Kamiko’s Reviews > My Dark Vanessa > Status Update

“… a woman who used to be a girl. i’m real too. have i ever thought that about myself so plainly before? it’s such a small revelation… and for the first time, i can imagine how it might feel to not be his, not to be him. to feel that maybe i could be good.”

“i see now what should have been obvious, that she was lost and looking for a way to understand it all— him, herself, what he did, and why it still means so much despite it being so seemingly small.”

“‘what could we have done? we were just girls.’

i know what she means— not that we were helpless by choice, but that the world forced us to be. who would have believed us, who would have cared?”

“so when my mother asks me to forgive her, i say, ‘of course i do’. i don’t tell her again she couldn’t have stopped it, that it wasn’t her fault and that she didnt deserve it. i swallow those words instead. maybe somewhere deep in my belly, they’ll take root and go.”

“i ignore what hangs in the air above us, my anger, my humiliation and hurt. they seem like the real monsters, all those unspeakable things.”

“somehow i sensed what was coming for me even then. really though, what girl doesn’t? it looms over you, that threat of violence. they drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. you grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen.”

“…it feels like observing someone else cry, a woman playing the role of me. i remember my college roommate bridget saying, after i first told her about strane, ‘your life is like a movie’. she didn’t understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn’t agree to. she meant it as a compliment. isn’t that what all teenage girls want? endlessly bored, aching for an audience.”

“i don’t say it, but sometimes i feel like that’s exactly what he’s doing to me—breaking me apart, putting me back together as someone new.”

“i can’t focus on what is happening, my mind so far away it might as well belong to someone else.”

“for a second my brain short circuits entirely and im as good as dead. moments of nothing pass, a static screen, a wall of noise. then i come roaring back to life with a harsh, choked sound—not quite a laugh, not quite a cry.