The irony is that the friends, at least the ones from my world, that can bring me away from what I have been are ones I manipulated and lied to. By all rights, they should hate me and not forgive what I put them through. It is not easy to allow people to get close enough to you to pull you back from that edge. But sometimes there is someone who can work their way past your defenses, and before you know it, you are about to go over the edge but they grab you and pull you back before you can fall. A large part of it is having that desire to change. But it is also immensely helpful to have someone who cares whether you live or die. I am sorry that that is not something you have. Having that...is something that has saved me.
The hardest thing is to change how you are accustomed to living. But you are right, you cannot have the good without the bad, regardless of what anyone may think. Did you stop fighting your humanity out of necessity for survival or because of something else? I became a monster because my daughter was murdered, and instead of letting myself grieve, I unleashed my anger upon the world. And it is difficult to temper those feelings and urges when I spent over a century allowing them to control me and twist me into a person I did not recognize.