On Monsters

Day 45

Do you remember the monster in the closet? I do – I remember lying in bed at night, trying not to think about my closet and how it was dark and scary. There were two doors in my room, one leading to said closet and one leading to the rest of the house. On the house side, if I left the room I knew that I would find family nearby, I knew who I was likely to meet, what I was going to run into, and the general shape of the world outside my room. I could also see my room, and probably find my way around it in the dark. However, I find that I didn't know my closet as well. Sure, there were clothes in it and a shelf, but as with many closet there were also corners filled with stuff I had forgotten about. We can often go into a closet or a garage today, just to look around, and we will find things which we have forgotten, but which were still there. We have them present and at hand, but we don't clearly remember them and we don't see them all the time. The closet is like that, and the monster in the closet is as well. We can open the door and peer in, shinning a light around and seeing nothing, but here we go back to bed, even if we have a nightlight, it turns out that the closet still has those dark corners, those hidden places where things can hide, like monsters. Or perhaps those monsters are under the bed – even closer, and the slightest movement will wake them up. Leaving the bed, a place of safety, or even taking the covers off our heads to that we can see what is around us – is that the action which lets the monsters eat us?

The traditional response is, that monsters do not exist. That these terrible things we imagine and fear as children are things which, to adults and reasonable beings, are figments of our imagination. Our parents shine lights into dark corners, telling us that the monsters do not exist. We tell ourselves that we are just imagining the monsters, that if we are brave they will go away. We sometimes make films or tell stories where the monsters turn out to be kind or cute. We hug our teddy bear, or touch our amethyst stone, and tell ourselves that they will protect us from the monsters. That is, our traditional ways of dealing with monsters in the closet is to deny them their existence and power. We tell ourselves that the monsters we are thinking of aren't really a part of the world.

We know, though that monsters do exist. We encounter them in our lives and, sometimes fleeing and sometimes fighting them, barring the slowly healing scars the rest of our days. Usually these monsters aren't very strong or terrifying; They are sadistic bosses which make the working day a torment, mean gremlin neighbors who ruin your whole morning every time you meet them, racists who look down on you, friends who gaslight you, the school bully, and the other people who cause the thousand tiny wounds of life in a strange and hostile environment. People who are just a tiny bit evil, just a tiny bit malicious, and who hate you just a tiny bit – not for a reason exactly, or to achieve something worthwhile, for that would be understandable and companionable – but either because they are injured in some way, because they feel better being mean, because they don't even understand that what they are doing is damaging, or simply because they don't care about you in a way which is abundantly and obviously clear.

Sometimes monsters are worse. Minor monsters we often deal with every day in one way or another, and though the wounds are small and many, the aftereffects don't tend to last long. Take too many wounds too fast and it could be very bad, but if you can make it through the day, rest at home and recover with a good book or with people who love and trust you, then you'll generally be ok. You'll forget about the problems eventually, and as you experience the you know that you will. However, the really bad monsters, when they rip with their claws, do lasting damage. Terrible things can happen to us which we don't readily recover from. Sometimes these monsters are physical, like murderers and spouse-beaters. Sometimes these monsters are chemical, like heroin or depression. Sometimes these monsters are emotional, like negligent parents and betrayers. There are things which happen to me, which happen to all us of, which we will not soon forget. Things which can and will effect us for the rest of our days, so that we always fear being alone with somebody, we always feel need or a push to do something bad for us, or we find it very hard to ever trust again.

These wounds aren't the physical sort which heal, or the physical sort which don't heal like the loss of limb, but rather are the mental and psychic sort which stay with as long as we are us, and which seem to effect the very world we live in. This wound, being a thing, is like a gem in the world. It is a part of what is, and being a part of what is is thus comprehensible and understandable to a certain extent. To comprehend and understand it is to have some knowledge of it, to see it in a point of view, and to be able to tell a story about it. To know not just what it is, but also how it connects to things, where it came from and what it effects. The monster in the closet tends to go away when you shine a light on him, but I find that these wounds don't tend to do that. Rather, shining light on them allows you to deal with them. By understanding the wound as a thing like other things, we are able to understand it as a type of stress in a logic field. It is an injury, but it is also a structural part of your identity and a forceful tendency effecting your actions. The wound become a bit like a little monster, a bit like something in the world which is both an injury, and a cause of further injuries.

