Thursday 1 November 2012

My Monsters


I really enjoy this time of year, more specifically the Halloween season.  I love the way horror and scary stories are embraced by society without question.  Disturbing activity is not judged, but encouraged.  I’m sure I wrote about this in my blog last year so I won’t repeat too much.  Perhaps I’ll even go back and re-read my old Oct blogs of yesteryear to reminisce.  

And of course, its also my birthday week. BSW - I’m a scorpio born during Halloween week in particular, which must surely have influenced certain character traits of the season within my very being. 

Alas, its not just being a Halloween born scorpio that has shaped my character, but my bipolar disorder has also manifested some darker traits within myself. I don’t mean anything truly evil or bad, but more akin to the imagination of George Romero, Alfred Hitchcock, Greg Nicotero, Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King.   

Thus, its no surprise BSW loves the last week of October!  

No doubt, anyone who has turned on the TV over the last week or two has noticed (and hopefully watched) all the horror flicks playing in heavy rotation.   I give a big ‘tip of the hat’ to AMC for their awesome Fear Fest - a full 2 week horror movie marathon.  It’s all I’ve been watching when I’m not working or sleeping.  Good times, good times. 

'Cujo', the infamous movie that tarnished the good reputation of the faithful St. Bernard in the minds of so many, was screened several times last week. Ironically, the movie spawned a fear of dogs, although the true evils (or lessons learned) of the story were the consequences of: i) not taking your pet the the vet regularly (e.g. rabies vaccination), ii) avoiding regular car maintenance, and iii) adultery.   Cujo, was one of the few works of Stephen King that did not involve monsters from another dimension, paranormal powers or evil forces otherwise unexplained.  ‘Cujo’ could realistically happen to any family tomorrow.   I think that’s what makes it so scary really.  No car named ‘Christine’ or encroaching ‘Mist‘ (two other examples of King’s work for those unfamiliar) scares me as much as a rabid dog because of the reality factor.    

All that being said, in my mind, its King’s use of little children in his horror stories that make his stories so gripping.  A great story must stir emotion in the reader, and without that reaction (anger, anxiety, sadness, empathy...) the writer failed to reach the reader, and without this connection the story is lacking (in my opinion anyway).  I believe King’s greatest talent as a writer is how he uses the innocence of children to bring out the ultimate horror of a particular situation.     

OK OK, moving right along, this blog wasn’t intended to be a critical review of the works of Stephen King, but rather how one scene in particular from ‘Cujo’ stirred a strong childhood memory of my own that I wanted to discuss.  As a child I had many fears of monsters in my mind.  At the time I assumed every other kid shared the same fears as I did. However, its only now that I’m an adult, and have shared some of these childhood monster stories with others, that I’m only now realizing that not all of my childhood fears were so average or typical. 

For example, ‘Cujo‘ set its scary atmosphere early through the use of scenes where ‘Tad’ (the little boy) was terrified by what he believed were monsters hiding in his closet and under his bed.  Admittedly, this is a fairly common childhood fear that most of us grow out of in time.  However, the depth of Tad’s fear of the monsters under his bed, and the behaviour that he adapts in order to deal with his fear was incredibly described and emoted in Cujo that it hits on something deeper.  It stirred some deep memories in me, that’s for sure. 

I totally understand how Tad felt during the whole movie. Both Tad and I, faced a terrifying situation every night before bed.  We knew that the monsters couldn’t get us when the light was on, as they could only come out from beneath the bed when it was dark.  Our dilemma was that our beds were on the other side of the room, a good 10 feet away from the only light switch, which was always next to the door, which meant we had to cross our bedroom in complete darkness leaving us vulnerable to attack during the few seconds it took to reach the sanctuary of our beds. (Monsters must stay on the floor thus we were safe on our beds which were elevated - basic monster rules).  

While this is probably a normal childhood fear, I think it was how each family dealt with it that affected the child’s mentality and future behavioural patterns.  The simplest solution to this dilemma would be for a parent to tuck their child into bed then turn out the light, thus avoiding the whole situation entirely.  
But not all parents tuck their kids into bed at night, or they stop tucking them in too early.   I think that was the case with me.  While my parents didn’t divorce until I was in high school, I don’t have any memories of being read to at night or being tucked in. I recall Dad was too lazy to get up off the couch/barstool to do so (he was always in the basement if he was home), and once Mom had fed and washed me and my brother she hopped into the car and went to play bingo.  I remember sneaking into my parents bedroom (it had a front facing window with a street view) night after night, so I could watch her going out. I was so sad watching her drive away.     

When kids have to deal with irrational fears on their own, while they’re too young to properly deal with the situation, its one for the earliest opportunities for mental problems to occur.      
Since we couldn’t depend on our parents to protect us from the monsters under our bed we (Tad and I) developed behavioural solutions out of necessity.  (It wasn’t like we could re-wire our bedrooms for more sensible monster defensive light switches when a simple tuck in was out of the question!).   

