And in one thousand million years
Imma still be everywhere
You won't forget me
The immortal queen

Life as a vampire was a dichotomy for me in a lot of ways. Adjusting to the smooth alacrity, the robust coil of muscles, even the overwhelming sensory perceptions was just easy, simple as breathing had been. I had been beat down for so long, no more meek than a doormat, that to not only feel my supremacy but know it with unequivocal certainly - it was intoxicating.

Less natural was all of the metaphysical headroom. There was far too much conflict, affliction gelling with aberrant newborn hostility. Carlisle had been hard-pressed to keep me off human blood in those early years, focused as I was on meting out my own perverse vision of vindication.

So while I reveled in gleeful joy at my body's upgrade, my mind began to erode, warping with resentment. I took the flames that had burned me and fanned them by my own hand, stoking the bonfire, pouring gasoline on the greedy inferno until Carlisle could ignore it no longer.

I wish that when I say he dragged me kicking and screaming it was a metaphor, but it was quite literal. Eventually, I think he realized it only served to swell the burgeoning wrath I kept cradled to my chest, but not before he forcibly relocated me to the most remote of areas. Multiple times.

We'd been in the most northern parts of Canada for roughly 10 years when seemingly out of nowhere he announced he was moving to Wisconsin. In and of itself, this wasn't Earth-shattering news. We moved around a lot as a baseline.

The fact he hadn't invited, let alone bothered to even ask me, is what incensed me. I felt betrayed and abandoned, except without the finality of death, the sting throbbed more acutely. Like he could just change me, impose his will on me, then dip when I didn't cooperate.

I think I followed him out of pure spite at the time, determined to haunt his every moment like a baleful specter. Perspective, being what it is, gave evidence he was trying to honor my stalwart attempts at independence when I refused to follow the same gentle path he did. The whole, 'If you love someone, let them go' shtick.

And to be fair, his trickery did work. Enraged as I was, the genuine warmth with which he greeted me when I kicked in his door jarred something loose in me. I became moderately less wild, more prone to sullen silences than raging tantrums. The true turning point, though, was Esme.

We had first seen her when she was 16, living in Ohio, and Carlisle tended to her broken leg. While they had got on well, he was a vampire and she but a teenager. The memory was fond, but brief, as we'd moved on long before she claimed adulthood.

The moment he walked in the door on the outskirts of Ashland with her battered, broken body that day, I was floored. The fact the Roulette gun had been loaded when fate had pulled the trigger, it was beyond fortune or happenstance. World War I was on the horizon, and yet this singularity was far more profound in my still-selfish universe.

The incredible acceptance and ease with which Esme took to being a vampire unhinged some very deep-seated assumptions I'd been carrying around. If Esme, who had endured neglect and loss, could be so gracefully accepting then what the fuck was my problem?

Outside that, her mothering of my angsty soul was just so fucking natural. I craved it like oxygen, the way she'd smooth my hair or kiss my forehead. Emotionally stunted as I was, the burgeoning feeling I'd get in my chest at her innocent, casual touches seemed to smother out everything else as it swelled. It also confused the hell out of me, because I wasn't her daughter, so why did I like it so much?

Let's just say I went through a hell of an identity crisis. And it wasn't like I just flipped a switch or anything - vampires didn't change like that. I was still ragey and cagey and had manic moments. But the more I saw of Esme and Carlisle and them falling in love, the more I wanted to try to emulate my new parents in earnest.

I had lived through a lot, in a sense, even though I was more charcoal briquette than smokin' babe for the start. We were still in Carlisle's house in Boston when the Tea Party had happened, and then Paul Revere's ride (thus Rosalie's nickname). I was just more focused on myself, unaware to the world changing around me.

And then I was alive, and aware, when Washington crossed the Delaware. When the Declaration had been signed. The Civil War, Gettysburg and Little Bighorn, Reconstruction and Industrialization. Milestones and dates that, while incredible, seemed to mean so very little at the time.

Despite Carlisle's patience and Esme's nurturing and the landmarks I should have marveled, I was still as much a slave to indignation and devastation as the first day, immune to the passage of time, untouched by even abolition.

Carlisle postulated later in life that I had buried all of the hate and pain I'd had as a human as a coping mechanism, and was releasing it all at once as a vampire. Kind of like smashing into a fire hydrant. Once the deluge was unleashed, it gushed, unabated, until it had run its course.

Then there was Rosalie, who was also another pivotal moment for me. It helped that her hurt and bloodlust felt so similar to mine, although she had been wronged unfairly and my debasement had been by my own hand. Different, but same enough we naturally fell into each other's gravity. We were linked by our vile shared sexual histories.

It was soothing to live vicariously through her as she claimed the lives of the men who'd defiled her. Served to make me feel like I was finally getting some payback on humanity.

It did incite another verbal spat with Carlisle, though, as he had simply let Rosalie do as she pleased when he had restrained me so dutifully.

He'd told me that he'd learned from his mistake, all kind and calm as you pleased. That he had been wrong to deny me, and he was deeply ashamed to admit it.

I wanted so badly to be mutinous with him, but suddenly I couldn't muster the fury needed. Yeah, I'd got the short end of the stick, but at least Rose was able to get some closure as a result, and that had to count for something.

I say these were turning points and pivotal moments like it's a Hallmark movie. In reality, it helped take the negativity that was an inky storm cloud and turn it into a gray focal point.

I was still full of venom and vitriol, but with the inadequacy and embarrassment cut out came a sense of evenness. It was the root of my unpredictability, the shame associated with it shoved in a drawer to rattle and shudder violently until it burst forth with great vigor.

With those gone, the drawer empty, everything else felt smaller. Muted. Easier to manage.

Edward Masen should count his lucky stars I had the practiced capacity for restraint. It was fun, still, to imagine his face if I had simply just attacked him in my bedroom. Relieved him of the burden of his appendages and spat on his fragmented carcass before setting it aflame.

Now, though, it was almost habit to reign in my more savage tendencies and temper it with barbed wit and jeering sarcasm. It was the primary reason Blythe and Kylie were drawn to me, moths to flame.

The celebrity I had fabricated didn't hurt, but superficial attachment only went so far. I was brash and fearless, unafraid of anyone or anything. Salacious rumors and reputation games had no hold on me because I was immortal, above it all. It'd all be gone in a hundred years anyway and I'd have lived several lives over.

I wasn't indiscriminate with my superiority, either. It was a pocketknife, concealed at my thigh, aiming to kill only when necessary. Especially for those close to me. Being willing to step to anyone immortalized me in their eyes, not knowing I was a genuine article.

While they weren't social outcasts, life in any sort of aristocracy was undeniably brutal and fluctuated on impetuous fancy. The fact that I was willing, more than, to take the brunt of the vicious social kneecapping in their stead gilded their loyalty to me. I protected them from what they saw was the worst thing ever: scandal, rumors, ostracism.

My shoulders may not be broad, but they were more than strong enough to hold up everyone I loved.