Although Peter cared for me, he wasn’t equipped to help me safely exit my marriage. I was starting to entertain thoughts of suicide, which in my distraught state was beginning to seem like the only option. After seeing an ad on a cereal box, I called a youth hotline from a telephone booth. It was as if the counsellor at the other end had never encountered my specific situation—a teenage Muslim girl trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage—and when she suggested I tell my parents how I felt, I hung up on her.
