Thoughts on Life

More Than Stories

When we were kids, we were afraid to sleep because of the monsters under our beds.

Our moms or dads would check and tell us that there was no such thing.

They were wrong.

The monsters in this world are not the tales we were told at bedtime.

They don't hide beneath bridges, waiting for us to come along to they scare us and feed off our fear.

They don't have long sharp claws and jagged teeth,"The better to eat to eat you with!", they'd say.

The real monsters do hide, though. Our parents can't stand guard at our close doors anymore because they are everywhere.

They hide in the shadows but are still seen.

They hide behind masks with false smiles and fake names.

Hiding behind computer screens because they can't show their faces.

Every kind word and "I'm your friend.", is a lie.

Writing on comment boards as if in a race to see who can be mean first.

Refusing to let themselves see the beauty in anyone else because they can't stand to see anything but ugly. As if trying to make the world around them worse would make them see something better in the mirror and make us not see them.

They take form in more than just people.

They are fear, envy, discontentment, loneliness, sadness, and a longing to be accepted.

It's their words that have talk strangers into their graves.

They have offered the wrong kind of escape to people who found them before they could find help.

The sad fact is: we are stuck with them.

The same way they are stuck with themselves.

There will always be the creatures that we fear.

They exist in more than the stories we were told as children.

But the thing that we have to understand is that they wrong.

Don't believe the tangled web that their spindled legs have woven.

The only opinion that matters is the the one that YOU'VE chosen.

Your heart is yours and no one else's. Ignore the harsh words that are whispered about you.

All that they crave is for your reaction.

And we will NOT let them make a meal out of the things that we feel.

Author's note: This was inspired a lot by a new poem called "Trolls" by Shane Koyczan. I wanted to give him most of the credit not only for the poem and because he's pretty much brilliant all around! Thanks for reading!