liz

“Why does it have to end at all?"

He looks from the road to me, back to the road, his eyebrows cocked in alarm. "Vanessa, when we say goodbye, it won't be painful for you. You'll be ready to be rid of me. The rest of your life will stretch our ahead of you. It'll be exciting for you to move on."

I say nothing and stare out the windshield. I know that if I try to talk or move, I'll start to cry.

"I see so much in store for you," he says. "You're going to do incredible things. You'll write books, traipse arounf the world."

He keeps prophesizing, says I will have had a dozen lovers by the time I'm twenty. ...

He says, "Vanessa, when you look back, you'll remember me as someone who loved you, just one of many. I guarantee your life is going to be so much bigger than me."

I let out a shaky breath. Maybe he's right. Maybe there's safety in what he says, a chance to walk away unscathed and unbound. Is it really impossible to imagine that I might emerge from this worldly and wise, a girl with a story to tell?

Someday when people ask me, "Who was your first lover?" the truth will set me apart. Not some ordinary boy, but an older man: my teacher. He loved me so desperately I had to leave him behind. It was tragic, but I didn't have a choice. That's just how the world works.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa