Monster under the Bed

It’s strange, isn’t it? How we lived with a monster all those years, unseen in plain sight. Love has that power, it covers decay, wraps it in illusion, paints over wounds with perfection’s brush. It builds a bubble, hiding us from the monsters we live with.

I grew up in a broken home, walls built high, shielding what lay inside. I learned to wear my mask well; you’d never guess how shattered I was. Yesterday, I heard shouting from next door, angry, wild voices tearing through the quiet, and suddenly, I was a child again, gripped by the same fear, imagining the children inside, trembling like I once did.

I remember my mother’s small frame, her voice lost in desperate cries. We screamed with her, terror washing over us, but some force inside said to protect her, though I was just as frail. My father would stumble home, drunk and angry, shouting things that made no sense. If it were only the yelling, we might’ve clung to our blankets and prayed it would pass, but it never did. The shouting always broke into violence. And we’d come running, begging him to stop. But he never saw us, his rage blinded him, and we’d be pushed aside.

Sometimes the fight would spill into the street. Once, I remember vividly, the night was silent as we huddled outside, waiting, until he finally staggered back inside and passed out. We crept in after him, leaving a broken game behind, shattered like the night.

It never dawned on me then that my mother was hiding too, just like us. She would slip into that narrow space between the wall and the bed, telling us to wake her if he came back. Only now do I realize she slept there out of fear, her guard up through the night as we took our own silent watch.

The monster would sleep, and we would drift into uneasy dreams. By morning, we acted as though it never happened, holding our breaths beneath the weight of what others might know, of what we ourselves could hardly bear to face.

Was love ever enough to forgive it all,
or did we forgive because there was nowhere to run?
Or maybe we never forgave at all, maybe we just learned to live with it.

It became our normal, spilling out into the street, our screams slicing through the night, breaking into people’s sleep. Yet they locked their doors, pulled their blankets close, turned away.

It was never their business, anyway.