my life as a vampire

So, hi. My name's Amber, and I'm a vampire. I've, uh, not always been a vampire. Had a mom, dad, cat, dog, brother, the usual. It's just this most recent job which, you know, turned me.

I started out a daywalker, sort of human like everyone else. But there was this "transition", and poof! Going on about three years now, I'm a vamp. Not the typical- chocolate's more my lifeblood. And the whole holy objects thing burning me - meh. They might, but I'm Methodist. A recently warmed covered dish'd burn anyone.

What I'd really like to be is a zombie, though. I see them, shambling off the trains as they arrive. Each 15 minutes or so, at odd times new loads delivered. Plugged into tech, squinting at the sun, the siren song of Starbuck's green mermaid calling them back to a relative state of humanity. I see them. I'd like to join them, but there are layers of office building glass and expectation between us. Plus, it's really hard to suck life from the half-dead.

Right now, the powers-that-be decided to transition me again. I'm a in-between vampire. Cross-trained, they call it. Since the introduction to straight sunlight after three years of denial would cause anyone to burst into flames, the powers placed me in the in-between. Sort of a halfway house for the lunarally enchanted.

Now, some people see me, and some still don't. Work gets done, I wander the halls like a ghost with a more professional intent. Sort of a zombie, sort of a vamp, I guess that makes me an.. apparition. My agenda's transparent, my intent's pure.. if not horrifically corporately-minded.

I heard a new group of headhunters started their way through the ranks. It'd be petty and vindictive of me to approach them, flirt a little, see if I get a nibble. It'd irk the powers, of course, but... the idea makes me just lick my incisors, I have to admit.

Either way, sometime hopefully soon... I'll leave the nights of aloneness and step into morning light, meandering towards the ever-hopeful Finned Lady, finding my soul in the bottom of a sea of chai.

bui-doi no longer: survivors' guilt

A friend, a Marine, texted early in the morning, speaking of guilt. He served his time; it wasn't enough. When he asked for an extension, wanted to return to duty and was told no, the sinister-looks-like-shame whispered into his ear: said none of his training, time, sacrifice meant anything since he didn't die with the rest of his unit in Afghanistan. 

After all, if you are trained to take lives, shouldn't you give yours as payment? If not, did you really complete your mission?

A solider. A survivor. A shushed guilt.

Someone else I know lost his marriage. He tried; she tried. Time passed, and one decided it was easier to be roommates rather than lovers. One thought about working on a marriage; eventually, they settled on divorce instead. Packing up boxes in an Indian summer, he stopped, found a chair. Talked about the mourning of a relationship, wondering why they even did it. What good is a marriage if it ends with a signature and separated CDs?

A geek. A mourner. A socially acceptable failing.

A kid, hormonal and angry, yelled as clothes fell out of an overstuffed closet. Dresses, jackets, coats, waves struck, stifled, beat back by the hanger still in hand. Growling in frustration, she asked why leave a house with closets which actually hold clothes to live in one without locks on the doors. Why make it through the bruises, the nosebleeds at school, and anger just to face this blinding light of life? How is this better?

A child. A remainder. A stifled stigma.


Something coats guilt in darker, slippier things. It's hard to name, to claim, to own. And the coating camouflages this healthy thing until it looks sinister like shame.

But at the core, shame requires some sort of death payment - death of innocence, joy, physical life. A noble idea, to be able to right a wrong with a life; except these wrongs require something more than powerful than death: a life.

The Armed Forces train to preserve life. Marriages begin to solidify, express committed love. And abuse, well, the only good which can come from that is surviving it.

Surviving any traumatic event can be its own bloody battle. Choosing to carry the beautiful weight of memory of lives lost, or homes no long whole, requires a quieter, less obvious glory; a taciturn strength harder, too, as the dead can't speak. And the living have to trust broken others with their pain.