I had almost forgotten about all this until watching ‘Cujo’ again after so many years.  Tad was going to bed on his own (his parents had stopped tucking him in recently) and he had to turn off the light, then get into bed. However, he knew that as soon as he turned off the light the monsters could reach out from under his bed and get him.  The only way to safely deal with this situation (on his own) was to completely prep for bed as much as possible with the light still on, then at the very last moment flick the switch and essentially do the childhood monster equivalent of the running long jump.   When I saw Tad bolt in the dark in knew exactly what he was doing and why.  In the sudden darkness the monsters under the bed were temporarily limited to arms reach, and if you were able to leap the distance of the monsters reach between the safe spot on the floor to your bed, you’d be safe.  Those were the monster rules - I don’t know why but for some reason we all knew what they were.   Countless nights I did the running monster long jump to bed every night.  Its just the way it had to be.  

I never thought about it that much since growing up, but watching that scene in ‘Cujo’, having all those thoughts rushing back again when I saw myself in Tad (that scared child in the dark), I started thinking about my childhood monsters again.  I suppose it was partly because I was caught up in the Halloween hype, and partly because I trusted this person in particular (as he’d stood by me through some rocky times over the past few years) that I shared this memory with him.  And his response surprised me.  He thought the running monster long jump was bizarre.  He never did it himself and had never heard of it before now.  He wasn’t judgmental or freaked out by my confiding, but felt that as my friend he wanted to tell me what he honestly thought. (Its this integrity that is the foundation of our friendship I have no doubt).  
It was the first time I ever told anyone else about the running monster long jump, and the only other time I saw anyone else do it was in ‘Cujo’.  Now I don’t know what to think.  Was it normal to do that or not?  I can’t deny that since I was so hesitant to mention this to anyone else for so many years that I obviously felt a certain degree of invalidated shame regarding the topic.  

I’ve thought a lot about this over the last few days and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.  Its normal for little kids to fear monsters in the night.  That’s a normal part of life.  But there are ways, better or worse ways (not so much right or wrong ways), to deal with this fear.   I thought about why my friend never felt/acted the same way as I did, and I realized that he shared a bedroom with his brother during those formidable years of his childhood, and that made all the difference.  He never had to face the monsters in the dark alone night after night.  They had each others back.  I had no one.  I can’t help but muse at the irony in which the poverty of his upbringing brought him so much comfort in the night, while my ‘privileged’ upper middle class upbringing afforded me the cold comfort of isolation. 
Although I haven’t discussed this with very many people, I’m willing to bet children who were left alone with their fears developed very different coping mechanisms than children who had the support and perceived protection of family to ease them through their fears.   It would be something worth discussing with a psychiatrist or psychologist no doubt.  

I wish I could say my childhood monster fears had ran its natural course, but I don’t think I ever truly outgrew that fear like most other children did.  Instead, I think it just changed its manifestation according to my lifestyle (e.g. what realities and responsibilities I had at that age as I grew up).  Eventually I stopped being afraid of the monsters under my bed - I was old enough to know that fear was nonsense after intense physical examination of the space under my bed and my ensuing purchase of a waterbed which strategically closed them down regardless!!! haha!!! - but instead found a much more serious monster to fear.        
At this point I was older and had more free space through out the house.  Even the responsibility for locking the doors, both front and back.  I have no idea why, but the monsters that used to live under my bed suddenly moved to the backyard.  And unless somebody was doing something in the backyard (which would always keep the monsters away) I felt an uncontrollable urge to lock up the back door to protect us.  It didn’t matter if it was day or night anymore either.  The monster had gained the ability to attack at any moment, so long as the backyard was empty.  It was like I was the gatekeeper to the backdoor and I had to stop all the monsters.  They never dared use the front door. Just the backdoor.  I don’t know why. They just did.  
I can still vividly recall my terror, racing to the backdoor terrified that I wouldn’t be able to slide the deadbolt through its adjacent metal loops fast enough before the monster would beat me there.        

I was always so incredibly relieved when I made it just in the nick of time to lock the door and save us all.  I never told anyone about my backdoor monster until last year.  And it never mentioned it to anyone else since.  The only soul I ever told this to was a relative of mine who also has bipolar disorder.  I had recently opened up to her about my vivid nightmares and wondered if she had ever experienced anything similar.  She said she had.  She told me that her whole life she had been dealing with the same kind of dreams I was and suddenly I didn’t feel so alone (after a little research I discovered vivid dreams were quite common in manic depressives actually).   
Then I told her about the fear I had with the back door monster. She stopped suddenly, she didn’t know what to say about that.   She didn’t think it was normal and she sounded concerned.  I reassured her that since leaving home several years ago, I had never felt like that since.  I had almost forgotten about it.  But going home scares me sometimes it seems.  I never feel scared by monsters at my current backdoor.  
  • Am I just more mature now?
  • Do I truly feel more secure now than before?
  • Am I coping with my bipolar disorder more effectively perhaps?

I just don’t know.  I thought about it briefly once last year, then buried it away again.  I’ve never mentioned any of this to anybody else. Not even my doctors.  Its only the Fear Fest horror movie marathon that made me think on all this stuff again.  

Ok that’s it for now. I’m done talking about this stuff. I feel exhausted. 

So do my childhood monsters seem strange? Am I normal or odd? I have no idea what’s normal anymore.  ugh.