My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

It’s both creepy and out of my control, this ability I have to notice so much about other people when I’m positive no one notices anything at all about me.

Afterward, my teeth won’t stop chattering. I want to be fearless, to smirk and say something flirty and coy, but all I can do is wipe my nose on my sleeve and whisper, “I feel really weird.”

the teeth chattering

Strane says I need to contextualize my reluctance to grow up, that everyone my age is drawn to self-victimization. “And that mentality is especially difficult for young women to resist,” he says. “The world has a vested interest in keeping you helpless.” He says as a culture we treat victimhood as an extension of childhood. So when a woman chooses victimhood, she is therefore freed from personal responsibility, which then compels others to take care of her, which is why once a woman chooses victimhood, she will continue to choose it again and again.

I hate that he is right. Narcissistic pedos like him love philosophy because they take that to impress their victims

Sometimes it really does feel like a curse, the meaning I can attach to anything.

For the rest of the semester, I let my pot run out, stop drinking so much. It happens by accident, a realization that I’ve been sober for a week and a half without even trying. I do the dishes, clean the bathroom. I even do laundry on a regular basis and don’t let it get to the point where I have to wear bikini bottoms as underwear.

Healthiest part of the whole book

He forgives me, says it’s all right, then reaches over and pats my knee, until he realizes what he’s doing, stops, and curls his hand into a fist.

I HATE THIS MAN

“I just feel . . .” I press the heels of my hands into my thighs. “I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.”

Where can I get this tattooed

She stands over me as I say I’m sad, I’m so sad, small, simple words, the only ones that make sense as I clutch my chest like a child and point to where it hurts.

Learned in therapy that when you begin to describe your feelings about events in simplistic terms, no longer complex words, it shows you’re healing

There must be a point where you’re allowed to be defined by something other than what he did to you.