Vampires

Very little to do with vampires.

People write books

and    make movies

and they show us vampires;

monsters,

beautiful monsters,

who are always thin and fit

with perfect    hair   and a [flat stomach]

and sometimes even

     abs,

hating themselves for the basic act of

eating.

They hate themselves for preying on

humans, so they don't.

They go for animals, and still consider
themselves abhorrent, even though 

humans eat    animals all the time.

This is [romanticized].

Seen as sweet. Tragic. 

Humane.

It is not humane to think you deserve to die
for doing what it takes you keep you alive.

I know there's more to it than

[that], but when things

like this get    popular,   I get really

upset - Twilight nearly

made me apoplectic.

Your vampires will starve themselves for "love",

via pop culture,

and you wonder why so many 

fans of the genre

have anorexia?

     [Bulimia]?

 Dysphoria?

    I was ten when I was introduced to this s**t.

I made myself throw up,

yellowed my teeth,

ripped my stomach lining apart,

ruined my taste buds,

and it wasn't just so that I would do what the vampires

did and looked like the vampires looked

because it was a

good

thing

anymore.

I cut myself to draw 

blood but I was

never brave enough to [bleed].

From there, I had  my mom's

   anxiety and my dad's depression.

As I grew up, the cuts

got deeper and made   less

  sense,   the binging  stopped

because I   couldn't

stand food anymore  without

throwing up    involuntarily,

  and my weight

dropped

and dropped

and dropped

and dropped to something

 approaching what

I considered [reasonable],

appropriate,

pretty.

The purging was constant.

No food - the stuff

I had to eat to convince

my family I was fine was expelled

the night I ate it.

I was empty.

My stomach growling became

a good sign,

   and eventually

when it gave up and stopped,

I counted it as a

triumph.

I have bags under my 

bloodshot eyes

and skin like chalk.

This was the [goal]

at some point before.

I am the vampire.

Reviews

[free will]

wow...that was so honest...you are brave! I really like alot about this; how it's presented, how your wrote this piece, and how you reveal how effed up pop culture/society sees beauty & how it's portrayed. I appreciated reading it...thanx for sharring ;)

[Maglia Weaver Twill]

yeah me too...I like how it looks on the page also because photographs and the visual are so important

[jacob erin-cilberto]

confessional, and effective---
become a monster because we think we already are a monster...
doing that bit to stay perfect looking, which in itself is a really monsterous thing to have to do to be accepted.
and then we cut and bleed, and become.

really like the play on the idea of not eating humans but animals and feeling guilty about that also, even though that is so natual for survival...

guilt makes us do strange things...i am somone who knows that, being raised catholic.

jacob