A good and sensible approach to take. While there is nothing inherently wrong with blood (even contaminated blood - at least as far as HIV is concerned, the virus is only spread via blood to blood contact, which won't happen unless you have cuts or sores in your mouth - there are sturdier viri than HIV, but *most* are curable or at least preventable) there is something wrong with the hordes of young people who seem willing to engage in unprotected sex, intravenous drugs with shared needles, etc because they feel they ought to be immortal. "Ought to be" is a far cry from "reality."
All I do know is that I should be very careful. I'm going to be perfectly honest and unbiased when I say I am an extremely powerful being according to everyone else here's typed experiences. If you just read that and sai, "Boy, he's in love with himself...", Think again, I OFTEN wish I were not so powerful. I mean it's a nightmare having to worry about whether someone will make me crack.
I can relate. I have a few strong capabilities that freak the hell out of me. Most notably my ability to influence people. I've always had a sort of knack for putting people in trances and/or touching their subconscious minds; I don't think this is "occult," although it's rather unusual and only seems to have been held by a handful of historic people (William Mesmer, Rasputin, um, my mind's drawing a blank - Hitler...) I don't think it's inherently bad, either, but it is rather scary and it has, unfortunately, backfired on me a couple of times. With DISASTROUS results. Part of the reason I tried to kill myself (only part, mind you) was guilt and shame over a mesmeric healing that went very, very wrong.
Charisma seems to be a part of this gift - people never feel neutral about me. I tend to inspire extremes of admiration and hatred. Buffy said that all charismatic people have this problem.
It's the putting people into trances bit that really scares me, though. This is a dangerous thing to carry around inside of me. I've had two people go into a deep enough trance while I was feeding from them that their hearts stopped beating, albeit briefly - I'm not sure if that happened because I was depressed and ended up taking too much life force in order to try and achieve my own inner balance again, or if it happened because I put them under by mistake and the trance was deeper than usual. I don't know if my donors go into a trance or not when I feed. It's actually a complex issue - light trances are little more than states of concentration, and are very difficult to distinguish from waking consciousness. Hell, I probably go into a trance myself when I feed. I know I put myself in a trance to do magic - *all* image magic involves self hypnosis.
I've noticed that when I live with a person and have intimate contact with that person, then that person's will seems to slowly erode - the fights I have had with Scott are to me welcome, because they prove he is strong enough to live with me, but they also worry me because they seem to be signs of regression - it's like I've brought out his worst side. We both noticed one night that he was acting like he used to act before he met me, and before he grew and matured and got more calmness inside. I am wondering if this has to do with the inevitable regression that occurs when any couple fights long and hard over an extended period of time, or if it has to do with me accidentally doing something to him. Dripping hollows out stone, after all. The thought of living alone all my life in order to avoid causing accidental damage to a loved one terrifies me. I have never really been a "people person" - I shut my parents out of my life at age seven without so much as a backward glance, and got used to being a pariah among my peers at school, so that by the time I hit puberty I really only needed books to make me happy; I could probably survive solitary confinement without going insane provided I had enough books to read. Still, I don't like being utterly isolated; there is the issue of need, for one thing, and besides, I do like people (to a point). There is a difference between extreme introversion and complete antisocialness. I'm an introvert. I do like to have companions, and I like to have loving relationships, and while my natural instinct is to withdraw from people, I don't want to cut myself off completely.
The last time I put somebody into a deep trance, and consciously worked with her subconscious mind, was in 1992. After that, I stopped. I'm not so sure, now, that this was a good decision. Yes, it was probably the only decision I could have made, but in retrospect it was not very well thought out - if one has a gift, burying the gift is only going to make it erupt in an inconvenient and unpleasant way at some awkward time. The thing one really must do is train that gift and get it under control. I have to stop running away from myself; hiding behind coke-bottle glasses, avoiding looking at people or getting too close to them, avoiding my past, avoiding getting involved. If I'm stuck with myself, I have to stop running.
I wonder sometimes about why vampires are said to have great hypnotic powers. Where did that myth come from? All myths come from somewhere, after all. Do I have this gift because I'm a vampire, or is it just a fluke - the way my affinity for storms seems to be a bit of a fluke, and my healing ability (the first "magic" I was ever able to perform was healing pain by laying on of hands) and my knack for prediction and my being disgustingly clever? How much of being "gifted" is part of being a vampire? I don't know. I think I can say that I wish I knew.
As I write this, the wind is picking up outside. I stop typing concentrate on the wind and it creeps into my room and caresses me. This day is sickeningly sunny and yet I have a feeling from experience that it may become cloudy tonight. Maybe more rain. It poured last night...
I am glad that my own power to influence the weather is limited. I wouldn't want to be as intimately linked to weather as you are; my own problems trying to control my gifts are bad enough. Just take comfort in knowing how much power for good you will have when you have your gift under control: you could help places that were suffereing from droughts and so on. Severe weather is not an aberration; it is actually the earth's way of restoring equilibrium in imbalanced weather patterns. Yes, tornados and hurricanes and floods can be horribly destructive, but they aren't inherently evil. (Of course, I plan on being a professional stormchaser in a few years, so I'm a little biased)
Sorry for rambling on and on, but whenever I think about something important, I have to voice it. And again, don't think I take pride in the concept that I might be more powerful than others, and no doubt I am far weaker than others still. Sometimes I despise it. Please don't get the wrong idea of me.
Ramble on. I personally prefer long rambling posts to one-liners; would write more long rambling posts, myself, if I didn't have so much stuff to do (and procrastinate) and so many lists to sort through (most of which, fortunately, I lurk on). And don't be ashamed of being powerful. If you are gifted, then there should be nothing inherently wrong with it. I think too many times American pop culture worships mediocrity. This gives people the idea that being different (especially being superior) is something to hide and something to hate. What baloney.