There’s a monster that’s under my bed.
I’m always scared of putting my foot outside the blanket. Afraid that if a foot showed, if my arm dangled off the side of the bed, the monster under it would reach its hands up. Hands with long fingers, they might have even been slimy. They might have been cold, but I don’t know because I’ve never felt them before.
I just think it might look like that, feel that way. I’ve never seen it before either.
There’s a monster that’s under my bed but it might just be in my head.
When it starts to get dark, that’s when it arrives. Like shadows of the maples outside my bedroom window from my childhood home, out of my memory, it settles, comfortable in the darkness. It’s quiet too while it gets comfortable. Shadows grow in silence, looming like trees against a darkening skyline.
There’s a monster in my head.
Sometimes I hear people say silly things about their internal demons. Maybe these silly things are true or how they make light of their own shadows. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a different way to experience it all, sometimes I think that. When they make silly jokes about how they’re uncomfortable alone, or they’re afraid of the dark. What they don’t know is I’m afraid of the dark because that’s when the shadows set in. It’s when silence breeds like wildfire on dry kindling.
I can’t sleep tonight, cold and uncomfortable with the way the morning is only moments away. I’m uncomfortable, I want to run, I want this to change. It won’t though. It won’t, but I’m not really sure why. I have an idea, a gut feeling.
They say the only way you grow is by getting kicked out of the nest. I never was and for no selfish reason. Only kindness and love would have influenced that. They didn’t want me to have to face the monsters alone. I understand that. What they don’t understand is — you can’t make the monsters go away if you don’t.. Well, I don’t know how you make them go away.
I can’t sleep tonight and it’s cold outside. The heat makes the house warm, and it isn’t silent because there are sounds of morning. I hear the dogs waking up. The cats have gone downstairs for breakfast. It might be light soon when the shadows recede and I feel less than paralyzed.
See — there’s a monster that’s under my bed. I’m scared if I move, so will it. But not too long before my alarm goes off — somehow I can start moving. I get up earlier than my husband. I’ve always gotten up earlier than everyone and enjoyed the first few hours of the day alone. I always did — my brother hated sharing a room with me on holidays even though I insisted because I didn’t want to deal with the monster, that night.
Truth be told, I don’t want to deal with the monster any night. That doesn’t matter though, because there’s a monster that’s under my bed.
And truth be told I’m terrified it’s all just in my head.
