Monsters Under Her Bed

They come, they halt, and they go;

And yet she is standing there.

Waiting, listening, breathing, breaking;

But life goes on everywhere.

A storm came and uprooted her life.

Then an eerie calm settled in.

But no one looked long enough to know;

The tornado yet going on within.

Such was the story of her life per say.

Two steps back for each one ahead.

She came; she tried, but didn’t conquer.

Over the million monsters under her bed.

We live in two worlds. The one around us and the one within us. Often there we feel unfamiliarity among family and alone in crowds. The chaos in this silence is deafening. When fairytales lose their charm, being hopeful starts getting referred to as delusion, innocence “matures” and the soul withers. This depressing monologue sounds suspiciously similar to the phenomenon we proudly call “growing up”.  

As a child our parents have often scared us with the then terrifying tale of the monster under the bed. Sleep early or the monster will bite you, eat your veggies or the monster will come for you, and God knows what! But little did we know then that those monsters are nothing in comparison to dark and dangerous monsters that we carry to bed now every day. Monsters of self-doubt, anxiety, inadequacy, jealousy, ego, restlessness, fear, have surrounded us. They are waiting to suck us into this bottomless pit of insecurity and depression.  We have to fight every day, every minute to be happy. Some say happiness is free. I believe happiness is very costly. You pay with an endless amount of courage. You are constantly struggling to survive and win over the million toxic emotions, failures, prejudices, insecurities, while the world is waiting for you to drown and cheering on the sidelines. To block out those thousand voices and focus on the tiny whisper reminding you to smile is what it takes to be happy. Pain and depression are addictive; comfortable. To strive to never give up means constantly venturing into the uncomfortable deep end and waiting for the tide to arrive, with a smile on your face. 

This poem is about the struggle that a young girl faces in trying and failing to overcome the monsters of depression and insecurity lurking around her. It echoes with millions of such unheard untold stories of many of us who may seem to be plastering a smile and are constantly breaking burdened with a million monsters under their bed.