The Truth in The Lie*

Let me start off with some honesty. Even when a book is “hyped” by authors I love, trust, and admire — I’m skeptical. Going into the novel, My Dark Vanessa, I was doubly skeptical because two of my most favorite, respected authors blurbed it. Both masters of storytelling, Stephen King and Gillian Flynn are two of my knockout authors. So if they say it’s a must-read… it’s a must-read, right?

Well, in this case, yeah, they were right.

There’s a lot I want/can say about this novel and after sitting with all my feelings/emotions about it the last week, I decided to split this essay into two, because there’s so much more than just the content piece for this novel. There is a whole other aspect that demands to be talked about. And we’ll get there. But for now, I want to talk about the takeaways from a novel centered around sexual abuse. A novel that is reminiscent of Lolita, and yet… not.

What I want to say for the TL;DR crowd (and those who just want to know if I liked it or not) is this: It’s not a feel-good book. It’s not a book you close and walk away from with happiness or content. But it’s a brilliant book. It’s an illuminating and thought-provoking book. So if you’re looking for a feel-good book, this isn’t it. If you’re looking to be challenged… to be forced to look inward and also outward at the same time — then you will probably find this book as smart and intriguing as I did.

So without further ado, let’s get into the details (also, spoiler alert. Don’t read if you don’t want various aspects of the novel spoiled).

PSYCHOLOGIC WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

“To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

One of the most brilliant aspects of this novel is how Russell demonstrates grooming and gaslighting. Russell’s depiction of Jacob Strane and how he evolves from cool and collected English teacher to a man who preys on the young is one of the most accurate and effective portrayals of grooming and gaslighting that I’ve ever read. It’s also an instrumental depiction to understand why Vanessa feels and thinks the way she does — and why it’s so difficult for her to reconcile what she experienced with what others call “abuse.” What most people don’t realize (or tend to forget) is that grooming isn’t always about the sexual aspect. It’s about gaining the trust of the victim. Abusers who are skilled at grooming their victims know that it’s all about the small, innocuous but important details.

“He drops his hands from his face. “I’ll be honest with you all,” he says. “I’m fucking tired.”
Across the table, Jenny laughs in surprise. Sometimes teachers joke around in class, but I’ve never heard one say “fuck.” It never occurred to me that a teacher could.
“Do you mind if I use four-letter words?” he asks. “I guess I should have gotten your permission first.” He clasps his hands together, sarcastically sincere. “If my use of colorful language truly offends anyone here, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
No one, of course, says anything.
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

In this scene, Strane is the “cool and hip” teacher. The teacher who treats them like adults instead of like children. For teenagers who are used to being talked to as such… this is an immediate way of gaining trust. Throughout the first half of the book, the level to which Strane grooms Vanessa is insurmountable. He is so gifted at the skill and art of it and I honestly don’t know that Vanessa stood a chance to escape his grasp. Especially when he turns things around and puts it back on her. Here are a few examples:

He says, “That reminded me of you.” Then he reaches behind me and tugs on my ponytail.
Mr. Strane asks, “Is it ok that it reminded me of you?”
I lick my lips, lift my shoulders. “Sure.”
“Because the last thing I want is to overstep.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

“Pointing his pen at the page, Mr. Strane whispers, “Nessa, I have to ask, did you mean to sound sexy here?”
Did I mean to sound sexy? “I don’t know.”
He backs away from me, a tiny movement but one I feel, and he says, “I don’t mean to embarrass you.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

These passages show the subtle but intentional way that Jacob Strane uses grooming and gaslighting to plant seeds into Vanessa’s mind. He’s honest and vulnerable, but apologetic and sincere. He’s also adept at self-deprecation which further supports his grooming in an attempt to seem “different” than what he really is. He even goes as far as to admit that the things he’s doing are “wrong” and “bad” but he allows Vanessa to correct him and thus, in her mind, make it less wrong or bad. After all, “bad” people don’t admit they’re bad right? So if he admits it, he must not be all that bad.

