Other Monsters

Vol. 3, Issue 37

I got really messed up by nightmares when I was younger and on one particularly unrelenting night, my mother finally came to rescue me. She turned on the light and told me to point at the wall where the monster was so she could throw a pillow at that spot. She threw it until all I could see was the dull white wall, not the black spotty demon thing that was there before. She even slept in my bed afterward and let me keep the light on all night. But my dad intervened after that and wouldn’t let her help anymore. My kid nightmares no longer warranted protection – they were just sleeping problems that frustrated him and I had to grow up. It turns out some friend’s doctor or some book they half-read had convinced them that I suffered from “separation anxiety,” the wimpiest, most pathetic form of anxiety. Nothing was real. It was all in my head, my poor fucked up head.

I always tried to climb into their bed after that, but they’d had enough, and they began to lock me out. “Doctor’s orders,” they’d tell me the next morning. Sometimes I’d sleep out in the hallway with my hand up against their bedroom door. It was the worst. 

When my oldest son had his first nightmares I knew what to do. He was close to three, still in his crib, and adjusting to being alone in the dark. There were a couple of nights he cried out that there was something in the room with him. It was around Halloween so he’d binged on mindless silly singing monster YouTube videos for about a week straight so this wasn’t a total surprise. He realized that at bedtime the singing monsters were now floating around his room, climbing his wall, hissing, growling – more typical monster behavior. “It’s in the closet!” he said. “Right there!” He didn’t have to show me – I knew exactly where it was.

I pulled him out of his crib and told him to wait with his mom while I turned on the light and got to work. I looked under his crib, inside the closet, behind the toy chest, outside the window on the roof.  “All clear!” I yelled to him in the other room. Before I put him back in the crib I hid most of the toys in his room that caused the crooked lurking shadows. I also recruited the biggest stuffed animals he owned – this three-foot Frosty the Snowman and this two-foot T-Rex – to stand guard in front of the closet. “If the monsters come back call me and we’ll figure out another plan.” 

And now my two-year-old daughter is the one having nightmares. Hers are not the same as his – she just doesn’t want to be alone. Sometimes she’ll wake up at 1 a.m. and sleepwalk into the kitchen, bouncing off walls like drunk E.T. When she bonks herself awake, she cries for one of us. I walk her back into her small bed and curl up next to her. It’s probably bad for my bones and the next morning my neck feels like I slept in a football helmet, but that’s where I want to be.

And just last weekend my oldest boy deduced this: “Dinosaurs were real – so monsters must be, too.” I’m not gonna lock any of them out – if it’s real to them it’s real to me.

*****

Last week’s essay was pretty heavy, but many good people wrote in to say how helpful it was and even spit out their own gnarly stuff – some of it was eerily familiar to my experience with that dick-rubbing bastard at the hair salon. Some people just wanted to make sure I knew that what I’d experienced was real. Like, here’s one example:

“[A] very similar thing happened to me in May. We hired this guy to come to our house and cut our hair outside. He definitely rubbed his dick on me a few times as he was working, but in my mind, I was like, "well, I'm in a folding chair outside, so I'm at a non-standard haircutting height... well, he has back problems, so maybe he has trouble moving..." And then – the kicker – as I was walking him out of our front gate, he was like, "Take your mask off, let me see your face." And I DID. Even though I was like, I feel like this is him winning somehow, and I immediately felt queasy.”

and this

”[I] too was molested. And I have lived with guilt and shame since I was six because a part of me wanted it. I didn’t want to feel that way.

I’ve been doing therapy since my 20’s and never admitted it to any of my therapists until the one I have now…”

and this

“I had a seatmate rub against me and touch my lap on a red-eye from LA to Detroit about 10 years ago and even as it was happening, I kept convincing myself that it wasn't?? Eventually, I told a flight attendant just so I could get a different seat and the guy ended up getting hauled off the flight in Detroit by federal air marshals which I guess was protocol but didn't make me feel great either. It was completely embarrassing being trapped there and feeling like I was somehow at fault for either saying something or not saying something. I still sometimes wonder if I imagined it? Horrible. Oh no, I bet you're going to get tons of emails like this!!! I'm really sorry that happened to you.”

and this

“It happened. It's real. And I'm sorry it happened. The same thing happened to me too. And when people wanted to have sex with me, even if I didn't want to, I let them because I didn't have boundaries. I was afraid of what they'd think of me if I said no.”

I’m consistently surprised by how many people instinctually rush to the aid of strangers to share in communal grief. It’s the best part of being human.

*****

The world will thrash my children in the way the world does and I have mostly accepted it. One of the only ways I feel like I can prepare them for that is to believe them when they see scary things – when they feel scary things. Because I’ve been there and seen those monsters. I’ve also had depression because of them– the pinballing mania and the empty sadness – and spent too many long sweaty nights wide awake with people I kinda hate just to keep the lights on a bit more. So who am I to tell my children what’s real or not? It’s all real to me until they say otherwise. That’s what I’m here for. – AJD