Navigating the Gray

I had just started 9th grade at a competitive public high school, and I was sad because I missed my ex-boyfriend. During lunch I went to the school counselor’s small blue office and sat down across the desk from him. I asked, “I can talk to you about personal things, right?” 

“Yes, but if something concerns me, I have to report it.”

I had spent the previous years in a very insular community, homeschooled in a Bengali Muslim Musjid in Brooklyn. This was my first year at a public school. I went to the counselor because I had no one else to talk to. 

I told the story: My boyfriend and I had gotten involved when I was 12, after he comforted me when I was sad. From sharing feelings, we moved to pet names and talked about our future together. Then, the summer after 8th grade, I explained to the counselor, “The relationship got physical and more intense. Then my family found out, and made me end it.”

“Why did they make you end it?” he asked.

“Because he was a lot older.”

The counselor stopped typing notes and looked up. The whirring of the fan overhead became louder.

“How much older?”

“Fifteen years. He was my teacher.”

“I’m going to have to contact the police.”

His response took me by surprise. Some elders in my community view children as adults when we reach puberty. Once a girl gets her period, she is responsible for her actions—and for men’s reactions to her. For many in our neighborhood and in the Musjid where I was being homeschooled, a relationship between a 12-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man is acceptable, as long as they remain chaste until marriage. 

I believed that it was OK too; I felt adult enough to handle a relationship with someone older. I’d been sexually assaulted by older men several times, the first time when I was 7. To me this relationship was different because my teacher said he was in love with me, and always asked my permission before doing anything. 

He also had told our class his sad story of having to emigrate to the U.S. alone when he was 14. I pitied him, and to me that put us on the same level. 

He Blamed Me

Once we kissed, my teacher pressured me to tell my family that we wanted to get married. It took me about a month to tell my parents, during which time the teacher would drive me out of town. Sometimes we would go on actual dates, while other times we just made out in the car. Every time we made out he would ask me to touch him. I didn’t want to, but the last time we were together I gave in.

When I asked him what he thought about our age difference, he said it was fine with him but that other people would find it “crazy” that he was marrying someone who was 13. Our plan wasn’t very formed; he wanted us to move away from the community. I didn’t know if he planned to keep teaching at the Musjid. I had been accepted to my current public school for 9th grade, and we agreed I should go.

When I told my family, my dad was ready to give his blessing, but my brother was outraged and called my teacher a “pedo.” My mom stayed silent. My brother threatened to ruin my teacher’s life by telling the community that we had violated Ta’aruf, the custom of getting to know each other with family members present. Kissing and touching are not allowed before marriage no matter what age the two people are. 

I texted my teacher that I had to break up with him because of my brother’s threats to tell. 

“How could you do this to me?” he texted back. 

I couldn’t believe he blamed me. I expected him to say he loved me, but he only talked about the consequences for him. He never acknowledged that I was doing this to protect him. I stopped texting him, and a month later, I had my conversation with the high school counselor. 

After I revealed his age, the counselor asked if there had been penetration, and I said no. Then the counselor told the assistant principal, who called my family.

The next day the police came to interview me at school. They asked me his name and what had happened between us. When I finished, they also asked me about penetration. 

My parents were mad at me for talking about my relationship to any American. They wanted to protect the teacher, and they didn’t want Child Protective Services to take me away.

My parents and I decided not to press charges, and as far as I know my teacher was never charged with a crime and still teaches middle and high schoolers. My counselor recommended to my parents that I go into therapy. 

Listening Without Judging

I was sent to an in-school counselor, C., and met with her every week for about two years. C. listened to me without judging. She also grew up in an insular immigrant community, so she understood what that’s like. 

C. was the first person I told that I had been sexually assaulted before the teacher and I got together. Talking about the childhood abuse made me feel self-conscious, and made it easier for me to blame the relationship on myself.

“He’s not the first man to be interested in me.”

“Adults being interested in you can’t be your fault. You’re a child.”

“Then why does it keep happening to me?”

C. mentioned “grooming” when I told her my teacher began our relationship by comforting me when I was crying at school. That’s not how it felt over the year or so before he touched me.

