Monsters

There is nothing at all horrible about monsters outside your head. Monsters outside your head are the ones you see on tv from a scary movie or you read about in a book just before bed. They may be scary, but you can always kick them in the shins and run if you have to, or grab a knife from the kitchen if you have to or simply just sit down and talk to them if you have to. For who’s to say that monster isn’t just lonely and in need of a good friend? So yes, never worry about the monsters outside your head. It's monsters inside your head that you have to worry about. The could-bes or the what-ifs or the might-happens, or worse, the ones that you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN are standing right next to your bed up until the very instant you open your eyes and breathe a sigh of relief when you find your room empty. But even then, just because the monsters aren't there doesn't mean they're gone.

It's no good trying to tell someone about monsters inside your head. You simply have an “overactive Imagination” your mom will tell you, and then jump back on the phone telling her friends   “She’s such a creative young child.” Dad will only tell you that he is busy, so go away, except on some nights if he is in a particularly good mood, or a particularly bad mood, and then he will play the pretend game of finding all the monsters. He will go through the closet, look under the bed, and study the stuffed animals all one by one, just to show you that there are no monsters there, which isn't any help because monsters inside your head wouldn't be monsters inside your head if they were in the closet or under the bed or behind the chest of drawers or at the bottom of your stuffed animals. But if you tell dad this he will only get a stern look on his face and tell you that enough is enough, now is time for bed, and we can worry about monsters in the morning.

Then he closes the door and turns off the light and maybe he says Good night or maybe he doesn't, it doesn't matter because you close your eyes so that you don't see your room when it's dark. Seeing your room when it's dark is the worst thing you can do for monsters inside your head. The dark changes things because suddenly the chair isn't a chair, and the door isn't a door, and your stuff animals on your dresser aren’t stuffed animals anymore And all the normal things that  wouldn't make any sense to be afraid of during the day smudge into the dark and become nightmare versions of themselves.

If you have monsters-inside-your-head, all you can do is close your eyes, tight, so that they don't come open, and pull up the covers so that it looks like you're asleep, and pray that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee. And then, maybe, just maybe, the monsters inside your head won't come out...