A current discussion (just right now as I am typing these words) reminded me of something that happened 16 years ago. On the one hand I keep tinking about this on and off, on the other hand, it is always different thoughts that keek coming o my mind, connected with the same memory. The night that changed my life.
Many discussions I had about this incident in the VC, many of which were not exactely pleasant, but I will get back to this on a different note sometime later. At this very moment, my thoughts are occupied with the nature that lies beneath the surface of each and any of us. The Beast.
I have a pretty nasty incident behind me. That what everybody usually calls "Awakening" was not very "enlightening" or "awakening" for me, nor did it come slowly, or gradually, or during puberty. It was one single night and it was pretty... violent. It left scars on my body which I still have today. And I sometimes wonder if there is any good in this. People keep saying that you have to find something good in everything that happens to you, otherwise things will eventuelly drive you crazy. Now, I am not close enough to crazy yet, but I keep wondering about the good things in such an event.
The fact is: I think I might have found something tonight. After 16 years of pondering, ignoring, neglecting, things boiling up again, I finally come to a conclusion.
The things that happened to me might have helped in finally coming to terms with that part of our nature that is often hush-hushed away in discussions and public statements. We do have a violent, animalistic, predatory part in our personality. More than most "normal" human beings have. Thereians have it, too. Even those who don't drink blood. It breaks out with no or little warning sometimes, it can take control of our thoughts and actions. It can hurt people badly, verbally but also physical. The physical side of this beast has marked my body for the rest of my life. It reminds me that I am different, just in the same manner as the man is who has caused these marks. It gives me no room for the illusion that I might be just as human as everybody else.
For I am not. I am differrent in a sense. I feel it whenever I am underfed and hungry. I feel it when somebody crosses my territory, my friends, my private space. I feel it when someone pushes my red buttons. I mean the real evil ones, not just topics I don't like. I feel it when I notice there is somebody around who I don't like to have around, another vampire, for instance, that I don't consider friend, family or at least "no treat".
Sounds like game? Yeah, I know. This part I think, the games and books have copied from reality. It is no secret that certain authors of a certain game used to hang around places where they could have caught up something from the real world of darkness out here.
The Beast is there. It does not make us any more human than we were before we changed, no matter how and why we changed. It makes us less human with the years, I suspect because I sometimes feel this gradual loss of certain... things I used to have still years before. Enough stuff for a new post on a different night.
But what I really wanted to say is: Thanks, "dad", for reminding me of what I am. For as long as I will live.
