I know this is a site for posting things relating to social and global consciousness and new agey type of things and I have yet to do that.  I've been posting about my mental and emotional health and focusing on myself.  There's a reason I do this, though.

I firmly believe that to change the world, people have to change themselves and that's what my journey is about right now; changing, bettering myself so that I can benefit the community later.

The relationship with Chris was extremely damaging and destructive. The tremendous emotional pain I have suffered as a result has forced me to take a closer look at past relationships and my own emotional deficiencies.

Chris is not healthy. At last count he was working on it but he has a long way to go. Maybe in the course of it, he will learn that even though you can push through some things, they still scar you, still affect you and how you deal with related life circumstances. And maybe then he will understand how deep my scarring myst be to render me so dysfunctional. Maybe he'll see the ways in which he contributed to my damage and his own level of toxicity.

I'm not healthy either and I think it will be a long time before I am. I may never be. Emotionally, I'm a mess and I always end up in relationships that are a mess. The emotional pain has become unbearable. I simply cannot stand it anymore.

When our relationship was good, it was because he was pretending to be somebody that he's not. I truly did love him but he turned out to be an illusion. I'm still trying to understand why I needed him so badly and why I couldn't let him go even when the relationship becan causing more pain and loneliness than happiness.

I need time and space. Lots of it. I can't be his friend or anything else to him right now, not that he wants me to be. I don't have the emotional resources left. I have nothing more for him. I don't even think I like him as a persoon, let alone have any other feelings for him.

Now that I'm on disability, my priorities are my kids and my emotional development (i.e., my therapy). Drugs alone aren't enough. They keep me stable but they don't give me the tools I need to cope emotionally with the world at large. I'm not working at the bakery anymore because I need my days for my therapy and group. Unfortunately, my regular therapist is no longer with my clinic so I'm on the waiting list for a new one and the group I was trying to get into is defunct so I have to find other groups that I can benefit from. But that's what I'm doing. My boss told me I can go back to the bakery when I'm ready so I'm happy and relieved about that.

I'm still angry at Chris, primarily because he hasn't returned the hardware he took from me and what that implies about the kind of person he is, and secondarily because even in the end, I was the best person I could be towards him and he shit all over me just like everyone else which also implies the kind of person he is. Maybe ultimately I'm angry at myself for being taken in and actually believing in him. I'm trying to scratch my way back up from the bottom, but I think the bottom is where I'm going to stay for a very long time.

Note: The contents of this article are based on research (which is by no means complete) and personal experience.

 Thus far, I have been able to separate Emotional Vampires into two separate categories as follows. There may be more, but these are the types I’ve found so far. I am not categorizing by feeding practices, but by types of emotional feeders.

Type 1 The Emotional Terrorist

I refer to these types of Emotional Vampires as Emotional Terrorists. They not only feed on your emotions, but they emotionally abuse you as well. These are the better-known and more easily discernable type of emotional feeder. These vampires are usually severely depressed. They are needy, clingy, whiny and constantly in need of emotional support yet have not the resources to return such support. Almost every conversation, no matter how well it begins, will end up with the victim trying to alleviate the vampire’s severe depression.

Any attempt to make the Emotional Terrorist feel better backfires as the ET will twist around any well meaning attempts and words in such a way as to enable an even more remorseful or self-degrading reply. Relationships with this type drag the victim down into a similar depression, which can be debilitating. Relationships are also often stormy and filled with conflict, jealousy and insecurity on both parts. The Emotional Terrorist doesn’t take responsibility for the conflicts, always turning the blame around on their victim regardless of how ridiculous the reasoning may seem to the rational mind. The victim, however, is rarely rational in these situations.

ETs often display a Martyr Syndrome type of personality. In their view, they are never the victimizer, they are always the victim. Often, Type 1 is obsessively pre-occupied with their victim and resort to stalker-like behavior, which can intensify and continue long after the relationship has ended. I don’t believe these vampires are in control of their behavior and I doubt the majority of them see themselves as the emotionally abusive types they are. These vampires are extremely destructive to themselves and their victims emotionally and psychologically.

So far, the best way I have found to rid yourself of this type of vampire is to tell them you no longer want anything to do with them, cut off all communication and cleanse your aura of any psychic links connecting you with them. Don’t worry about trying to spare their feelings; you can’t. This takes great emotional strength as the victim tends to retain a certain amount of vulnerability to this type of predation. Generally, it has been my experience that these types will continue to obsess over the victim for unbelievable lengths of time (so far, 2 years and counting though this may be influenced by the other party’s own type of vampirism ... see Type 2).

Type 2 The Emotional Predator

I call these types Emotional Predators because, unlike the ET, there comes a point when they become aware of what they are doing and intentionally hone their skills and feed in the following manner. The emotional predator type will manipulate your emotions just as the Emotional Terrorist does but there is a vital difference. Where the ET feeds primarily from fear, sympathy, anger and emotional pain, the EP feeds primarily from feelings of lust and love.

These types are usually very analytical and will use their talents at reading people to determine what type of personality is most appealing to their target. Once they’ve done this, they will emphasize such traits and behaviors while repressing those that aren’t as attractive to the type of person they intend to feed from. This stage of the relationship can be seen as a type of hunt or game.

The next stage begins when the target professes deep emotional feelings towards the EP. EPs who have developed their skills can tell beforehand when this stage has been reached. Many times, the EP will feel as though they return the targets affections but I believe this to be just a reflection of the target’s emotions rather than any real feeling on the part of the vampire. It all sounds rather boring but believe me, it’s not. EPs feed on the emotional intensity of new relationships and the challenge of making someone fall in love with them. When the relationship balances out and becomes familiar and more secure, that’s when they stop feeling what they thought they felt to begin with and that’s when they leave.

