#mdv

There are so many people who claim to 'sympathize' with Dolores Haze, Vanessa Wye and Laura Palmer from Lolita, My Dark Vanessa, and Twin Peaks respectively—say things along the lines of how they would've saved them, and claim to love them, but when faced with a teenaged girl who actively displays symptoms of CSA/grooming/unfamiliar coping mechanisms and romanticizes what may or may not be their real life living situation as a coping mechanism for it/or for the pressures patriarchy puts on young girls, they adultify them and treat them like shit and say abhorrent things to them and call them paedophiles and tell them they are enablers of abuse and yadda yadda. You guys suck.

I've been re-reading My Dark Vanessa recently, since writing that post about my English teacher and how he kissed me in his office when I was 16. Some of the similarities between what happened to me and how Vanessa feels towards her teacher, Jacob Strane, are eerie, and I think that speaks to how universal these experiences are, and how many older men take advantage of young girls, whether it's emotional or physical, or both. It's like being connected by a shared wound. I see myself in Vanessa and the book's writer Kate Elizabeth Russell, and so many other girls and women have written in the comments on Russell's blog about how they feel the same. How they went through exactly the same thing when they were 14 and 15 and 16. And isn't it both a depressing and comforting thought. That you'll never meet most of these women but you're connected to them anyway.