Coraline - Violet Baudelaire

Coraline

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"There's no happy endings, not here and not now. This tale is all sorrows and woes. You might dream that justice and peace win the day. But that's not how the story goes." 

 Coraline Jones is broken inside, only instead of hiding it with a smile, she hides it with a scowl. Pain becomes rage, fiery, white hot rage at her parents, her peers, and the whole damn world. She's silently screaming, and people continue to ask her why. "Well" she wants to say "it's hard to be happy when whatever soul you once had inside of you is just jagged, razor sharp pieces of glass from the destroyed picture of who you used to be. It's hard to smile when those shattered fragments are constantly cutting at your insides, shredding your guts, trying to poke through your skin, giving you scars that no one can see and that no one believes in, no matter how real they are. It's hard to be pleasant when your brain is fucked up and your childhood was torn away in a nightmarish ordeal and you're constantly in pain. But what do I know?" She doesn't say that, of course, it would be too damaging to her father's oh so perfect reputation, and an insult to all the 'hard work' her mother has put in to raise her. As if either of them give a damn about her. If they really cared, they would see that everything inside of her is crying out for help. If they really cared, they would have believed her when she tried to tell them, again and again, that she has been ruined and she cannot put herself back together alone.

Coraline does not cry when her father is found dead in their own apartment. For once, the anger and pain she has felt every day since she was eleven is gone, and all that is left is numbness. He was her father, and yet he wasn't, not really. Not in the things that counted, like providing his child love and security or even giving her a moment of his attention once in a while. Coraline does not cry when she is told her mother is missing, and a potential suspect in the case of her father's death. Why should she spare her tears on people who had never allowed her them before, who had told her to stop crying and get over it any time she came to them with one of her numerous wounds? The death of a parent is a sorrowful thing to most, but to Coraline, it's just another uprooting of her life, another twist of the knife that was shoved in her back years ago. Even with metaphorical blood trickling down her side and people offering empty condolences, she holds her head high. After all, she's already destroyed and has been for a long time now. She doubts that she can break anymore than she already has. 

When her father's childhood best friend Beatrice takes her into the Baudelaire home as her new legal guardian, it only proves what Coraline suspected all along; that her parents were neglectful and unloving, and that her childhood was anything but normal. It's no wonder, she laughs bitterly, that she's so messed up. Yet the Baudelaires don't seem to mind her many faults and wounds, and embrace her with friendship and gentleness. How strange it feels, to actually be listened to. They're so good, the Baudelaires, so smart and good and perhaps if Coraline was raised with the same love that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny's parents show them, she would know how to talk to her new guardians, to tell them what happened to her and ask for the help she so desperately needs to deal with her trauma. But keeping her feelings inside and masking them with anger has become a habit, and not one easily broken. So life goes on, and Coraline goes on with it, spending a single summer at the Baudelaire mansion, the most at peace she has felt in years, before it all goes so, so wrong. When everything goes up in flames, it burns away any calming of Coraline's anger and reignites her belief that the world is a cruel, merciless place that snatches anything good from her hands without care. 

See, when she said she couldn't break anymore than she already has, she was wrong. Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire going up in smoke fragments something inside of her, causing more broken pieces poking away at her, more pain, and it's only the tip of the iceberg. Coraline and the three Baudelaire children have been set on a path they never would have chosen for themselves, a path of villains, and secrets, and loss, so much loss. Wasn't it enough that Coraline had to have her innocence torn from her so young? Why did it have to happen to her friends, the cleverest and kindest people her ruined soul has ever been in contact with, too? Seen as little more than burdens, tools, or money to lust after, and pursued by death and fire, the four children struggle on, hearts heavy with grief, heads held high, because there was nothing else they could do but keep them up. Some say that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Coraline says that's bullshit. What doesn't kill you makes you angry and in pain, unable to trust, unable to go a day without looking over your shoulder, unable to live. The universe wants to grind her shattered innards to dust and bury her six feet under, so she keeps on kicking and screaming so it doesn't get the chance. She won't give anyone that satisfaction. She may be completely fucked, but if she's going down, she'll drag them down with her. "Oh but Coraline," well meaning fools like to say, "you may be broken, but it isn't as bad as you think. Broken pieces can be arranged into beautiful mosaics. The most magnificent things in this world are broken. Don't you see, you're a masterpiece." Coraline can't even justify them with a roll of her eyes. She's not a fucking mosaic, damnit. She may be an artist, and a macabre one at that, but that doesn't mean she wants her feelings and her mental health to be treated the same way art is. She's a person, not a piece of paper lathered in paint. Don't you dare romanticize her trauma, don't you dare call her a masterpiece. Coraline Jones knows what she is, and she knows what her life has been, better than anyone else ever can. After everything she's been through, Coraline has earned the right to hate her life, thank you very much.