What I mean to say is that we have monsters inside us, monsters which are a part of us. I find that these monsters are often like points of view, like ways of thinking about the world. Have you ever looked over the edge of a rooftop and felt the strong urge to jump off and smash down into the street, thinking at one and the same time that it was both good idea and a very bad idea? Have you ever listened to what someone was saying to you, having one opinion about how the social event was going, and what kind of person they were - but also knowing that in the back of your head there was something entirely separate going on; and that when you lay down to sleep tonight that you would spend an hour rethinking and reevaluating everything that had happened, trying to convince yourself that you hadn't messed up the social activity, and the person you were talking to was being sincere and open, not secretly laughing at you? Have you ever felt an instant dislike about someone because of how similar they looked to someone you knew before, well at the same time knowing that that belief was irrational and the person was an entirely separate being you had no real reason to immediately despise? The feeling of knowing and thinking two opposing things at the same time, of knowing that the front of your head and the back of your head were conceiving very separate opinions, is something which I feel is familiar to many of us.

Sometimes these types of dual thoughts and opinions are harmful, are the results of trauma or depression. Sometimes though, these thoughts are there for good reason. Monsters injure us, but they also teach us something – that there are monsters out there. Sometimes the point of view that we have of something, the logic field which is most reasonable to us, is not the one that is the wisest to use. Sometimes its the back of the head which is the injured one, but sometimes it's the front of the head. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, its more complex then that with more like a thousand points of view all existing at once, than only two. After all – maybe you don't like the guy because he looks like someone evil you once knew, but you 'know' that you have that reaction, so you ignore other signals, like the way the talks or the way he dresses which can give you more information. We have, after all, many responses all bundled up together.

Often one of the ways which we distinguish our responses is by placing them into two categories, the rational and the emotional. I've talked before about how dangerous categorization can be, but also think that this particular type of separation is suspect for quite definitive reasons. I once said that being emotional is like coloring the world, like seeing a part of it in a certain way. Thus, to be angry is to have a certain point of view, a certain understanding of the world. We can still be angry and be rational, still shape the world into a logic field, have definitive limits to to the world, and make reasonable decisions. Its simply that we tend to ignore certain parts of the world, or have our rational decision making all go towards one particular goal, like punching our enemy in their big, stupid head. Anger can be, for many people, a type of monster. Anger can be something which always threatens to overcome you, which whispers dark thoughts in the back of your head, which has you tending to react in a certain way, which blinds you to certain possibilities, and so on. Anger is a condition, but it is also a force. It is a point of view, but also a part of the world.

As is anger, so is sadness and gladness, to be angsty and inspired. Sadness and depression are not the same thing, thought they are related, just as weariness and sadness are not the same but are often seen together. You can be glad and yet worried at the same time, feel inspired and melancholy, or feel scared and elated, all at the same time. To be emotional is not necessarily to have just one emotion, but sometimes many. Of course, if an emotion is a point of view, then this is to be expected, just as we can have many points of view at the same time. We are multi-faceted creatures with different aspects to us, for which no single aspect or point of view suffices to understand us, or for us to understand ourselves.

As is an emotion, so is a monster. You can say that you are over being sad because of a death, or mad because of a fight, but saying so does not make it true. Saying that you are have healed from the emotional wounds and trust issues an ex gave you doesn't mean that you are. If you aren't, if you deny yourself, then you will eventually come out. The point of view which is still existent, still a part of you in the world, and still a facet of the gem of you in the world, effecting the world, will end up with you doing something you didn't consciously intend. You'll consciously be surprised at what you do, only realizing later why you did it, why you were rude to the customer, why you made a foolish purchase, or why you rejected a kind offer. Sometimes we learn about ourselves by watching what we do, because we don't always know ourselves all that well. It might turn out that we are more complex than we think, and that we have more points of view in our head then we imagined.