“Beautiful girls don’t fall in love with lecherous old men.”
“You aren’t lecherous.”
“Not yet,” he says, “but if I make another move toward you, I will be.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

“I’m ashamed of how I first touched you,” he says, “back at the beginning of the year. That’s not how I like to behave.”
“I liked it, though.”
“I know you liked it, but wasn’t it confusing?” He turns to me. “It must have been. Having your teacher touch you out of nowhere. I didn’t like doing that, acting without talking it through first. Talking through absolutely everything is the only way to redeem what we’re doing.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Yet, his careful grooming of Vanessa makes it possible for the appearance of control to be in her favor. He constantly asks her if things are “okay” and if she “wants” what is happening to her. He makes it seem like she has the power to say no when of course, she’s been groomed to say yes.

“You want me to kiss you?”
I lift my shoulders and duck my head so my hair falls over my face, too embarrassed to say it.
“Is that a yes?”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Furthermore, he makes her say what she thinks she wants so that down the road, when she inevitably realizes that it might not actually be what she wanted, he can say, “but you said yes.”

“I’m not going to force you if you’re not ready,” he says.
“I’m ready.”
“It doesn’t seem like you are.”
“I am,” I insist.
“I’ll come over.”
“But is that what you want?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it really?”
“Yes.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

The gaslighting starts early on with Vanessa. At the first appearance of “trouble,” Strane has her believing that her part in their relationship is on the same damaging level as his.

“I need you to take this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously.” I try to pull my feet away. He squeezes my ankles so I can’t move.
“I wonder if you really understand the consequences we’d be hit with if we were exposed.”
I start to speak. He cuts me off.
“Most likely, yes, I’d get fired. But you, too, would be sent packing. Browick wouldn’t want you here after a scandal like that.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Later in the book, when Vanessa confronts him about some of their past, Strane shows absolutely no restraint. It is truly one of the most vomit-worthy scenes of gaslighting.

“I lost Browick, my parents’ trust. There were rumors at my new school as soon as I got there. I never even had a chance to be normal. It traumatized me.”
He makes a face at traumatized. “You sound like you’ve been seeing a psychiatrist.”
“I’m just trying to make you understand what I’ve gone through.”
“Ok.”
“Because it isn’t fair.”
“What isn’t fair?”
“That I went through all that and you didn’t.”
“I agree that it’s not fair that you suffered, but me suffering alongside you wouldn’t have made it fair. It only would’ve resulted in more suffering.”
“What about justice?”
“Justice,” he scoffs, his expression suddenly hard. “You’re looking to bring me to justice? To do that, honey, you have to believe that I unduly harmed you. Do you believe that?”
“Because if you believe that,” he continues, “tell me now and I’ll turn myself in. If you think I should go to prison, lose all my freedoms, and be branded a monster for the rest of my life just because I had the bad luck of falling in love with a teenager, then please, let me know right now.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

To be gaslit like this is crazy-making. It is infuriating and breaks down even the most strong-willed people. Because someone who is good at gaslighting makes it feel like you never even knew yourself at all. That the decisions and thoughts and feelings you had were a figment of your imagination. That you’re the crazy one — not them. I feel sad and angry for Vanessa in these passages because she had no chance at all — between the grooming and the gaslighting — she was under Strane’s spell without any real way to break free.

THE POWER OF BEING A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE (AN EXTENSION OF GROOMING)

One of the most dangerous but effective forms of grooming comes in the form of attention. Not just any attention though. The kind of attention that makes someone feel like they are important, worthy, loved, beautiful. The kind of attention that makes someone feel understood.

“Just remember,” he says, “you’re special. You have something these dime-a-dozen overachievers can only dream of.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

It’s the detail within the attention that makes it even more powerful.

“He compared my hair to the color of maple leaves, slipped poetry into my hands — Emily, Edna, sylvia. He made me see myself as he did, a girl with the power to rise with red hair and eat him like air.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

There is something inextricably powerful about being understood. Feeling connected to someone on that deep level.

“I want to be a positive presence in your life,” he says. “Someone you can look back on and remember fondly, the funny old teacher who was pathetically in love with you but kept his hands to himself and was a good boy in the end.”
As soon as he says this, I become someone somebody else is in love with, and not just some dumb boy my own age but a man who has already lived an entire life, who has done and seen so much and still thinks I’m worthy of his love. I feel forced over a threshold, thrust out of my ordinary life into a place where it’s possible for grown men to be so pathetically in love with me they fall at my feet.
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Even as children and young adults — we recognize that connection, maybe even more so at that age where we all feel out of place, lost, and alone. When I read/watch stories that involve skilled sexual predators and their prey — they all come back and say a similar version of “the attention made me feel special.”

