The Monster

I'm just a kid, not scared of the dark but of what's in the dark. Petrified of the monster under my bed. My parents say it's not there, but I hear it. I hear the noises it makes and see the scratches it puts on my bed frame. I hear the gurgling of its stomach and feel the bed moving as it breathes. It's terrifying. I do everything I can to avoid it. To avoid that feeling of not being able to move or even breathe out of fear or the feeling of wanting to wake up everyone in the house so I’m not the only one awake in the dark. Even my own sister doesn't believe me when I say there's a monster under my bed. She gets annoyed because I wake her up out of fear. She just tells me to go back to sleep, there's nothing there. But there is. I know there is. My parents bought me a nightlight but after a while it stopped making me feel better. I was just too scared. But no one would believe me. I just wanted to shout “WHY WONT YOU BELIEVE ME. I'M YOUR DAUGHTER I'M NOT CRAZY”. But I didn't. I just kept listening to them when they said “there's no monster under your bed”.

 Eventually I started to believe everyone. Maybe they're right. Maybe it's all in my head and everything's okay. I let them convince me there was no monster under the bed. I ignored my own feelings for the sake of wanting to be normal. There is no monster under the bed.

I forgot about it for a while. 

Then my sister moved out.

Suddenly I was all alone.

I could hear it.

I could hear it screaming. 

I could hear the monster. It was calling out to me. Begging me to listen to it. I hadn't heard it in so long so I thought maybe it was just in my head like everyone was saying. Then it grew louder. And louder. And eventually its screams grew impossible to ignore. I tried telling my parents about it and they told me it was normal and nothing serious. Nothing serious? It was screaming at me every night. Tormenting me. Calling me names. Telling me I was worthless, that I should give up. It was making my life hell. So yeah, it was serious. Why wouldn't they believe me? I just wanted to be heard. It was consuming me.

Eventually I had no choice but to try befriending the monster. And for a long time I didn't fight it. I would just sit in my room alone. Doing nothing. For hours. I wouldn't do my homework, I wouldn't hang out with friends, I wouldn't talk to my family, I was alone. I liked it. Soon it became obvious something was really wrong with me, not everyone had a monster like me. I hated it. I hated being different. I just wanted to be normal. I needed to be normal. I had to find a way of making it go away so I tried to fight it. First I tried to just ignore it and pretend I was okay. That didn't work. So I tried to accept it was there, write about it and maybe that would scare it away. It didn't. So I tried physically fighting it by dragging a blade across its skin and watching it bleed out. It felt good. For two seconds. And then reality would hit and it was still there even bigger than before. That's when I knew I couldn't get rid of the monster. So instead I got addicted to those few seconds of peace. 

Obviously that was not healthy, but it was the only way I knew. I had no one to teach me how to cope so I had to teach myself. This only brought up more problems. My parents wouldn't believe me when I said I was struggling so I had to hide it. I had to convince them I was happy. It wasn't very hard. However I couldn't hide my struggles from everyone. Especially when you could see the scratches along my arms and legs. Somehow my problems became everyone else's problems. I would get messages from people I barely knew saying I needed help. Suddenly my cries for help were not silent. Everyone could hear them. Careful what you wish for I guess. 

It was the worst time of my life.

It felt like things could never get better no matter how hard I tried. 

Then one night my friend came over, she didn't believe there was a monster under the bed but she didn't need to, just her being there meant she believed in me. That night all we did was talk. We’d never opened up like this before, I've been friends with her for over ten years but we never talked about these kinds of things before. Now we did. It felt good. I felt seen. Suddenly I wasn't alone anymore. She gave me my nightlight. She gave me peace. Ever since that night I haven't let the monster control me. I know it's still there but I can fight it. Not in the way I fought it before but in a healthy way. I write about it and I talk about it and I don't let it take over. When I feel it calling out to me, I call out to my friends. And although my parents never took my cries for help seriously, my friends did. And that's all that mattered to me. 

I don't let the monster consume me anymore. When I'm with my friends, my mind is quiet. It's peaceful. I'm better. It feels like my friends are my guardian angels, no matter how far into the deep end I am they always manage to pull me out. It's because of my friends that I can say the monster doesn't have power over me anymore. I can sleep at night knowing that tomorrow will be a good day, because I get to see my friends. 

But sometimes, when I'm alone at night. I can hear it. 

It's calling out to me. 

It wants me to give in again.  

I won't.

I'm tempted sometimes. 

But I can't go back to those times. 

Not again.