My Dark Vanessa

Everyday I order coffee and pie while I read or finish homework, imagining that I look mysterious and adult sitting in a booth all by myself.

While reading this book, I was often struck by how very personal to my own story as a teenage girl it felt, and it is all boiled down in that quote. It could be a line out of my own diary at fifteen - being called “mature for your age”, feeling like I got along better with adults than with people my own age, being swept away in the romanticism of the taboo and depressing, feeling as if no one understood my hidden depths, and more than anything thinking that I was already grown up and in control.

All of these hallmarks of adolescence, which feel so singular to yourself in the moment, are the exact kind of emotional foundations within Vanessa's character that are ripe for potential abuse once you mix in the fact that you aren't actually as grown up and prepared as you thought. In Vanessa's story, unlike mine, someone unfortunately did notice her in all those ways she thought she wanted, but in the end was ill prepared for. In the book's flashback chapters, there was no point that Vanessa seemed to care for Strane as a person (in fact, she notes on several occasions how unattractive she finds him), but rather is groomed into a strange possessiveness towards him – where she feels disgust one minute, jealous the next, wanting, and then repulsed. As she grows older, she continues to seek him out, even while not wanting him to touch her. She is a victim, but one that deals with that reality by drawing out the unhealthy relationship for over fifteen years in order to convince herself that there's no way she could actually be a victim. Even in her adult form, she not a clear-cut sympathetic figure – she acknowledges (in an observational sense at least) her potential to become exactly the type of abuser she endured, she lashes out with cries for help just as often as she returns to comfort her abuser, she continues to both belittle her own experience and the experiences of the other girls, and I'm not truly sure she has understood any of those behaviors in herself by the end of the book.

Because of that deliberate stagnation in her character growth, this is much more of an “it's about the journey” type of story, but works extremely well as an emotional dissection of the murky waters of sexuality, consent, victim-hood, and cycles of abuse. All the questions her experiences bring up are laid out for you to contemplate within yourself, but are left open ended and without conclusions drawn. Why is the lure of a younger woman/older man trope so strong (both internally for a lot of teenage girls, and externally in pop culture)? Can you feel like you had autonomy in an abusive situation? Do you have an obligation to tell your story, no matter how bad a light it sheds on you? The answers are that there aren't really answers at all, but examining the questions and the emotions behind them is still worthwhile.

Sidenote: Why is it always an English teacher? As I discussed with my friend while reading this, the English teacher at my high school had that friendly vibe that made you feel like a peer instead of a child (and who every person had heard substantial rumors about, and who we all still talk about amongst ourselves over a decade later), it feels like it's always English and Literature teachers. At her school it was the exact same situation. I guess there is something much more alluring and accessible about roping someone in over classic literature than over the quadratic equation.