WHO OWES WHAT?

As a sexual abuse trauma survivor — I’m acutely aware of the vicious side of being a victim. When I started working with survivors though, I began to see a subset of victims who were faced with more judgment, resentment, and vitriol than most of us. Those who didn’t feel comfortable coming forward about their abuse or trauma. Those who still hadn’t worked through it and as such didn’t even realize or know that they were/are victims. Such is the case for Vanessa and I LOVE that Russell didn’t shy away from showing this side of the issue because it’s often just as damaging to a victim as any other kind of shaming behavior. There’s a growing mentality that I’ve noticed (and is shown in this book) that trauma survivors “owe” it to other survivors to come forward about their abuse. To speak up and use their voice. To be harbingers of truth and if they don’t — well then maybe it wasn’t actually abuse? Maybe they wanted it? Maybe they’re not a victim?

“Trust me, I know how hard this is.” Janine lowers her voice. “I’m a survivor, too.”
That word, with its cloying empathy; that patronizing, flattening word that makes my whole body cringe no matter the context — it pushes too far. My lips curl up over my teeth as I spit out, “You don’t know anything about me,” and I hang up the phone, bolt across the lobby to the empty staff bathroom, and throw up into a toilet, curling my arms around the bowl until the wave passes, my stomach empties out, and I’m coughing up bile.
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

“It’s selfish to watch the rest of us not be believed and do nothing to help. If you came forward, no one would be able to ignore you. They’d have to believe you and then they’d believe us, too.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

“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.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

As both a trauma survivor and someone who works with trauma survivors — I want to say it LOUD and CLEAR: we don’t owe anyone anything.

And by insinuating that we do, the shame, blame, and self-hatred that already lives within us became an infestation that takes years and years to recover from.

“I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

What was done TO us and taken FROM us was enough… no, we don’t owe anyone anything. Sometimes the best we can do is survive until the next day. And that’s okay.

THE WORDS WE USE WHEN WE TALK ABOUT TRAUMA

Abuse is a loaded word. Heavy, full of sorrow, sadness, and grief. But at the end of the day — it’s also not nearly a big enough word to encompass all the ways people are traumatized. For some survivors, the word is accurate and depicts their experiences, but for others, the word can be just as triggering as the trauma they suffered in the first place. For some survivors, it’s also confusing. It implies that their trauma was done to them without their consent… that they were physically hurt or forced into something. For survivors like Vanessa, this view of abuse doesn’t make sense with her experiences. She didn’t experience it against her will. She wasn’t forced into it. So of course, in her mind, she doesn’t believe that her trauma fits into what the world sees as “abuse.”

He’s disgusted at me. I know what he thinks, what anyone would think — that i’m an apologist, an enabler — but I’m defending myself just as much as I am Strane. Because even if I sometimes use the word abuse to describe certain things that were done to me, in someone else’s mouth the word turns ugly and absolute. It swallows up everything that happened. It swallows me and all the times I wanted it, begged for it. Like the laws that flatten all the sex I had with Strane before I turned eighteen into legal rape — are we supposed to believe that birthday is magic? It’s as arbitrary a marker as any. Doesn’t it make sense that some girls are ready sooner?
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

This is why the words we use with survivors are just as important as the way we use them. If we could extend more compassion and understanding rather than lumping trauma survivors into “groups” of abused populations, perhaps survivors would feel more comfortable processing their trauma. They would be able to find the common ground between their experiences and the words people use to talk about those experiences.

YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE

I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies that depict therapy. I’ve been in a lot of therapy, myself. I’m pretty confident in what I would call “realistic” therapeutic scenes. In My Dark Vanessa, there are a few scenes that are rare gems when it comes to therapy depiction.

“Don’t apologize.” She reads for a moment longer, then sets the phone facedown on the little table between us and looks me in the eye. Asks me where I want to start.
At the end of the hour, she calls me brave — for confiding, for trusting. “I’m honored,” she says, “that you chose to share this with me.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

I love this scene because it reminds me of what we were trained to do as coaches. Vanessa’s therapist doesn’t immediately rush in and say, “okay, tell me everything from the start” or “well, how did it get started?”

She asks Vanessa where she wants to start. Which is what we ALL should be doing when talking to a trauma survivor about their trauma. Meeting them where they’re at.

