My Vampiric Awakening by Lys Serra

Unlike some awakening stories, mine did not unfold all at once, but rather in various stages across my lifetime and as such, like with many vampires, my story is still unfolding, still being written. When I think back on my awakening, I think back on those times that stuck out to me as different, moments in time where observations became too big to ignore, and patterns and behaviors that were later classified into descriptors and identity. I share this to add to the rich tapestry of voices and experiences on what it means to awaken. As where each of our stories are very different, they are all equally valid.

 

Early Years

As a very young child I clearly remember being chastised for reading (and vocalizing) our neighbor’s thoughts (much to his shock). Ever the inquisitive mind, I sought to understand how things and people worked, often using energy as a tool for such discovery. Many times it was reported to me that I could drain or energize the people around me, and as such, had to rein in and not use whatever it was that I was using. I learned that I was too different to be accepted, so I learned to hide and ignore much of who I was.

I stumbled across books on witchcraft around 5^th grade and started to explore magic as well as spiritual and energy work. I practiced Harner-inspired techniques and went down the rabbit hole with authors like Paul Huson and David Conway. I made so many mistakes and learned so many difficult lessons, but I also learned how valid and powerful magic and my own abilities could be. I learned that working with energy was as easy for me as breathing, it was simply another language in which I was fluent.

Fast-forward to high school where I begun to recognize how magnetic I was. Strangers came up to me all time with a variety of motives but always as if drawn by an unknown force, acquaintances needed to be in my presence, and bullies obsessively needed to fixate on my every move, decision, and word. I still received reports and negative comments about how folks would feel drained or energetically/emotionally altered after spending time in my presence.

 

Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

In college I was introduced to LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing) and White Wolf’s Vampire the Masquerade. For my peers it was a fun game of dress up, acting, intrigue, deceit, and fantasy. For me it was a way to work through my experiences, my unacknowledged desires, and sense of self. I felt like a freak for taking aspects of the game seriously, for really pretending that I was an actual vampire. I seriously questioned my sanity while feeling very much at home. At night I pretended I was an undead creature of the darkness, and by day I was surfing the internet for answers to my burning questions. Were vampires real? And could I be one? I spent hours searching, initially going through pages discussing psychology and physiology, then pages dedicated to New Age ideas about self-defense and harmful entities, and then I found the forums and pages where people were talking like all of this was real. They discussed topics about the need to feed, both energetically and from blood, about experiences and thoughts that I had long considered unique and bizarre. I felt like I had found something that I wasn’t supposed to, but it was something that spoke to me so deeply that I could not tear myself away.

I never told anyone about this because I didn’t want to be locked up or ostracized any more than I already was. I lived in a rural area, so there were no goth clubs, no meetups, no dark corners of the night available for connection and hushed discussions. I pushed real vampirism aside, never really exploring that side of me, lest it become known and public. I ignored my intuition and urges and I pushed it all back into the realm of fantasy and questionable private thoughts.

But here’s the thing, you never can really push it away. You don’t get to be other than what you are, you just get to be in denial, and that hurts everyone, especially as a vampire.

 

Living Half-Awake

I fed.

I had always fed – unconsciously.

And I manipulated, though I would have never called it that because I was a “nice” person. I hung out in populated areas, I had to. I went downtown at least once a week in order to feel refreshed, stronger, more capable of facing the week ahead. I preferred New Age and witchy shops, needing less contact with people in those shops to feel better faster.  I went out clubbing and drinking, dancing, flirting and hanging out until all hours of the morning. Then I found the service industry and flourished; the intensity, the countless people, the attention, the energy – and I was good at all of it.

 

The Full Awakening

Years later I was advised by a medium and ghost hunter, as I was starting my own ghost hunting journey, to find the book, A Ghost Hunter’s Survival Guide by M. Belanger. I did and read it in one sitting. I had finally found a book that described almost exactly how I used energy, so I explored the other titles by that author.

To my surprise, I was staring at vampirism once again.

I purchased and read all of Belanger’s books on the topic and started buying other books on vampirism. The Psychic Vampire Codex by M. Belanger and The Ethical Psychic Vampire by Raven Kaldera were very influential books for me and lead ultimately to my full awakening as I found myself described right there in black and white on the pages before me, over and over again.

I read Vampires in Their Own Words and was amazed that there were others out there who felt as I did, that I might not be alone, or crazy.

I cried a lot. I was angry. I was in denial. I was overjoyed. I was afraid. I was relieved. I went through every emotion possible. I was questioning reality, my entire life…and yet it all made perfect sense.

Finally everything fit. As I looked back on my life, I could see every time I was intimate with a partner and they were completely drained afterwards and what that had meant, how I needed to bartend in order to get the most energy, how performance and dance gave my starving self a captive and willing audience pouring energy into me, and how all of that had been done out of need, desperation, hunger…and without consent. I was a monster, I was horrible, I was the worst of the worst. How could I?? How could I harm innocent people? I fell into an odd state as my mind was having trouble making sense of all of the facts and memories that were now sliding into place, like a complicated thousand-piece puzzle.

 

Well, Am I?

I told my partner. He was not surprised. He read the books and confirmed everything that I was feeling and thinking but from his perspective. He offered to be a consenting donor, so we experimented. I fed daily, and that soon became a couple of times a day. I realized how hungry and how much in a deficit I was and how much I was having trouble controlling myself, not unlike the description of the “Beast” from Vampire the Masquerade. We also both very quickly realized how dangerous this could be for him. Feedings pivoted to included energy work and exercises for him to learn how to feel me and himself, to judge his own energy, to sense when feeding was too much. We practiced having him cut me off mid-feed. He practiced shielding and self-care and learning to say no before he felt drained. I practiced not causing harm, feeling when his energetic body was pulling back starting to say no before his words could, and learning to control myself during periods of intimacy and during sex, which was especially difficult as I had come to realize it was and had been my primary source of contact and deep feeding.

I then fasted. No feeding, no energy cycling in my environment, no crowds, no ambient feeding. I felt like I was losing my mind. I felt like an addict in withdrawal (having been addicted to nicotine and alcohol I don’t say that lightly or flippantly). I got very tired, my body began hurt again more, my food cravings changed and I became obsessed with thinking about feeding, proving that I in fact did need to feed.

We went back to regular feedings and as we did I felt better, calmer, more centered, healthier, and as a wonderful bonus, so did he. Unbeknownst to us, he is the type of person builds up extra energy and it stagnates, so having regular feedings meant that he too benefited. This fact led me to understand that many of my attractions were energy-based in nature, that I subconsciously sought out folks who were more capable of being fed on.

As I practiced my abilities, I became stronger in all aspects of my energy work and magic, and as I learned more, I reached out to others who seemed to share similar abilities and identification and found community among strangers.

Most importantly I found a sense of self that had too long been left unnamed, unacknowledged, unappreciated, and unintegrated. I finally was becoming me.