Most humans wouldn't recognize a true vampire if they came across one in passing. Something that is proven true every single day that we stay here in Forks or some other city undetected. I work with my other collegues and patients every day. My children go to school and pass as teenagers on a daily basis. Humans are accustomed to the portrayal of vampires on screen or what they have read about them in a work of fiction. While some of the stories have some truth to them, most of them are false.

However, the myths about our kind is what help keep my family and myself hidden. If human expect a savage creature to come out only during the night and sleep in a coffin during the day, then what does that mean when they happen to come across one of us?

The truth is, most human wouldn't believe any of us were vampires if we told them outright. With all the stories, legends, and movies made about our kind, they like for that story to be nothing but just that. A story. A work of fiction designed to provide entertainment.

We're hardly works of ficiton, but it still begs the question of how long we will truly be able to keep our identities secret in a town like Forks. I hardly expect for us to be able to stay here for many more years, but we still take advantage of the location while we can.

My family isn't quite like most others. Technically, I suppose, we do share all the same blood in one form but that is not what makes us a family. We have certain similarities that bind us together in ways that most do not understand, both human and vampire. Perhaps we're a self-made family and one that has grown in number over the decades. To those who do not know what we truly are, they believe my children to be adopted. Ones that my wife Esme and I chose to take into our home and care for as our own. In a way, this is true even as a vampire. Circumstances aside, all were chosen in some way or another.

I've never forced my ways on my family. Have I wished that they chose to follow the tradition of feeding from animals instead of the blood of humans? Of course. But it's not something I demand. There is a conscious choice for each of them that makes our family even that much stronger. We are different, yes, but every one of us choose to become so.

The seven of us are not the traditional family in either of the worlds that we are apart of, but perhaps that is was makes our bond stronger than the others of our kind. We protect one another and how we came together makes no matter. We are what we are and I could not be prouder to call every one my family.

There were times I considered making myself a companion, but never found the right opportunity to do so. I travelled over Europe and many times I saw my kind with mates they'd selected for themselves. It's a human tendency to crave the companionship, but I suppose it carries over after death as well.

When I changed Edward, I was fulfilling a promise to a dying mother. He'd been the first I'd ever changed though not the first I'd ever considered. I hadn't been completely sure what I was doing at the time, but am thankful that it ended up as it did. Edward was a wonderful companion for many years. He was a friend and ultimately a son.

When we moved to Wisconsin, I found Esme. She was near death when I found her and that was her intention at the time actually. She'd lost a part of her and had attempted suicide. The last thing she was expecting was to wake up in pain and a few days later, a vampire.

Esme has become the greatest companion I could have ever hoped for in a creation. She's kind, gentle, beautiful and I've never really regretted the decision. I didn't change her with the inention of marrying her, but that is how we both ended up eventually. She's become like a mother to the rest of our family and I never will look for anyone else in all my eternity.

Any vampire will tell you that they drink from humans. That it's common sense for them to do so. How else are they supposed to live and survive? Carlisle Cullen realized soon after he became a vampire that he would not drink from or kill humans. When he first was changed, he literally starved himself to keep from doing so. He was trying to kill himself in the process, but not killing humans was still a part of the reason.

Feeding from animals is different. Carlisle would as soon tell anyone who asked that as any normal vampire who made his habit of feeding from humans. He knows it's not the usual and there are very few vampires who have the amount of self control he's developed over two centuries. Especially given his chosen profession as a doctor.

The Volturi wanted to do nothing but convert Carlisle to feeding from humans while he stayed in Italy, but they were far from able to convince him. Any other vampire he's come in contact with over two centuries aside from his vampire and a handful of others look at Carlisle as if he's insane when he tells them that he feeds from animals. A vegitarian as he likes to call himself.

None of this matters to him, though, because it's the life he's chosen for himself. It's for himself and not one that he forces on his family. Nearly every one of them have spent several years going against the idea of animals only and have fed from humans. Carlisle may be disappointed, but he's never forced his ways on anyone. He knows he's different when it comes to his kind. The vampires who look at him and call him crazy can do just that. As long as they don't harm anyone in his own city.

Hello, my name is Carlisle Cullen. My story is different than most you'd find in a place like this. Currently, my family and I live in a small and mostly quiet town in Washington called Forks. We're able to live in peace there thanks to a treaty that came about many years before now. I may look human to most, but I am far from it. I am a vampire as is all of my family. We're an odd collection of vampires considering we're unlike the rest of our kind. But it's probably better if I start more towards the beginning.

I lived in London and was the faithful son of an Anglican pastor during the mid 1600's. My father was determine to rid the city of evil and sin and wanted to take out creatures such as werewolves and vampires. He did not always find those that were truly of that kind, but as he aged and I was put in charge of the hunts, I kept on doing his work. Eventually, I did find a group of vampires in the sewers of London, but was attacked during the fight. Three painful days later I emerged as a vampire myself.

Naturally, I was horrified by what I'd become. Something I'd been fighting against most of my adult life and now I was one of them. I tried killing myself through several ways, but nothing seemed to work as it would have if I'd still been human. I fled to the woods and came across a herd of deer. It was then that I realized that, as a vampire, I did not have to live off the blood of humans but could hunt animals instead.

Many years passed and I travelled all over Europe. Mostly, I studied and was able to develop a tolerance to human blood so that to this day, the smell has little to no effect on me. This serves great purpose in that I studied medicine. I found that I was able to hear and detect certain things that human doctors could not. While I was in Italy, I stayed with a coven of vampires known as the Volturi. They are the equivalent are royalty of our kind and I learned much from them, but still would not drink the blood of humans as they did, so I left and decided to travel to the New World.

This was where I started a family of my own. While I was living in Chicago during the Spanish flu epidemic, there was a young boy who's mother begged me to save him any way that I could. I could not save his mother, but I did the only thing I knew to do to save he son. Her son became my own son, in a sense, and the first member of my family.

Edward and I lived together for several years and soon there was another addition to our family, Esme, who is now my wife. Later there was Rosalie. Both of whom would have died if not for having changed them into vampires. Emmett has been the last that I've personally changed and have added to our family. Alice and Jasper joined us, but on their own.

We travel around to keep our identities hidden, acting as a family and playing different parts as the cities change. Currently, we live in Forks, Washington, and I am a doctor at the local hospital there. My oldest, Edward, has left for his own reasons but the rest of us have all stayed in Forks. We live well here and I must say it's one of the most enjoyable places we've stayed in several decades. Perhaps not all of my family would agree, but then again we don't always agree on everything. What family does?