C. was my only outlet at the time, and I told her that I felt so sad sometimes I wanted to die. I told her, “I don’t get it. Things are becoming easier, yet I seem to be getting worse.” I liked my new school and the freedom that came with it, but it was hard making friends when I felt so different from the other 9th graders. 

C. reminded me I’d felt bad before. “You couldn’t sleep at all.”

One way I made sense of my awful sadness was to conclude that I missed being with the teacher and that if we were together, I’d be happy. 

C. and I talked a lot about the relationship. One thing that I agreed with her about early on was that I didn’t feel much love from my parents and that I craved adult attention. But knowing this didn’t diminish the love I continued to feel for my teacher. 

Imbalance 

During the spring semester of freshman year, I finally started making friends and settling into school. From this new steadiness, I started thinking more and more about the breakup, and how the teacher seemed to care more about his reputation than about me. That hurt more and more, and I brought it up with C.

“He was just like my dad then. Fully absorbed in his reputation. Did he even care that he was losing me?” I wondered.

For the first time, I considered my feelings, not just his. What if I felt it was love because I so strongly wanted it to be? How much was I in love with him?

And that made me think: Maybe he isn’t the person I’m meant to be with.

Soon after that, I was saying my usual “I miss him” to C., and she decided to give me one of her rare inputs. Once in a while, instead of just asking questions, she would give an opinion, and I always thought about those a lot, even if I disagreed at the time.  

“You know, there’s a power imbalance between a teacher and a student. Due to the age gap and the setting.” 

“But he always treated me like there was no age difference. And he seemed like a kid my age.” I told her how he cried when he told the class about coming to the U.S. on his own as a child.

“But he’s not a kid your age. He had power over you.”

It took me months to truly process what she was saying. I observed that when I talk to my current teachers, there is a power difference. I never felt that with the teacher, and because of that, so much more was able to happen. 

But how was that dynamic just non-existent? When I talk to C. and she comforts me, it doesn’t feel romantic or like anything more than an adult helping a child, so how was it different with him? 

Partly it was that he told a class of 7th graders, while crying, about his sad childhood. In my eyes, he wasn’t an adult all put together. He also told the class, often, “Guys, I just want a wife.” I felt like we could save each other from loneliness. 

Other adults didn’t tell me what upset them, much less ask for comfort. But he did, and that gave me a feeling of power. My parents and some other teachers hit me, whereas he told me, “Nobody’s ever loved me like you do.” 

C. mentioned “grooming” when I told her my teacher began our relationship by comforting me when I was crying at school. That’s not how it felt over the year or so before he touched me. It still doesn’t seem to me like he was hatching some evil plot that whole time. It felt patient and respectful. 

He was the shining sun among all the clouds of my life. If he’s a groomer, a child abuser, the one with all the control, then I’m the victim. I don’t want him to be the villain, and I don’t want to be a victim. It felt powerful to be equal with him, not weak and helpless. 

Still Processing

I saw C. for two years. During that time, in spring of 10th grade, I was hospitalized and received a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). The diagnosis made my relationship with the teacher seem like part of a harmful pattern of childhood abuse. I had internalized early that grown men forcing themselves on me was my fault, and at age 12, I started to think of myself as a “whore.”

This low self-esteem made me feel lucky to attract the teacher. 

I started to entertain the idea that all C. said could be true. Maybe there was an issue with such a big age gap; maybe I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe none of it was my fault.

The CPTSD diagnosis complicates my feelings about the teacher. He didn’t seem like another abuser to me at the time, but now writing about this makes me feel like he was. He was in a higher position than me, and even if he didn’t know better, he had more responsibility than me. 

It is not my job to constantly reassure everyone that our relationship was OK, but that’s what I’ve been doing. I reassure my friends so they think I’m normal, and adults so they don’t do anything to him. 

Partly from therapy, partly from writing about it, and partly from being in a public high school out of my community, I’m not as sure as I used to be that it was a love that’s OK. 

I know that the relationship was wrong. There was a power imbalance. He should have known the relationship could harm me. I have trouble trusting men, and I haven’t been able to connect with kids my age romantically. 

But not defending him anymore gives me freedom. Thoughts of him have controlled me for too long. I can shed the self-blame and second-guessing and leave him behind. I will not let the past chain me down anymore.