Toxicity and Guilt Trips as Writing Motivators

I’ve had a lot of toxic people in my life: Whiners, users, people who just wanted to use me as their personal, 24/7 therapist regardless of my time, energy or feelings, and who just complained about their problems constantly with no desire to solve their own issues or find a solution. They wanted me to devote all my time and attention to their “me! me! me!” needs and their problems. They were always playing the victim and trying to get attention by constantly whining about the worst things in their life that they wanted someone to always fix. And sometimes it would always be the same things they complained about. They wanted solutions, a “savior”, and someone who would always be there to vent to. If I refused or had something else to do, they became desperate, depressed, hard-to-please, always unhappy with everything, pessimistic, clingy, helpless, panicky, draining, angry, and accused me of not being a good friend, and if something went wrong, they blamed me for not “being there”, and treated me like I just did the worst thing in the world to them. Or they became manipulative, as in they would do something to themselves if I didn’t appease them right away. It was exhausting and I hated the way these people made me feel like I was “abandoning” them.

I bet that’s how Guardian Angels feel when people cry to them for help, and feel they don’t “answer”. And they were tired of humans feeling “abandoned”. And it can feel too much to keep up with.

The way I got these people out of my life was through writing. They were great character studies. There were whiny, desperate characters that my Vampire Guardian Angels fed on. My Vampire Guardian Angels were tired of being therapists and their methods were to put whiners out of their misery instead of saving them, so that they did not have to play therapist anymore. In a way, it was therapeutic.  Now I avoid toxic, overly emotionally needy people like the plague.

Then there were the judgmental, fault-finding, close-minded, overly criticizing, suffocating, guilt-tripping, holier-then-thou-I’m better-than-you-you-are-a-sinner people I grew up with who used their religion to abuse me psychologically and physically, and treated me with contempt and anger because they feared divine retribution if I “sinned” in any way (and abused their own religion in the process, which made them, and their religion, look bad). I was always told to “pray for salvation” and beg for mercy from a higher power, and punished with fear if I didn’t. Today, I'm respectful to the positive aspects of religion even if I am now an atheist. But back then, I was supposed to be the “toxic whiner” and the Guardian Angel was supposed to be my “savior” and my “therapist”. I had to imagine what a Guardian Angel would feel like when constantly faced with demands from a toxic human. Then I turned these Guardian Angels into serial killers who only targeted toxic whiners, and, as vampires, fed on them. That’s why my Guardian Angels rebelled and went against mankind and welcomed becoming vampires—because they were tired of being slaves to these toxic humans. (But on the upside, they did make a great meal.)

So in a way, my own comic books turned out to be, well, therapeutic for me.