Emotional Vampires

(Originally posted at The Mess That Is Me April 2011)

The world is fascinated with vampires right now. The Twilight series, True Blood, Kim Harrison, Laurel K. Hamilton, Anne Rice, Buffy and Angel, all of the neck biting, blood sucking fantasies that can be had are readily available. Television shows such as CSI have done episodes pitting vampires against werewolves in century long battles with mundane endings. People have their teeth cosmetically altered while some even go so far as drinking actual blood. That part gives me the heebie jeebies.

Still, I can understand the romantic edge to it. Vampires are seductive. Anne Rice's Lestat was a selfish, powerful vampire with a raging libido and people swooned to give him whatever he wanted. Vampires are erotic, mystical. They are also fun to watch in movies nowadays. The special effects of Van Helsing are amazing to behold. Spike was my all-time favorite vamp. His wit and humanity kept the shows he was on worth watching in my opinion and he should have sunk his teeth (and other things) into Buffy from the get go. Still, not all vampires are sexy. There's another kind of life-sucking villain that's been around since Cain and Abel shared the same crib. They don't drain you of blood, but they do sap the energy right out of you, leaving you an exhausted husk of what you once were. They steal your time, your focus, and precious minutes on your cell phone plan. There is nothing seductive about these vampires, and while they aren't immortal, time with them feels like an eternity. "But I can't stand the smell of sheep. You have to feed them, and move them around and they're the dumbest animals.” Cain said at the dinner table. "God always did like you best. You always get the better gifts." These are what I call emotional vampires and nothing in their life ever seems to go right. They are hypochondriacs of the soul and gloom and despair are their daily cloaks. Dark clouds follow them on the brightest of days and hurricane winds always seem to blow them from one crisis to another. Their happiness is only found in being miserable. Eeyore is their role model and they see Richard Lewis as a philosopher. They live their life by the words "If only....” If only they had more money. If only their parents had been famous. If only Ben & Jerry's hadn't discovered Chunky Monkey. They wallow in the blame game pointing fingers at everyone while forgetting the fingers pointing back at them. They need Prozac, or at the least a fifth of Maker's Mark. I know people have rough times, but they are just that. Times. Periods with a beginning and an end. Emotional vampires have no such brevity of woe-is-me. It's a constant cry of despair with even the Fates against them. It's time the Scooby Gang got busy and drove their stakes into the heart of the whininess of emotional vampires. We will not stand idly by while these energy sucking creatures waste another second of time that cannot be captured. Grow up or shut up is the cry that rings from the hero's mouth to the lifeless, clueless souls to hear. Get a grip, get a life, get cable television! Life is not a morass of misery dumped upon your unsuspecting spirit. It's a celebration as you join other people in the festival we call Life. Emotional vampires focus on themselves and only look at others to see what it is they don't have. Stake them out of your life or better yet, stake them to an anthill so they have something to really whine about. If I groan when I see a person calling, I delete the number, which works for me because I don't answer numbers that aren't already programmed in. I also never listen to voicemail. I think there are eighty messages on my phone now and I'm actually surprised people still call me. I'd rather give blood than allow myself to be drained by the constant morose bellyaching of others. I'm prone to surround myself with Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet and avoid Eeyore and Rabbit. My only response to emotional vampires is "Suck this!"