Jane Doe (Jane Doe, #1)

by Victoria Helen Stone

I don’t hate them; I just don’t understand why people feel the need to try over and over with toxic family members.

People cause pain. Even good people hurt those they love. We all do it because we can’t help it. Most of us aren’t evil; we’re just stupid and flawed and not careful with others.

“I only read nonfiction.” He wants me to feel self-conscious, but the truth is that a man like Steven doesn’t want to immerse himself in someone else’s world. It gives the author too much power. It makes Steven feel small.

Neither my books nor my viewing habits are good enough for him.

Frankly, fictional people appeal far more to me than real people do. In fiction, the choices have to make sense. The timeline proceeds rationally. Emotions are explained to me. Characters feel the way they are supposed to feel in response to the actions of others. Nobody stays in a bad situation because of inertia or low self-esteem. That would make for a truly shitty story. But in real life . . . God, in real life people so rarely behave in ways that improve their circumstances.

I’ll never belong. I’ll be a stranger everywhere I go for the rest of my life.

Erections and guilt can’t exist in the same plane. One makes way for the other.

After all, everyone knows that women are responsible for how men behave. If we’re not careful, they might decide to take what they want. They can’t help it. But somehow I’m the one with the psychological impairment.

When other people are suffering, it’s because they’re not righteous. But when our people suffer, it’s only a test of faith.

In my experience, men try to talk women into opening their legs from the moment girls can walk on them. Men stand in for the Lord in this scenario. Always testing us to see if we choose right or wrong. But it’s a trick. There is no right. You’re a tease or a whore. A heartless denier or a Jezebel. Their penises are God’s divining rods, searching out evil.

I was fascinated by the way Meg interacted with men. She always made herself smaller, and they always loved it. At first I admired it as manipulation, but I later realized that once she’d established herself as small, she couldn’t make herself bigger again.

She would shrug and say she felt shy with men she liked, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t shyness. It was fading. She dimmed her light to make a certain kind of man feel vibrant.

This is how you get through life. This is how you guarantee the species. Take abuse. Submit to men. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I don’t like movies as much as books. With books, the narrator explains what people are feeling and thinking, so I don’t have to figure it out.

I don’t want to live with a man or give up control. Why would I? Men lie. They lie right to my face, and it’s not hard to spot. Do they think we don’t know?

Accidentally bump into my emotions and I will punch you as hard as I can.

I am the strong one. It’s my job to protect.