Modern medication and therapy offer to take the edge off these sharp memories, the still-searing, haunting hope it didn't happen, or somehow ended differently. But the survivor still has to do the work; to deal with the bitterness, anger (hurt left to fester) or one of three things happen.

1. You kill yourself. The story ends; your pain wins. Period.

2. You keep needing more and more of the same meds to maintain the same level of sort-of-kind-of-if-you-squint functional.

3. You'll need harder, more and different meds, more, rougher, harsher therapy. All of the meds will require more meds for the side effects; the supports who could hold your pain before will stop, then disappear, all ending in a point of medicated, technically-not-labeled-yet,-but-certainly-not-living denial-controlled zombiehood.

Eventually, option 3 will cycle back to option 1, as shame will choke whatever life still seeps from the drug-haze of swirled emotions when you realize you've purposefully chosen to place those you love in their own mourning cycle.

The best - and no question, hardest, most painful - option to this story is to stand in the pain and sing the stories you had the privilege to be part of. 

Because that's what survivors do.

That's why we need them. And why they must be saved.

To paraphrase Miss Saigon, survivors are the living reminders of all the good we have left to do.

flight from Nashville

You are seductive, and you are bad.

The white-haired man across the room in Nashville continued down the list of what voices say. "An immature boy in a locker room may feel shame, and hear from that - even years later - "You are small. They are large." A girl, molested, learns from that experience shame, and hears, "You are seductive. And. you. are. bad."


Something resonated, deep, shattering in that moment. And my soul was free.

I don't know why I thought I didn't need to hear it. My inner cynic argued my abuser was forgiven. I'd processed, he died; I'd evolved beyond this. Logically, I am 35 years old, and it's been decades. I am free, can defend myself. My job helps many, is unsexy-boring and requires responsibility. It's a grown-up job. I am a grown-up, a functioning, contributing member of society. I'm a lady, dammit.

You are seductive, and you are bad.

In that space, though, filled with hipsters, artists, grandmothers, I sat alone, bared, scared, held.

Men had always watched me - when I ate, while I walked, even sitting and reading. I felt their eyes roam, cling like weights with knife-sharp edges. 

Meeting those eyes meant staring them down. Showing every man he couldn't hurt me. Angry, wounded hazel eyes dared them to make a move. Do something so I can use this new-found power to call others to my aid. Do it. Do it so you can be punished for wanting me.

Or... my eyes lowered from theirs.

A quick smile meant I was friendly, harmless, something soft. Lowered eyes, folded-in shoulders conveyed I am small, won't fight. The quick, nervous movements translated soul messages: Please, please hurt me. I'm not your wife, your girlfriend. Bring on the leather, the anger. Lose those things which restrain you, like responsibility or ethics. Ignore what you've been told an enlightened, acceptable male does.

Be dirty with me. And angry. And hard. I won't tell. I want you to.

I am seductive. And I am a very, very bad girl.

Staring at my Crocs-covered, navy-nailed feet, the man, Al,'s voice echoed like the leftovers of a gong; quieting, exotic-but-familiar. And answering back was someone else in my voice.

You are beautiful. You. are. not. seductive.

You. are. not. bad.

Not a breathless, desperate prayer from a locked closet. Not the angry, empowered shell-person I'd worn since college.

Someone new. More vulnerable and more strong. Less protected and less unfinished. It was a quiet birth, unseen and unrecorded.

The next day, I boarded a plane for my homestate. Job, bills, family waited on the other side. Flight delayed, I ate BBQ and watched people roam halls. Artists, soldiers, fathers strolled into tubes leading to sleek, flying beast airplanes. Professionals Blackberried. Gazes caught, I smiled.

And didn't flick my gaze away.

When he blankly smiled, returning to something more attention-demanding on his screen, I blinked, stunned by the moment. 

No anger, no burn, no anything; but a hazel-eyed, brown-haired chick in an airport.

Not striking, not seducing, but not bad.

Differently beautiful. New.