BEWARE: PREMENSTRUAL VAMPIRE VENT APPROACHETH

You know those awful situations where you have to deal with someone who just sucks the life out of you and you try to shake it off and get over it and remind yourself that they have no power over your life, so why give it to them – yet you find yourself fuming and steaming and venting at an empty room at all hours?

Well, one of these nefarious little vampires has landed on the fringes of mine own life and I must needs vent or die. (Forgive me – is anyone capable of discussing vampires without seeping into Gothic speech? And it doesn’t help that I’ve been reading Charlotte Bronte all week.)

Why is he here, I ask myself? Why? WHY???? Not that I haven’t met his kind before – god knows, I have, and a more wretched bunch does not exist. And I hasten to remind myself that, of all the times a bloodsucker has appeared in my world, this one is the most tangentially connected to me of them all – even if he will, sadly, remain, as the shade-dweller he is, on the fringes of my world for a while more to come.

I try to see the humor in his behavior – of which there is much. The painfully narrow avenues for recourse he allows anyone in his wake. The hugely apparent foibles he insists do not exist. The glaring insecurity hiding behind his condescension (O, the loathsome vileness of a condescending creature of the night!).

I try to blow it off – it’s a triviality, a mere wisp. A nothing in the overall scheme of my life. A mere tra-la as I go about my business.

I cave. I can’t blow it off. I can’t find it funny. I give in to a brooding premenstrual pit of despair brought on by the wretched frustration of having encountered a self-proclaimed human being whose lifeblood can only be sucked unwillingly from the living flesh of those in his midst. I scream, I wail, I give in to the ragings only my hormonally-altered persona can produce.

As if by magic, I feel better. Relieved. The vile succubus has been excised, at last. Sent off to the hidden byways wherein the undead may travel, free and safe, amongst their own kind.

And I realize I have, at last, discovered the true purpose of PMS – the warding off of vampires. And for one brief moment I see the continuity of all things and feel at peace.

Tip #7 – Make a Success Folder

Start a folder of articles that inspire you, quotes that make you feel confident, and any other item that reminds you of how wonderful you are. Whenever you need a pick-me-up, break out your success folder and remember how much you’ve got going for you.