The Monster

The monster in my room.

Have you ever woken up to find a monster in your room? I did, when I was four years old. It wasn’t your typical monster, it didn’t look like a monster but it was. It had taken over someone else. I was told by my parents to sleep in the same bed as the monster. This same monster had attacked several people. That’s what it did, it would attack one person and then that person would become the monster. Then that monster would attack someone else and then they would become the monster. Then when I was four the monster had attacked my sister and she became the monster. Then the monster attacked me. But for some reason no matter how hard the monster tried, I wouldn’t let it take over me. I would have dreams about myself becoming the monster and wake up terrified and shaking. But I didn’t want to be a monster, so I didn’t become one. And that’s when I realized that no matter what happened to the people before me, they weren’t forced to become the monster, they chose to. They were introduced to the monster and then they had to make a choice. Become the monster or defeat it, stop it from destroying everyone. The monster attacked me and it was bad but to me becoming the monster was so much worse because I would rather be hurt than hurt someone else. And that’s all it took, the way to defeat the monster was so simple and yet it had taken years for someone to stop it. All along all anyone had to do was stop being the same monster that had attacked them.

I actually never planned on sharing this piece of work anywhere because it's so personal. I don't usually enjoy my non-fiction pieces as much because they don't usually sound as poetic. I find myself too tied down by reality and wanting to be faithful to the truth and details. So instead of letting the muse take hold of me I end up just describing events. In addition to the fact that this piece is way more personal than I usually get and when I wrote it no one knew the facts therein. Now that people in my life know about the events I don't feel as frightened to share things like these. Though they don't name names or say outright what happened I do think it is pretty obvious what it is about. I didn't bother editing it before posting it. I suppose I could clean it up and rewrite it to make it good but in a way I have done that in a much longer work that became a novella in one of my self published book. I changed a whole lot of things about the situation but the subject matter and the concept stayed the same. I encourage anyone to use writing as a tool to purge yourself of the dark things that live inside your memory. All you need to fight the monsters in the dark is to bring them to the light.