Of course, the lead in to the break up and the break up itself is pretty intense, but this isn’t the type of emotion the EP is looking for and will just reinforce their state of cold indifference. Speaking of cold indifference, the EP is usually exactly that. This is usually descriptive of their true feelings and personality. It is my theory that EPs feed as they do because they themselves are emotional voids and rarely feel this type of intense love and sexual attraction on their own; therefore they feed from those that do to fill that void in themselves.

I also theorize that EPs tend to be empaths for this reason; since they are unable to feel their own emotions, they develop the ability naturally to feel very acutely the emotions of others. EPs that have honed their skills and become aware of their feeding habits recognize that they do not truly feel for their target what the target feels for them. Many times, they are also aware that the target’s feelings aren’t real, either. Merely what they were manipulated by the EP into feeling.

The state of emotional numbness serves to make the EP feel their separateness from other vampires and mundanes even more acutely that other vampires. It is rare for the EP to truly feel love and when they do, they don’t experience it as other people. They experience it as a type of knowing more so than a feeling. They know they love, but they do not generally and consistently feel love. Do not, however, equate this emotional lacking as a lack of conscience or compassion.

Aware Emotional Predators do not do what they do because they want or like to hurt people, though someone always gets hurt. They do what they do because they have to. At the other end of the spectrum we have unaware Emotional Predators. Unlike the aware EP, the unaware doesn’t actively hunt or manipulate the victim’s emotions. EPs tend to have a love me or hate me type of personality and I’ve known unaware EPs who have never been in a relationship that didn’t lead to the victim falling in love with the EP. This doesn’t apply to people the EP is attracted to outside of a relationship.

The unaware EP tends to think they’re in love with their victim in every relationship; convincing themselves they love someone who loves them or someone they know they can’t have. Where the aware EP manipulates another’s emotions, the unaware will manipulate his or her own. Where the aware EP can have pretty much anyone they want via this manipulative skill, the unaware finds themselves lusting after those they can’t have because they haven’t developed this skill. In these cases, the unaware feeds on their own tormented lusts and desires.

I believe Unaware Emotional Predation is an early stage of development that leads to Aware Emotional Predation in types who have a strong inward focus, analytical ability and who have a drive to evolve beyond their corrupt state into something more beautifully devastating and dangerously powerful; those who strongly desire to fulfill their potential as predators and higher spiritual states. We have a legacy and strive endlessly to fulfill it.  Unaware Emotional Predation is a lower more corrupt state of being.

When Emotional Terrorists and Emotional Predators Collide

Some of the most intense relationships you can imagine occur when EPs and ETs feed from each other. When this happens, you essentially have two emotional vampires who feed off different types of intense emotions, each manipulating the emotions of the other to satisfy this need. This is not pretty. This can result in a type of symbiotic relationship that can prove to be dangerous and incredibly destructive, particularly to the EP. The ET, by the very nature of their needs, will not let go of the EP and the EP, by nature of their natural cold indifference, try to remove themselves the only way they know how; quickly and cruelly. But this method only serves to further feed the ET and increase their hold.

The bonds forged by this type of relationship are stronger and much longer lasting than the bonds between vampires and mundanes. Even when the relationship has ended, EPs will find themselves returning to the ET as the source of a quick and sure feed. In my personal opinion, starvation is the better option.

I don't believe that love just stops. I believe that when you really, truly love someone, you always do. But I also know that when you love someone you don't just up and leave them because things get rough. You try. You stand by them through the bad and the good. When you love someone, they can depend on you. When you love someone, you put their needs before your own; you do what's best for them. When you love someone, you aren't selfish because love isn't selfish. When you love someone, you make a committment to them and you stand by that committment. When you love someone, you make sacrifices for them. Love isn't easy and it doesn't just happen. It takes work. That's the non-romantic realistic side of it. When you love someone, it's for keeps. You don't abandon them. You don't run out on them when their back's turned. You don't hurt them needlessly. When you love someone, you treat them with honor and respect.

Actions speak louder than words. When you love someone, you don't just say it, you show it.

"I'm impossible to forget, but hard to remember." - Claire, Elizabethtown.

What does it mean to be one of the Substitute People?  It means that we are forver living in the shadow of and being compared to that one idealized man or woman that got away.  Have you ever noticed how men always seem to have some love of their life, usually from the time of their late teens, that they have never quite let go of? Someone they have always been unable to move beyond?  They always tell us about these women as if to say, "I'm with you but my heart is still back there."  And we know that we can't replace these women and that the men we're with are just looking for another one just like her, that we will never be that one, but we stay anyway.  We're just a pit stop along a really long road. 

Sometimes, they even marry us but their heart never really belongs to us.  They're never really ours and it seems as though they don't ever really want us to be thiers.  Not in a real, meaningful way because they know we're not her and they seem to have the idea that if they keep looking, they'll find her again.  That's what it means to be one of the Substitute People; never having a true love of your own and never being the true love of another.

I'm one of the Substitute People and I always have been.  I probably always will be.

I seek only to be with you; to mean something more than what I am here and now.  My life has been a journey to this time, this place and yet my future is unknown.  I can't let go yet I'm not sure I can hold on.  There has to be some small piece of magic somewhere seemingly insignificant yet holding within it the power and force of a thousand suns.  If only I could find it.  If only I had the time.  

I'm sleepwalking and yet I don't want to wake up.  Not yet.  Close the circle and I'll still be here waiting for you.  My entire life has been a search for you, for that one who would complete me and bring me home finally.  Don't take it away from me.  I ask for so little.  Only to be with you, only to make things right again.  Just let me see the sun again.