Copy of Monsters

By: laurenicious |


Monsters

By Hannah Nie

“Go back to sleep,” they told you. “There are no monsters under your bed.”

Yet the monsters are everywhere.

It’s the first day of school, or camp, or basketball tryouts, or some other event where you’re expected to *talk to people—*and you really do want to, but your smiles are warped into grimaces, and eye contact is near lethal. No one wants to be around you, Social Anxiety drawls into your ear as a cold hand grips your shoulder.

It’s science class, five minutes before you wing your presentation on cells. Your head starts to blank out. (What even is the mitochondria? you scream inside.) Words are knotted into shapes you cannot comprehend, and the audience seems to multiply. They call it Stage Fright, and it’s everywhere: in front of you, around you, dancing circles around your thoughts. There is no escape.

It’s four in the morning, the day your summative essay is due. Your only sustenance is coffee—no milk, no sugar, just a blackness that’s as dark as the sky outside. At first, it lured you in, beckoning to you in that easy-going tone: “Look! A cat video. No harm in giving it a click”. But the videos turned into playlists, and now you are trapped, in a black hole of hour-long marathons. The horror dawns upon you, but Procrastination has already slinked away, satisfied with the night’s bounty.

    	We all have our monsters. Perhaps it’s Loneliness. Or maybe Stress, or Heartbreak. Perhaps it’s Depression. They are masters of disguise, and sometimes even you can hardly see through them. You think you’ve finally outrun them, or by some miracle, even outsmarted them—you bend over, catching your breath--but a quick glance behind, and they’re right on your tail, lurking in your shadow.  

I can’t say these monsters can all be tamed. But the greatest of them all is one we can fight, and right now, these very words are strapping Stigma down.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

laurenicious

No biography available.