Inside every good girl, there's a bad girl and a lot of lies.

Warning: Don't Go Out Tonight!

No, it was not Twilight.
Get comfortable if you intend to read this because it will be a relatively long read.
Ok, deep breath.
So I was fifteen, the perfect age for forgetting who you are. It was confusing to say the least and I was unhappy, questioning everything about who and what I was. My perfect sweet Christian girl identity wasn't holding up under the pressure of hormones and I started hating more and more of myself, feeling guilty about every part of me that didn't fit in with that identity, trying to push down about half of all the feelings that come with being fifteen. You can laugh and shake your head if you like. I know now that it was like trying to stop an erupting volcano with wet paper towels. I've always enjoyed fantasy books and at fifteen, I often surfed the net looking for fantasy pictures, sometimes to inspire my own drawings and sometimes just to look at. And somehow, on one of those searches, I must have stumbled across vampires. I had always known they existed in stories but I hadn't realized just how...interesting they were. Online vampire stories and art became my guilty pleasures and yes, I'm aware that Freud is probably jumping up and down in his grave and yelling about repressed sexuality. Put a stake in it Mr. Freud, I'm not finished.
I found a reference one night to something called The Vampire Chronicles and one trip to the library later, I had the first book in my hand. I read it fast and I loved it. Inside me something started to move slowly. I went back to the library and happened to pick up the second book. I sat down in my usual reading spot, opened it and was introduced to the vampire who became my teenage idol or childhood hero. Other people had rock stars, I had a vampire (they're both fictional characters anyway). He frightened me but something in me was also drawn to the way he was not only bad but enjoyed being bad. He was the monster I couldn't be, free and terrible and maybe more than a little insane. He was erotic rather than romantic. The volcano inside me overflowed and erupted, the ashes darkened blue skies and night fell. What really happened was that I let myself feel what I felt and let go of most of the guilt. I dressed in black and painted my eyes and lips in it and after endless nagging and pleading, my mother finally let me dye my hair black as well. Then the music came like a tidal wave. Nightwish, Inkubus Sukkubus, Alice Cooper, HIM, The 69 Eyes, Type O Negative. I was a lost girl.
Now fast forward almost nine years.
I'm happy that I can finally say "no, it was not just a phase". I still wear black even if I won't flat out refuse to wear another colour like I would have when I was fifteen. My hair isn't black now, it's blood red and now that I'm old enough, I'm pierced and tattooed. I made the snakebites because they remind me of fangs a little. I read vampire books but mix them with other books as well. I wear fangs for Halloween. And even though I don't always remember it, at least I know somewhere deep down that I'm allowed to have my urges and desires. I may not always be able to fulfil them but having and acknowledging them isn't something to feel guilty about as long as it doesn't harm anyone. Being a little bad can make you feel very good.