by Brad Foster (2021 ©)
I spent so many years alone since my first girlfriend (and almost my fiance) told me that I was too intense. She could no longer continue in our relationship.
This was around 1993 at Mankato State University. Michelle and I met in the Fencing Club when she joined a year after me. I finally worked up my courage to ask her out and she said yes!
Fast forward by ten months and Michelle is telling me that we need to talk. We had just returned to Minnesota from a disastrous weekend in Las Vegas. After nearly a week of seeing her from afar (I had quit going to the Fencing Club by that time), she called to tell me she was coming over. Thirty minutes later, she knocked on my apartment door for the last time.
We sat down on the faded and threadbare yellow couch on which we’d had much better moments. Michelle placed her hand on my knee and said that she had to leave our relationship for her own sake. She told me that I took too much energy and she had no more to give.
Time stopped for me at that moment. Before I met Michelle, her ex-boyfriend was in one of my classes. I had given him a ride back home and he dropped some hard truth on me. He announced that I was a vampire because I sucked the energy out of others. I felt hurt and disrespected. I thought he was a complete asshole for saying that.
Turns out that he was right. I was a vampire. I needed energy from others because I couldn’t sustain myself. Back then, I desperately needed love and…