Secondly, before Vanessa’s therapist says anything else, she validates her bravery in sharing her story. But what’s absolutely beautiful is that she doesn’t validate her bravery in “telling the truth” and she doesn’t patronize her with “wow, that must have been so tough.” She validates Vanessa in the most basic, human way of connection, “Thank you for trusting me.”

“It’s the same with the nightmares — they come in waves, brought on by something not always easy to predict. I know to stay away from any books or movies set in a boarding school, but then I’ll be blindsided by something as benign as a reference to maple trees, or the feeling of flannel against my skin.
“I sound like I’m crazy,” I say.
“no, not crazy,” ruby says. “traumatized.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Just light gaslighting — triggers can throw us into a tailspin about our own stability. We think we know what sets us off and choose to then avoid it, but the truth is that when we’re traumatized, even the most minute details can set us off. And it’s not always consistent. But the way Vanessa’s therapist handles this is an exceptional example of validation. My mentor always says that the reactions we have as trauma survivors are not wrong, crazy, or dumb. We’re having a normal reaction to something abnormal. I see that within the exchange between Vanessa and her therapist.

There’s also a powerful exchange in which Vanessa’s therapist kindly and gently offers Vanessa a different view of the situation to consider. And it’s a turning point for her. It’s the moment I think changes Vanessa (and it reminds me of all of the “a-ha” moments I had during my recovery… more often than not a result of someone offering a gentle view to consider).

“I know how this all sounds,” I say. “I’m sure you think I’m terrible.”
“I don’t think you’re terrible,” she says quietly, still gazing down at her lap.
“Then what do you think?”
She takes a deep breath, meets my eyes. “Honestly, Vanessa, what I’m hearing is that he was a very weak man, and even as a girl, you knew you were stronger than him. You knew he couldn’t handle being exposed and that’s why you took the fall. You’re still trying to protect him.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

TIME DOESN’T HEAL ALL, BUT IT HELPS WITH CLARITY

What I love perhaps most of all about My Dark Vanessa is the realistic way time plays a part in the novel. Russell shows Vanessa at age fifteen and at age thirty-two and to be honest, everything and nothing has changed which is so similar to trauma survivors I’ve met in my life. Vanessa struggles to make sense of her past, reconcile the future, and honestly, just keep her head above water in the present (which is what most of us are doing when we haven’t fully dealt with our trauma). But when she’s forced to look at the deepest parts of her trauma and her relationship with Strane, she realizes just how frozen in time she’s been with her trauma.

“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.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?”
I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy.
“It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

That’s a really, really tough truth to face. But so is the fact that when we become aware and accept what has happened to us… what has transpired over the entire course of our lives, we start to see the other side. The possibilities. The person we have not yet become because we haven’t had a chance to truly blossom.

“Do you remember yourself at five?” I shake my head. “What about eight?” she asks. “Ten?”
“I don’t think I remember anything about myself that happened before him.” I let out a laugh, rub my face with both hands. “That’s so depressing.”
“It is,” Ruby agrees. “But those years aren’t lost. They’ve just been neglected for a while. You can recover yourself.”
“Like find my inner child? Oh god. Kill me.”
“Roll your eyes if you need to, but it’s worth doing. What’s the alternative?”
I shrug. “Continue to stumble through life feeling like an empty husk of a person, drink myself into oblivion, give up.”
“Sure,” she says. “You could do that, but I don’t think that’s where this is going to end for you.”
— My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

My Kindle device tells me that I have 234 highlights in my ebook version of My Dark Vanessa. I’m not surprised… I had to cut several passages from this essay to make it more digest-able and avoid spoiling everything in the book. As both a trauma survivor and a novelist, I find Kate Elizabeth Russell one hell of a writer — her ability to weave truth and fiction together seamlessly, yet leave enough room for the reader to come to their own conclusions. In fact, I think she says it best when she says:

“I think any reaction to Vanessa and her choices are valid, whether people relate to her, empathize with her, or are disappointed and frustrated with her. All those reactions are important, and I hope readers walk away from the experience questioning what is the best thing to put a survivor through. Is [it] the horror of a trial, especially knowing how few rapists are actually convicted? These are really tough questions, and there are no easy answers.”

— KATE ELIZABETH RUSSELL

P.S. The title is a riff off of a powerful quote by Stephen King:

“Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.”