When you're a kid, monsters are vividly colored imaginary creatures that hide in your closet or under your bed and wait for the lights to go out. But once you hit a certain age the monsters begin to take different forms. They're no longer bright, fanged, imaginary things that look like disfigured animals and go bump in the night. They become sweet, trustworthy; oh-so caring even-twisted interpretations in our minds as they beguile us into thinking their shelter is what we need from the storm that they caused in the first place. Sometimes they take the form of people, but mostly they stay in our heads. Pain, depression, anxiety, all go hand-in-hand and become the Unholy Trinity of monsters. Pain leads to depression, depression to anxiety, anxiety to the need to feel pain, the need to feel pain leads right back to depression, and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle that I've seen ruin lives and even take them away. The monsters seem inviting at first. Enticing even. Especially pain. Pain whispers in your ear "Just a little of me and it will all be better." So you do it. You hurt yourself, you inflict pain, but it doesn't get any better. But yet that little monster in the back of your mind keeps telling you it's working. That the pain will take it away. When in reality it's just trying to hold you there. Because the more you feel pain, the more the depression can come back to bite you, the more the anxiety can come in and fight you, the more you hurt yourself, the longer it goes on, the more you go down the spiral. The less likely the spiral is to end, and the cycle becomes more and more never ending. But the thing about these monsters is that they don't just affect you. See the monsters feed off pain and suffering and depression, they feed off themselves, the more destruction they create the more they grow, the more they plague the world. The more they see you hurt the more they long to hurt others. So you hurt yourself. You tell a friend, they hurt for you, you see them hurt,and you don't want to see them hurting, so you hold it in, until you can't any longer, you break even worse, they break for you, and the cycle goes on and on. And one day someone tells you they hurt themselves. And you hurt for them, they see you hurt, they don't want to see you hurting, they hold it in, until they can't hold it in any longer, and they break even worse, and you break for them, and the cycle.never.ends. Until one day. When the proverbial tunnel opens up and you finally see a light in the end and you think praise the Lord on high I've finally made it. Because the one thing about the monsters? Is that they can be defeated. The one factor that stays true about both monsters as you grow older? They love the dark, and they fear the light. Happiness, and joy, and love, just the tiniest amounts of those can shove the monsters right back into the darkness where they belong. I guess the thing that will always ring true for monsters: the moment the light comes on, they run and hide. They don't go away forever, they always rear their nasty heads every once in a while, they always come back to try to break you; but as long as there's light? The monsters will never win.
