My Hidden Truth About Her

I've been teaching at this university for over twenty years now, and I thought I knew myself pretty well. But recently, something inside me has changed dramatically in a way that feels utterly foreign to my usual self-respect. There's this student of mine, a young woman who is eighteen or older, let’s leave it at that, who just...draws me in like nothing else ever has. It started as a curiosity, then I found myself thinking about her more and more outside the classroom too. What amazes, and terrifies, me is how quickly my thoughts turned from admiration to something far darker. I began imagining scenarios where she was submissive towards me, not quite like a student-teacher relationship but...different. A kind of twisted power play that would never happen, could never be real. Yet the daydreams won't stop coming and now they're more vivid than ever. What's even worse is how much I've started looking forward to seeing her every week, just for a taste of those impossible fantasies. It’s as if some part of me wants to make them come true, which terrifies me because it goes against everything about who I am. I need to figure this out before I do something truly foolish.