Vampires, Werewolves, and the Abused Child

October is my favorite month of the year. It also houses my favorite holiday, Halloween. But October is also a month of many different awareness activities. One of those is Domestic Violence. Unfortunately, child abuse doesn’t have its own month, and also, unfortunately, child abuse doesn’t come to people’s minds when they hear Domestic Violence, even though it technically falls under that category. So I am going to talk about child abuse and how vampires, werewolves, and other “monsters” fit into it.

When you think of vampires and werewolves, what comes to mind? It may be common knowledge by now but these two monsters, in particular, are really metaphors for our darker selves. That is what I learned in college while taking a gothic lit class. It is also in almost all documentaries, books, and even some movies and TV shows about vampires and werewolves.

They represent the side of the human that most people don’t want to acknowledge is even there. Take the werewolf for example. The wild and uncontrollable animal within is meant to represent a person’s anger. When we get angry, we lose control of ourselves. That’s the werewolf. It is also Mr. Hyde from the famous novel, Dr. Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde. He is a fantastic example.

Frankenstein is another fabulous example of human vs monster and asks the question, Who is the monster, and who is the man?

Now that we explained what these monsters have to do with humans, I’m going to tell you what I have always seen and why they actually gave me comfort growing up in an abusive home (threes abusive homes really).

The abused child is already exposed to real-life monsters. The very humans who are supposed to LOVE and PROTECT that child, become the monsters to that child. Many times, a child will create a fictitious monster in their head that actually represents the very real human hurting them.

I lived in a real horror movie. No, teenagers weren’t being hacked to bits while the main character somehow finds her way out. Not that kind of horror movie. Mine was the monster movie. When you live with real-life monsters, the fictitious ones aren't so scary.

Only the humans didn’t have fangs, nor were they part of the undead. Let’s not get too literal here. That’s not what this is about. We are talking about the metaphors and about the philosophy of what makes the human and what makes the monster.

So Let’s talk about how the humans in my life were like vampires:

Vampires suck blood right? In some lore, the vampire can take the life force (like the succubus). Well, what is blood but life force? Or sucking out your soul, essence, whatever you want to call it. Spike says it best in season 3 of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: “Cause it's always gotta be blood. Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going, makes you warm, makes you hard, makes you other than dead.”

Basically, they take everything that is you. They steal from you everything that you are and everything that you CAN be. They suck the life right out of you.

That is what the humans did to me through starvation and neglect, sexual and physical abuse, gaslighting, and mental manipulation.

They sucked the life out of me. From a very young child, I was exploited, starved, beaten, molested, and then made to believe it was all my fault. The adults in my life were the vampires.

It took a very long time to finally see that it wasn’t my fault. Through therapy, I was able to get there but it was a very long road. It was a very hard road. The child’s developing brain is permanently changed by abuse. What would be a normal neural pathway to normal development, they have to take these side streets and when they run into blockades, rather than break it down, they are stunted.

Some will even just stop altogether. As an adult, I had to retrain my brain. Do you have any idea how incredibly difficult that is? I’ve been in therapy for over a decade now and while I have come so far - I mean, I have really come far in my journey to healing - I still have a ways to go before I sleep. There are things that will never truly heal and I have had to work hard to accept that.

I keep going though because what else am I going to do? Give up? Hell no! That’s not me.

Now, let’s talk about how the humans in my life were like werewolves:

I’m sure you can guess by now: The anger. Werewolves represent anger and loss of control over that anger. There were several people like that in my life. From my mother’s boyfriends, who beat on her whenever they came home drunk to my own father taking pleasure out of torturing his own children (beatings, starvation, manipulation, the list goes on).

Violence is something I have always known. For most of my childhood and teenage years, it was all I knew. Living with my great-aunt felt like walking on eggshells every single day because no matter how hard I tried to stay quiet and out of her way, I just didn’t know what would set her off.

This made me very vigilant. Hyper-vigilant, in fact. Anger was everywhere. And with Anger, came violence. It was a given in my young life. I was constantly on alert. So much so that when I reached adulthood, that never went away.

After I had my oldest son, that’s when I lost control of my anger. I had held it in for so long that I had become the werewolf, unable to control the rage I felt. No, not towards my child, though I came very close a few times. Having a child though, basically opened the floodgates and I eventually discovered I had PTSD.

It was my anger and my need to control it that drove me to get therapy. I wasn’t going to turn into another abuser. I would rather die first than to ever put that on my children. But it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. I had to fight myself.

You see, that is what these monsters represent. Ourselves. I had to fight myself, my dark half if you will so that I could be the parent to my children that I never had.

I had so much anger. So much rage! Because I had spent my entire childhood and teen years just trying to survive and how I did that was by staying as quiet as I possibly could. I was the kid who liked the dark because no one could see me in the darkness. I would hide in the dark as much as I could.

It didn’t always work though. The darkness didn’t always hide me from the monsters lurking just outside of it. Eventually, I would be found but that didn’t stop me from seeking refuge in that darkness.

And that is what brings me to this next section - How I took COMFORT from the vampires and werewolves.

I found some sort of solace in those creatures. Even the count in Sesame Street. He was my favorite actually. Later, it was Dracula. The vampire became to me, what I always felt - alone and isolated. I had something in common with the vampire.

The Lost Boys gave me a different look at vampires. They were badass creatures of the night who were also very vulnerable. I mean, they slept through the kids entering their lair, thereby giving the kids a chance to stake one of them. That’s very vulnerable.

Then, of course, Anne Rice. Louis from Interview with a Vampire. Lestat (who is my favorite even though I didn’t like Tom Cruise playing the character). They were lonely and in their never-ending desire to squash their loneliness, they made others, but they were still alone.

And that is why I write what I write. My vampires, werewolves, witches, and even ghosts are the heroes of my stories. They are the survivors of abuse but they are fighters. They are my warriors, my champions.

It also helps me while writing about these “monsters”. I give my darker self the space she needs to let loose in a way that is safe and something I can control. We all have a darker self in us. It’s there and it is absolutely the difference between what makes us human and what makes us monsters. We can control it but first, we have to acknowledge that it exists.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Thanks so much for reading!