The World Full of Vampires (Seek to Drain from us...)

There’s a line in the movie Tombstone, where Wyatt Earp is trying to understand Ringo, the antagonist of the story. He asks Doc Holiday what makes a man like that.

Doc replies that “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.”

And we're all run into people like this in real life. They just consume the joy and energy all around them. Often they’ll make a big show of how unhappy they are, while expecting you to conjure the answer from them with the stereotypical “I’m fine… but I’m expecting you to keep asking me.” 

They manipulate you into believing that you are failing them somehow for not giving them enough of, whatever, at the time. They need to be the center of your attention, and they often lay in guilt trips or become angry when you are not able to drop everything to help them through their current maudlin dilemma. (Read on Textbook Manipulation for more on this.)

It’s this slow leeching vampirism without the fangs that slowly draws the joy and life out of the people around them. But it will never be enough. They will never have taken enough from the people around them to be satiated.

These people would first have to do some self-reflection and decide that they need to make some changes in themselves. Most often, this never takes place. Because it’s easier to blame the world around us than take any sort of accountability for ourselves.

Only, it isn’t really. Easier, that is.

Sure, on the surface living a life where nothing is your fault seems pretty simple. I suppose it can be. But to constantly view yourself as the victim of circumstance is to never be able to change it. And yes, there may be some emotional liberation there as well, but it also means that any goal towards happiness in life becomes impossible.

“The universe will always work against me, so why even bother?”

So they continue to be miserable. They continue to be unhappy. They keep waiting for some passing comet to magically change their lives, or for some person to provide meaning and happiness. Only, they never can, because this person has never done so for themselves.

And I’m not referring to depression here. I was suicidally depressed for years. I know that private hell all too well. What myself and my friends dealing with life problems or deep depression never did though, was make it someone else’s problem to fix. That is the distinction between the living and the selfish, the actualized individual and the child, is trying to fix our own problems.

Sure, we may not be able to fix everything ourselves, but we need to try. If for our own growth and strength, if for nothing else. Like any other muscle can atrophy from disuse, so too can the strength of the soul wither if we never use it to better ourselves.

I’ve watched it play out time and again. The few exceptions do eventually realize their mistakes and work to win back their friends and fight to improve their lives. The vast majority do not. It’s too hard. It’s too much effort. It’s easier to be Fortune’s Fool.

And eventually, through much heart ache and misery, we all eventually come to the same conclusion: We cannot help someone who does not want help, we can only limit their ability to hurt us or affect our lives. This may sound cold or selfish, but if we examine the behavior of these associates, they are fueled with selfishness. They exist to consume the life and verve of the people around them and then lash out at those same people when they aren’t ‘giving enough.’

So do we just cut loose every friend having a rough patch? That is not at all what is being discussed here. This is about long term emotional abuse and manipulation under the guise of friendship.

This is not a new problem, but I have definitely watched tools like social media allow for certain self-imagined martyrs to find new pulpits of self-absorption.

Yet we must look at this manner of abusive relationship as we would any other. Do we keep allowing someone else to hurt us? To take our joy away?

Do we keep enabling the addict to their own self destructive behavior?

Or do we offer what help we can, and learn to draw a line where we limit their ability to hurt us and the others that we love?

Sadly, it isn’t easy. There is something there in that person we care about. There is some spark in them we find endearing. The same is true of the physically abusive lover or the substance abusing friend that steals from you for their own benefit. But at a certain point we have to decide if they are dimming our world, causing us to be less and hurting others we care about without any regard to their feelings or needs.

Not saying not to care for others. Just saying to make sure they are also caring for you.

It’s not an easy choice. As ever, the choice is yours. 

“Let not another's disobedience to Nature become an ill to you; for you were not born to be depressed and unhappy with others, but to be happy with them. And if any is unhappy, remember that he is so for himself; for all men are made to enjoy felicity and peace.” – Epitectus