Immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
That’s the first thing you learn when you become a vampire. That, and well, the Twilight fans who follow you around in hopes of seeing you sparkle in sunlight are extremely overrated.
In the beginning, when you first get Turned, it’s all fun and games. You’re pleasantly surprised to learn that you’re now extremely strong and agile. You can perform all sorts of neat tricks: jumping from the roof of one house to another, adding a backflip here and there; who wouldn’t want that?
But I guess becoming a vampire is like agreeing to the terms of an occupation. You get the employee benefits: immense strength, a supermodel complexion, and immortality, but not without the liabilities: no family, an inability to sleep, and a life of dreadful solitude (vampires aren’t especially social species, as I’ve discovered). And that’s just to name a few.
Ultimately, the worst part of it is living forever. You probably think I’m crazy; I mean, who wouldn’t love to have an infinite amount of time to explore the world, to try daredevil feats like skydiving, and to never have to fear death?
The thing is though, immortality gets to you. Day after day, year after year, century after century, your life blends together in one continuous period of time without any highs or lows. Like a palette of bright colours unceremoniously mixed together until they become a dull gray, your non-existent soul is stretched too thin and you lose the ability to feel emotions and enjoy life. Why?
It’s simple: when you’re mortal, you treasure life in all its limited glory. But as soon as you know you’re going to live forever, you have no reason to value what you have. If rarity is a way to measure value, and you have an infinite number of years ahead of you, then every upcoming year of your life is worth nothing.
Ironically, you could say that immortality sucks the life out of you (no pun intended).
Maybe some of the things I’m saying surprise you. I blame young adult literature nowadays, promoting being a blood drinking monster rather than a normal person. It’s been around nine years since teenage girls started believing that vampires sparkle. Well, they don’t. If anything, my life is the opposite of sparkly. Just think about it. I’m sixteen. Forever. Can you imagine being a teenager for all eternity?
As if hormones between the ages of twelve to twenty aren’t enough, I experience them daily. Not just the horrible mood swings, but also the constant craving for food. Human cravings consist of hamburgers and chips, while mine consist of blood. And although satisfying my thirst feels amazing, from the point of my conscience, it feels horrible. I used to be vegetarian, so believe me when I say that the prospect of having to turn a human into a fellow immortal gives me no joy.
I had a family, you know. I get it. I understand all the pain people go through just so that I can satiate my hunger. When I first disappeared, my parents didn’t believe I’d been murdered. For another six months, my sister would wait for me to come home, maybe praying that I’d just decided to travel the entire world without telling anyone.
Little did she know, I’d become a monster and would never return.
So trust me: if you can take one piece of knowledge away from this rant, it’s that the life of a vampire is a rough one. It gets boring after a while because the days are all the same, and there are an infinite number of them to drag through.
Do yourself a favour. Don’t do what I did. Don’t stay out past midnight, don’t go out alone, and if it’s the daytime and you see a pale and potentially sparkly creature following you, run. Run as fast as you can.
(But, then again, with our supernatural speed, there’s no way you’ll outrun us.)
