one. not in terms of having penis(i actually hate them but i am not lesbian) but i was secretly cross-dressing and such. so when i was trying to make a move when i was drunk(see few lines before), i was imagining myself as a guy, or just dominating person, i don't know.
and i also have a thing for older guys, probably because i have no connection to my father who separated from the family when i was no more than five(just in case it may mean something?), btw, i asked, he didn't hit me or was acting bad to me,m but was bad to my sister. and also i remember why sister hit me(she is older) but she told me i was the one hitting her just like my dad(i am whole life blamed for the sins of my dad btw and that i am just like him etc).

so the question is, how can i forgive myself? every time i look at my friend for a recent year since i found out i took her virginity i can't get rid of a thought that i ruined her life. i was around her way too much when we were young even without our experiments, and now i hate that she says i am her best friend(to everyone actually) but cannot find time for me. as if i am jealous and my mind actually thinks of her as my girlfriend but i didn't understand it before? though i am not jealous of her boyfriends(but when i was drunk i was considering an idea of having her bf for myself, wondering how would she feel about that(when i am drunk i am the dominatrix haha), i likes few of her boyfriends but when i was sober i ignored those ideas because in general, leaving all those stories, i am a best friend you can find, supportive and generous. but when i am angry or drunk, the person i was as a child, the manipulative bitch, gets out and i want only to destroy and make everyone hurt).
how can i forgive myself? i can't think of having a normal relationship with anyone even though i finally admit to myself i like guys and find someone attractive etc. all i think of is that i am a terrible person and i deserve every bit of my mental suffering(in really life i have no troubles, but my mind spins around all my past sins and mistakes, tiny ones sometimes hurt as hell but nobody would consider those problems, i am the bad type of perfectionist, never forgiving any mistake like i must know anything before i even do it). i want to get away from this friend of mine because i think i affected her and destroyed her life and cannot do anything about so for the best i must at least now stay away. and also because when i am angry i want to hurt her by saying how she ignores me and has no time for me and what a terrible friend she is. when i am angry i know how to speak the way to hurt the most, that's why i am dangerous to everyone. i can make everyone believe anything, lifting spirits in my god mood. but when i am at a bad mood i know i can make anyone feel miserable, i am scared of what i can do.
how can i let myself let go of the past? or rather, do i have any right to move on? how dare am i to forget and forgive affecting someone's life so much?
now she has a boyfriend she loves, but so was before and before. if by 30 she will be a drunk, alone and ###$ up, i know i will not be able to say it wasn't my fault. i look at her and pray selfishly that her life becomes good or i will never be able to forgive myself. i want her to have a good life because it will prove i am not the monster. but because of that i actually am.

how am i to live with that? i don't know. maybe you have some thoughts?
thank you everyone. sorry i wrote so much. i could write more because i want psychological analysis, lol. btw, i have a counselor but we kind of never get to the point of my sexual problems etc, she got her full attention on my professional attention somehow, which actually helps fighting the problems i never was able to address in her office because of circumstances and because i am not ready to make it out aloud.

Sorry, I found your post a bit difficult to follow, but you say you sexually abused your friend when you were both children.

There is no right that I am aware of to moving on or not moving on. Rights are legal, human constructs. As you know, the universe doesn't care if you move on or not, and that's where you ultimately came from. It's also where you will return.

Nor is it possible to forgive oneself (as this implies a duality of consciousness, the existence of which there is no evidence).

You do, however, have the legal right to life and liberty (and a whole bunch of other things, but let's not get into that now!).

You don't have to let go of your past, just see it for what it is - a thought, an object that arises in time and space. Yes, you may have affected someone through your actions, but that does not mean you are your past. You can't be an object of thought, that is impossible. You are the awareness of it, courtesy of a bunch of electrically charged neural pathways (that, by the way, you have little to no control over - study chaos theory for a mind trip).

So in my opinion the first step to moving on is accepting the obvious but often ignored truth that you are not your thoughts. Thoughts simply arise in the mind. The problems come when you start to identify with and take ownership of these thoughts - "I am this thought". As soon as you realise that you are not your thoughts, the attachment to your past is severed. It's now just a photo album with each picture labelled with your judgements - judgements such as pride, guilt, shame, pleasure, pain etc.

These things occupy a very small part of your brain. It is no more a reliable determiner of who you are than that mole on your neck! That mole was conditioned to be there. Guess what, your thoughts and impulses were too. Your mind is the perfect result of all your genetic and environmental conditioning.

