As a child I was always convinced that there was a monster under my bed. I would never stay stood stationary close to it when it came to bedtime, when I went to the toilet at night I had to take a run and jump to get back to safety of my duvet and in some cases I also had to peer cautiously under there to make sure the coast was clear (from the safety of my duvet, of course). I was and am a self-proclaimed bed bug. Always have been, always will be so I have had plenty of time for my fear of the monster that takes lodge under my bed.
Now, it is common knowledge that monsters that live under our beds thrive off of the dark. Something I am scared of. Yes, I am 21 and scared of the dark. It isn’t something that is crippling, nor is it as bad as when I was 6. However, I do sleep with the light on in my hall. I have to be able to have partial sight in my room when it is dark. Especially when I am alone, which is 96% of the time.
Something I was told when I had a nightmare was to turn over and go back to sleep. I guess this would confuse the monster…? If he popped on a certain side of the bed expecting you to be there and you had your back to him he wouldn’t be able to scare you. I don’t know. I will have to ask my mum what she meant by this. Another thing that is told frequently is there is nothing to fear but fear itself. In other words, it is our imagination that scares us. I think that in my younger years I did have a pretty good imagination. I was an only child and playing with Barbies on your own meant a lot of names and conversations to come up with. But I digress. I had a vivid imagination and it used to run away with itself. Mix that with a dark room and all sorts can happen! The dressing-gown on the back of your door, your wardrobe, a toy chest…anything could turn into a monster when you were blurry eyed in the middle of the night in the dark. My point is though that the monsters that did exist under our beds weren’t really under there. In actual fact they lived in our heads.
As adults I believe that we still have a monster under the bed. It has just grown up, like we have. It has turned from imagination to stress and guilt. I know for myself that when I climb in to bed, get comfy and close my eyes, ready to drift off the monster crawls back out from under my bed. As I reflect on everything I have done that day and everything that I need to do the following I can often feel the monster pull back my duvet, climb in next to me and make himself comfy. Often, this is worse than when I was a child. He wasn’t allowed out from under the bed then and when he attempted to there was always someone to put him back. There are many things I have come across as an adult that are just progressions of problems I had when I was younger. As we grow up and evolve into adults, so do our problems.
Some people are able to keep their monster at bay, some are friends with it and others don’t even have one. I am jealous of these people. I feel mine will always be a permanent lodger and it is just something that I have to learn to live with. I am an extremely worried person. I worry about everything. I stress about stress and when there isn’t any I stress about that too. That is my monster under my bed. Maybe one day he will move from under my bed and I look forward to that day but right now I am figuring out how to live with him.
Let me know what your monster is and how you deal with it, as always, I’d love to hear from you.
Ta Ta for now,
Em.