The Monster Underneath Your Bed

photo by Edson de Assis

There comes a point when you open your eyes and realize that you are the main character of your story. You realize that you no longer need to succumb to someone else’s narrative, and from there, you begin to live. It’s such a difficult thing to do at times. When we become entangled with life and others, it’s easy to forget that we have the leading role. It’s our movie, and plot twist, we are coming out of our powerlessness and stepping into empowerment. 

Scene 1: The Bogeyman

Even though most places around the world have 4 seasons, in life, there are many more. Naturally, we tend not to enjoy the seasons that leave us scraped up and bruised, sliding down the bathroom wall, depleted of energy, and stressed. We tend to revel in the seasons that create everlasting joy or happiness. However, those moments of immense sorrow are when we can truly bask in all that we are. No longer can we escape the parts of ourselves that we attempt to suppress. Grief and solitude allow us to come face to face with the most frightening person, the monster underneath the bed. Whom quite frankly may actually have always been ourselves. 

What do I mean?

The “bogeyman” concept has been used as a scare tactic for ages to get children to curb their behavior. However, the idea of the bogeyman is also said to be an inherent fear that children have of the dark, the unknown, being alone, and well, monsters. Through an existential lens, these elements are all things that make us very uncomfortable as adults. Think about how people create haunted houses. They utilize all of these scare tactics. However, suppose we put it into the context of the human condition. In that case, it may play out as so:

The Dark

The darkness disables our sense of sight, making us unaware of our destination. The darker or sadder parts of our being are often concealed so no one can see them and judge them. We’d much rather suffer in silence or fake happiness than reveal our darkness to others.  

The Unknown

Many times we become anxious because we cannot predict the outcome of certain events. At times, we may get so caught up in our heads and try to control specific scenarios instead of letting life just happen. 

Being Alone

When we find ourselves in a failing relationship, romantic or platonic, we may try to cling on to the partnership for fear of being alone. The fear of being alone, not having that one person anymore, and dealing with ourselves by ourselves, can make the thought of being alone the scariest thing for some to perceive. 

So, that monster under our bed could really be our authentic self that is tired of being hidden and overlooked for most of our lives.

Scene 2: Growing Pains 

Let’s dissect. Why do many of us shy away from tapping into the parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable? It is through discomfort that we grow. Do you remember feeling pain in your joints as a child? You would tell your parents/guardian, and they would say, “relax, it’s just growing pains.” Then before you know it, you grew an inch over the summer. How did that happen?

The “growing pains” are essentially a signal that alerts us that something is changing. This change can be negative or positive; it all depends how we perceive the experience. We can either see the addition in height to be a hindrance, because we can’t fit into their old clothes, OR we can see the height change as an advantage, to get newer and better-looking clothes. 

Therefore, to nurture our monster from underneath our beds, we must first confront it through the discomfort. We must encourage our monster to come out from underneath so that we can have a challenging conversation. The monster may fight and scratch and pull because it is so comfortable being where it’s at, but to be one with self, we need to confront every part of our being with love. 

Scene 3: Pulling Back The Curtain

In The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and the clan discover the Wizard to be a man behind a curtain, and not who he claimed, they questioned their reality. They all felt some sense of betrayal. The truth was being exposed, and it was difficult to believe. 

This is what may happen when we confront our “bogeyman.” Throughout the process of learning ourselves, we may be in disbelief of what we actually discover. We may even find the stem as to why we respond to certain stimuli and act in certain ways. This can all be attributed to getting to know the real us, the whole us, all of us. 

Scene 4: Contentment

The monster and the protagonist have put aside their differences. They are, at last, creating a healthy bond with one another. No longer shall our protagonist diminish or suppress the monster, but they shall harmonize to create an equilibrium. 

Inner peace and contentment are the objectives. Everlasting joy in one’s self is the aim. Finding comfort in our solitude is the goal. If we think about it, many of us want freedom yet are confined to the walls of our minds. Inner peace is freedom from those strongholds. 

Once we achieve this and feed our bogeyman with love, it will be easier to honor who we are.  

Scene 5: Unconditional Love

The most important relationship is with yourself, including the parts that you aim to suppress. I hope that we aspire to love ourselves so hard that we choose us every time, no matter what gets thrown our way. I also claim that we will wholeheartedly accept the bogeyman in us all. The parts of us that society told us were neither to heard nor seen. The parts of us that we have been made to believe are difficult to love. The features of us that we thought were too ugly to be us. Let’s learn to accept ourselves openly and fully, because this is who we are.