Doubt

I had an extremely misspent youth, even as a Vampire. This was mainly due to ignorance and stupidity on my part.

That is the main reason why I spend so much time thinking about how to parent my own kids so they won’t be going out into the big wide world with no direction or wrapped in a cloak of ignorance.

Anyway…

My brother Val and I spent a lot of time together when we were young. We have three older brothers, but we’re the youngest and only a year apart in age.

We don’t play “remember when” much anymore about the stupider moments of our lives. Remember when your hair caught on fire? Remember when you left your corset in the carriage? Remember when that Hungarian countess didn’t tell you she was married? Remember when we got locked in that basement for two weeks? Remember when you fell in love with HIM? Remember when she broke your heart and you chased her all the way to Boston and crashed her engagement party and she told you that she hated you forever? Remember when we went to that underground club and both got blood poisoning and threw up for a week. Remember when everyone had completely lost respect for both of us? The list pretty much could cover about 500 pages of 8 point type and single spaced. That would be the short list.

It really wasn’t that bad. It just sounds bad on paper, or if we say any of it out loud.  Most of our friends have the same sort of experiences. Somewhere along the line we learned from our mistakes experiences and grew up.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t all stupid. We were just kids who didn’t know how to be grownup yet. We’d been around for a lot longer than most adults, well, all regular human adults but we just sort of floundered. It was a long time of trial and error. We all go through it, or maybe not. I don’t know.

All I know is that I don’t want my kids to feel that sense of missing out or missing the boat, or just being lost and clueless. I want them to be prepared and to have all the tools they need to succeed in whatever they want to do.

Val and I remember the exact moment we grew up.

After yet another break up with my on-and-off-for-years lover Pleasant Van Dusen I moved back to my hometown. Pleasant moved 3,000 miles away and I was only slightly heart broken by his departure this time. I settled into a large downtown house by myself, making a studio in the upstairs and more or less living up there with my art. I’d go out in the night, reconnecting with a few old friends. Sometimes I’d go visit the Elders on their farm on weekends, reconnecting with a sense of something that seemed normal. I spent most of my time alone with my art, illustrating for magazines and books under a male name. It was 1922 and women were still supposed to be hidden away in the kitchen or some other domestic activity.

In my spare time I decorated the house, bobbed my hair, read and started to get more involved with my community, that is the local community of younger Modern Vampires. That included my brother Aaron who had started a law practice.

A few months into my move, my brother Val moved in with me. He’d just come back from Europe after some bad experiences with body snatchers and Vampire hunters.

We spend our evenings out, still making mischief but not so reckless as we had before.

One evening I found myself sitting on the steps of my basement wondering what the next century would really bring. I thought about Pleasant far too much. I thought about all sorts of things, but for some reason, no matter how crappy my thoughts were I knew I was home. I was where I needed to be.

Val came down and sat beside me.

“I was trapped in a basement for a week with a Werewolf named Ben Hayes and a nun before I made it back here. I know you’re waiting for a punch line on that one, but it wasn’t a joke. Sister Martha was trying to assist two young men who she thought needed help and we all ended up as captives of a crazy man. I owe Sister Martha and Ben my life. It was so stupid and it was all my fault.” Val sat in silence. I knew part of the story but didn’t press him for more.

He put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “The only reason I’m even here is because I realized that it wasn’t the basement that was holding me captive. It was my own prison of my own making.”

“Me too,” I said. “So how did you get out?”

“One night Ben tried the door and it was open. We just walked away.”

And in a way that is what I did too. I just opened the door that kept me from moving on with my life and walked away.

After that Val and I both lived a life where we learned from our mistakes and from our experiences. We thought before we acted. We treasured what we had and what we’d worked for. And when we worked we did it not just hard but smart.

Sure there were more disasters and mistakes and broken hearts, but all in all we’ve done quite well for ourselves.

But still, sometimes that nagging self-doubt comes back like some ghoulish phantom. Doubt can be a Vampire’s greatest fear and greatest enemy. So can the loss of hope and the sense of no direction.

And it wasn’t some earth shattering event that brought this all on. It was just getting to that point where suddenly everything clicked. Or maybe it was just that no bull shit point.

My kids will be (are already) smarter than I every was or ever will be. I can credit myself and my husband for a lot of that (for most of it.) I didn’t raise them by accident or without thought or purpose. I didn’t keep them in a box. I talked to them all the time. And I hope I’ve prepared them to make better choices with their eyes open and with purpose. Most of all, I want them to be happy and happy with who they are.

~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman