A Monster Under My Blanket
Have you ever heard a story about the monster under a bed? It was a story that frighten children, until 1984 a children book’s writer, Jeanne Willis, revolves around the twist on the common “monsters under the bed” story. Fun fact, it is now the most written topic of children’s bed time story with a value to teach kids to be courageous. I bet you all have heard of at least one version of it, don’t you?
Growing up as an introverted kid who even got special counseling on her kindergarten due to her incapability to interact with people, I got my safe place: my blanket. To emphasize how important it is for me, I can even sleep with no bed, no pillow, or no sheets, but I can’t even once sleep without any blanket covering me from my head to toe, even in a night that is hot as hell. It will get me sick for a few days if I do.
Sleeping inside it for manyyy hours was a usual thing when I’m sad. For me, it feels home, warm and safe, to be inside my blanket. No one to interfere, or to judge. Luckily, everyone close to me know to not interfere the cocoon-Alphani, as that means I am collecting back my cheerfulness that the world usually see.
On my sixteenth, there’s a moment that I keep on sleeping in my cocoon for almost two weeks. I only wake up and go out from Blanky, my blanket, to go to the toilet, and some days to go to school. I have no appetite to eat nor to study. As an outstanding student of the best high-school in West Java, it is a weird thing for my friends and teachers to see me sleep in the class and got below-average score. Honestly, I don’t even realize this until one day I can even hear voices that constantly whisper bad things to me: to say that I’m ugly, not good enough, and nobody loves me, even inside my blanket.
Long ago as a little kid, I remember that I once read a book about a monster under a bed that do this too, to say bad things to the person until this person lost all his cheerfulness. As someone who always got a bed without a hollow space beneath, I never believed that kind of monster exist. I never got scared of it, because where will the monster be if I don’t have a space for it?
Knowing nothing about the feeling and the experience… I think, this is the feeling of that person who got a monster under his bed?
Screw the monster! Amongst all the places it can be, it chose Blanky as his home. I know, Blanky is a comfortable place, but can’t it choose another place? I honestly got nowhere to go.
As the monster goes wilder and bigger, it consumes me and my health. It is countless time that I ran into the emergency room due to the ache that I constantly feel. Other than that, there’s no day for me that has no stress on it. Blanky as my only safe place has lost his comfort. Everyday was a torture.
Many things have me and my mom went through to stop the monster to take me away: exorcism — both Islamic and Christian way — , meditation, psychologist counseling, psychiatric therapy, and medicine consuming. None of it was able to expel the monster out of my head. “Will I be cured one day? Can I have the smile I got back then?” I plead the monster, but I guess it is one stubborn monster. The monster was still there that I decided to just live with it.
A year has passed since I decided to just live with it, luckily it gradually be better. Those moment teaches me to let go anything I had been holding on in the past. It was a happy ending for me, I got my smile back even though I lost my past.
But…
A usual but yet uncomfortable feelings are lingering these days. I guess, the monster came back — peeking from the window.
