“He'll never meet you," I say. It's a hard truth, carrying within it grief and joy. Jo opens her eyes, doesn't lift her head as she watches me. She's constantly taking in my face and tone, noticing everything about me. When I start to drift away, her tail thumps against the couch cushion, like a drumbeat, a heartbeat, a rhythm of grounding. You're here, she says. You're here. You're here.” HealingLetting GoAbuseSurvivor Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to mock. It’s just so typical, you know? That way he’d berate himself to make you feel sorry for him.” My head tips back as though the weight of my brain has suddenly changed. He did do that. He did it all the time. I'm not sure I've ever summed him up so neatly.” AbuseManipulationAbuser Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa
“I don't remember, not exactly. So many of my memories from back then are shadowy, incomplete. I need him to fill in the gaps, though sometimes the girl he describes sounds like a stranger.” AbuseDisassociation Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa
“I just want to know if you think I should.” “I think it would cause you severe stress,” Ruby says. “I’d worry the symptoms you described would become even more intense to the point where it would be difficult for you to function.” “But I’m talking on a moral level. Because isn’t it supposed to be worth all the stress? That’s what people keep saying, that you need to speak out no matter the cost.” “No,” she says firmly. “That’s wrong. It’s a dangerous amount of pressure to put on someone dealing with trauma.” “Then why do they keep saying it? Because it’s not just this journalist. It’s every woman who comes forward. But if someone doesn’t want to come forward and tell the world every bad thing that’s happened to her, then she’s what? Weak? Selfish?” I throw up my hand, wave it away. “The whole thing is bullshit. I fucking hate it.” AbuseAssaultPtsdSexual AbuseSexual AssaultMetoo Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa
“One tweet includes a photo of her at fourteen, skinny and smiling through braces in her field hockey uniform, the text screaming, THIS IS HOW OLD TAYLOR BIRCH WAS WHEN JACOB STRANE ASSAULTED HER. I try to imagine the same line paired with the Polaroids Strane took of me at fifteen, my heavy-lidded eyes and swollen lips, or with the photos I took of myself at seventeen, standing before a backdrop of birch trees, lifting my skirt as I stared at the camera, looking like a Lolita and knowing exactly what I wanted, what I was. I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.” AbuseVictimSexual AssaultAbuse Of PowerVictimhood Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa
“But I’m not ok. For days afterward, I walk around dazed, unable to shake the feeling of having been violated. During a meeting with my advisor, she asks how I’m doing, expecting my usual aloof response. Instead, I launch into a version of what happened. I try to be vague because I don’t want to implicate Strane, so the story comes out patchy and incoherent, makes me sound crazy. “This is Henry we’re talking about?” my advisor asks, her voice barely above a whisper; the office walls are thin. “Henry Plough?” He hasn’t even been there a year and already he has a reputation for being a man of integrity. Clasping her hands, my advisor labors over her words as she says, “Vanessa, over the years I’ve gathered from your writing that something happened to you in high school. Do you think that might be what you’re really upset about here?” She waits, her eyebrows jumping as though prompting me to agree. This, I think, is the cost of telling, even in the guise of fiction—once you do, it’s the only thing about you anyone will ever care about. It defines you whether you want it to or not. My advisor smiles, reaches forward and pats my knee. “Hang in there.” AbuseVictimMetooPredatory Behavior Book:My Dark Vanessa Source: My Dark Vanessa