I have problem in my head.
Hello everyone who can read this post. I am now a young adult with a pretty simple life. I’m 18; in two months I will pass my final exams at school, and I’ll leave this city—or maybe the country. I don’t know.
I’m writing this because I need to tell someone. I have a problem in my head, a problem with my mind, and I don’t know how to solve it.
Something happened to me when I was younger. I live in a small countryside town in Russia. We have only one school, and I have studied here for five years. It happened when I was 13. I had just moved to this town with my family, and I was a new student at school. We have nice teachers, and now I have friends (and I’m happy sometimes). But it was very hard for me to connect with people my age in my class. I didn’t have friends when I was a new, scared pre-teen with a funny haircut and a somewhat childish face.
I felt very lonely at the new school, so I tried to make friends everywhere. But no one wanted to talk to me, just because I was new and had moved from a big city.
Then someone noticed me—someone named Alikhan (I changed the name but kept the national identity). He was a geography teacher.
You know what? At first, I wanted to be his friend. He seemed cool and mature, like he knew everything. He started talking to me. Everyone else in class had tasks, and I was the only one talking with him—about football, girls, school and students, the world, and his past life in another city. He told me how he used to graze sheep. It felt amazing to have my first “friend,” someone cool who made me feel special, because I was the only student who could talk to him about things other than geography.
Then we built another connection. He gave me his Telegram and added me on VK. “Only to ask about your homework,” he said—but it wasn’t true. We never talked about homework in messages. He told me everything about himself—how he felt abandoned because of his nationality. I felt a strong connection, because I’m not Russian in a Russian place either. We bonded because there was a lot of racism in Russia in the 2020s.
After a few months, he invited me to a local football match in a city a bit bigger than ours. The last bus was at 9:40 p.m., which is still the schedule for intercity buses. We missed the bus, and he invited me to stay at his place. I agreed.
And now I’m broken. I’m crying while writing this, because I feel ashamed and wrong. I blame myself for such passion and passive agreement.
At his place, he brought a knife and put it to my face while I was sitting on the couch. He said, “Open your mouth.” I was so fucking scared. He said he would kill my little brother, my entire family, and me if I won’t open my mouth. So I did.
I shut my mouth for five years. No one knew—not a single person. I only started talking about it after five years of silence.
He told me he was drunk and that it “didn’t count.” He said he loved me and wanted to be with me because I was his crush. I know how stupid this sounds, but we even started “dating.” He said that’s how adults act after sex. I told him I was done and didn’t want to feel that again, and he agreed for a few weeks. Then it happened again—worse and more brutal than the first time.
I was trapped in that nightmare for two years. We “broke up” in 8th grade, in winter—I think January or March. I remember the snow when I tried to tell my principal. She said he was a grown, hot-blooded man and would never be interested in “an ugly boy.” After that, I went back into silence.
I’m sorry for telling this story. I just needed to tell someone without hearing reactions like, “Oh my God, you had the kind of relationship everyone dreams about.” One of my friends even said, “You should be the top in this relationship; the geography teacher looks like a bottom.”
I feel like something is wrong with me. Everyone saw what was happening to me. Everyone knew, and now my geography teacher is still alive, walking freely, feeling fine—and I’m not. He created a monster, and I feel like I did too. I used my story to write fanfiction, using real experiences to create a story. I have readers who are waiting for updates and see it as a love story. I feel so ashamed. I didn’t try to romanticize it—I made it disturbing—but some people still love it and even the character based on my abuser.
Thank you if you read this. Good luck to everyone who has survived something like this. And I’m sorry for any remaining mistakes—English is not my first language