When guilt pops up, you can either turn that into shame (where you attach yourself to and become it - this is madness) or you can turn it into a lesson and energy with which to make amends (where you observe it as a teacher). Those amends ideally should be directed at those you have hurt, but they don't have to be.

Big picture: you could potentially help far more people than you have hurt in this lifetime, as long as you give that guilt the space to arise and just be there - it will teach you if you just let it and don't resist it.

Bigger picture: there is no right or wrong, only actions and consequences to which we assign a value. As social animals, we humans seek (in most cases) to minimise negative consequences. A logical extension of this is to reverse or undo negative consequences. If this cannot be done directly at source, then try to create new positive consequences.

That way, you can never regret your past, because you will know that if it had not happened in the way it did, you would not have been put on the new path of creating these positive consequences.

When people say "my past made me who I am today" this is a curious twisting of the truth. What they really mean is "my past made my life what it is today" - so make the past, no matter how grim, work in yours and others' favour NOW, in this moment, the only moment that truly exists independent of thought.

Anything else, such as thinking "I am what I did forever" or "must get away from these feelings of guilt" is utter madness and will lead to great suffering, not just for you, but for those around you.

I apologize for this really late answer.

thank you for spending time reading it, sorry that it was hard to follow, i was writing it in a spur of a (sad) moment.
i was rereading this post few times over these days and still all i can answer is Big Thank You. Your words were a relief. when people discuss their problems with me i often tell them that it's not about past and more about choice, but when it comes to my own problems i am so much more concentrated on everything but forgiving myself(or if i was not the sourse of a problem i think about that maybe it was my fault somehow no matter what), i am a masochist, it seems
Yes, what you say is correct, I understand your point, thank you. I'll try my best to remind myself of your words from now on in order to stick to positive thinking of "you're not your thoughts".
Thank you once again, I didn't expect much help on that, but i got all that i had to get, i feel

I know it's an older post, but it caught my attention because I have a friend who did something similar. She and her sister were both minors and she's had a lot of trouble moving on from what she did, but I think she's gotten there.

I met her years after that, but not before she was really over it. I think one of the things that helped her get over was finding something to live for, so to speak. I think she realized that her past is part of her and she can't change what she did to her sister, but she doesn't have to let it be what defines her. Now she has something she likes doing that helps people.

We're defined by our experiences and choices, that's true. They're part of who we are. But we are all of them, not just one, and we can always make different and new choices that define us. I think part of moving on is realizing what we do now is as much who we are as what we did yesterday, and honestly more important because it shapes who we are tomorrow.

this is just GREAT, because Psychforums logs out like every 10 minutes I lost a long smart reply AGAIN and I have no power to retype it. I'll do it later.

-- Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:18 am --

Thank you for your reply. I think your friend is really brave choosing to help people now. And I am not sure she will ever get over it. Guilt will haunt you at your worst moments. But I wish her good luck and I hope she will be happy. If she is sad about it and she and her victim talked it over and were settled on it matter, she has a right to forgive herself and move on. But my thoughts are warped on that topic, I have no idea what is wrong and who is wrong...

From my side, I am constantly terrified being able to influence people in some way. I have the urges and at a bad mood act on them without feeling that it is bad. I act as a sadist. I have teaching abilities and I am a good counselor but after watching new Hannibal tv series I understood clearly that it is the best place for me to avoid.
For example, I had to babysit a child who was behaving badly so I made her make her toys in order, strictly, like they show the terrible teachers in homes for orphans in movies, not hurting but verbally being a sadist. Which led me to something. My parents were divorced when I was 3 or so, because my father beat my older step-sister, harassed her verbally. for example making up her bed again and again because she refused to tide it up first time, so she ended up doing it like 10th time in tears after he put blankets away again and again after her efforts, screaming at her. that's what she told at least, and I am not sure if about her own memories, because she told me I hit her as a child but i remember she hit me when we were kids and she was 5 years older. But my mother told that my father was terrible to her so despite sister's memories it is true. And I think maybe I inherited it among other things I was accused of all my life. people compared me to my dad even though i almost didn't know him. I grew up hating him and myself because my face is his, my hands look like his and even my actions end up being his, even I say things he said which is funny because those are my thoughts and looks like our thinking is same.
and my friendship with my victim is breaking apart now. and i think, because I was a victim of date-rape(i think I wrote before on that), I was not attracted to the guy but after losing my virginity to him I felt attached and jealous. Maybe my friendship is based on same bound. I was an abuser and influence long after I stopped being an abuser. Maybe what we had was more than a friendship. and over those years she gave me hints like would you be interested if you were lesbian or would you play bottle game with us(means possibility of kissing her). my words and actions could lead to more i myself being drunk once gave such a hint, gladly she didn't act on the invitation. There is nothing but memories that we have in common, if to think of us closely.
I am afraid that this will come back at me. after time, she will accuse me, ruin my career, my life, destroy everything, if her life will become terrible.
We always were close to each other, even if we didn't communicate, physically close, but our friendship falls apart and I feel like it is good, this time it is her desire though she is more upset. because over these years i felt like I own her everything i can give her because of what I did. And if i let go of it now, I will not be able to control outcome.
and I fear that we will destroy each other one way or another. Because we practically know everything of one another. If I or her would want, we are perfectly capable of becoming enemies of one another, the dangerous ones. But I'd be at a loss any way, since i was older all the time, i was smarter, she was influenced. And she is ###$ up now with her excessive drinking(normal for teens-young age) and high sex-drive, compared to my hate to alcohol thanks to drunks in my family and my fear of intimacy and relationships.

I am sorry, I do not know what I want to ask, I just feel tied up by this.

Consequently, children who initiate or solicit overtly sexual acts with other children most often have been sexually victimized by an adult beforehand,[4][5][7] or by another child who was in turn abused by an adult.[8][9] More than half have been victimized by two or more perpetrators.[6] In some instances, the perpetrating child was exposed to pornography or repeatedly witnessed sexual activity of adults at a very young age, and this can also be considered a form of child sexual abuse.[7]

In other cases, a child or adolescent may have no intent to cause any harm to another child, and he or she acts merely on a passing impulse. However, this act may still result in harm to the another child and is a form of child-on-child sexual abuse

nobody speaks of what it's like to be abuser when you were child and didn't understand what you did, but there are plenty talks of being a victim. But I feel hurt and disgust and fear about sex, intimacy and also had a lot of hate towards my body and privates in general(i thought i was raped because i do not recall the teenage when i actually was abuser, but i figured out i wasn't once i lost my virginity... wasnt before losing it, lol). If i feel this way, does it mean abuser is a victim too and has a right to be forgiven even by own victims? accepted?
I cannot bring up it into conversation with anyone, my victim-ex-friend, even my therapist.
I feel like I am a monster because right before my eyes i see the consequences. an my father is a clear example of my possible future.
and it is 5 am here and i am still writing.

God, i hate God for giving us emotions, they ###$ up so much. btw, as a teen I pretended i was heartless. now I see I felt so terrible that I was in denial.
But my logic doesn't help me to forgive myself, move on, to accept that what my victim does with her life now is her own fault, i think it is mine. Though i do not think my father is guilty in my outcome but I cannot shake the emotions screaming he is at a fault, even if not entirely directly.

P.S. I do not remember what else i had in mind in my original post that was erased by forums' log-in-twise-a-second system.

thanks everyone. hope there will be someone to reply... :\

If you're worried about turning out like your father, then you should get up tomorrow and do something he would never have done - prove to yourself that just because you share some of his DNA, you don't have to follow the same path he did.

The fact you have a heightened self awareness now means you're approaching new crossroads, a new path.

I believe (and not without good evidence) that people do bad things because they aren't fully self aware. They are unconscious to their (unfortunate) impulses and conditioning.

Remorse, if we are lucky enough to experience it, is a form of awakening. We suddenly become conscious of what our minds and bodies are capable of. This immediately reprograms the mind, and this is painful, like someone sticking a screw driver into your brain and fiddling the parts. But the result is we are now more aware of our own impulses and sensitive to other people's feelings.

The inevitable conclusion is that remorseful people start to choose paths that involve them helping other people, whether it be through donating to charity or physically helping people. This in turn gives you a new identity and makes you feel good. Life has renewed meaning.

If no remorse is felt, then what signal do we have to change? Remorse is a blessing from nature and the millions of years of evolution that ensured our ancestors' survival.

But before the awakening happens, the remorse must play out fully. There must be pain before progress. Orly, you have to allow this remorse to hammer you until you're sick of it. Even if it involves painful memories of your father and your fears about becoming him, give those fears the space to exist fully. It has no power over who you are now. Face it, but realise you are not what you are facing.

The mind will eventually get "tired" of playing with the past, trying to find identity where it doesn't even exist, and inevitably start to look where a new identity can be forged.

That's when you will start moving forward again, into a life of empathy, kindness and helping others. That's where your ego will find its new sense of identity and stop haunting you.

It will make you feel good. Probably even better than if you hadn't done something to feel remorse in the first place.

All this pain linked to guilt/remorse is a "gift" from nature, you're just not quite ready to accept it yet. But you will, whether it be months or years away.