As I lay here in my hospital bed with the sound of beeping and wheezing filling through the room I’ve decided to tell my story on how the monster got to me so that if anyone else is dealing with this monster they can find the strength they need to get rid of it.
When I was young I started to notice a lot of older people were attached with a monster slinking around them, it would wind and turn around their faces constantly making them look sick and pale.
I would see people without the monster later have one attached to them as well, it followed everywhere they went and if it wasn’t given the attention it wanted it caused them to become irritable and upset.
My father was one of the people the monster overtook, he would sit there with the monster wrapped around his fingers and let it consume him day in and day out. Eventually, the person I knew as my dad began to wilt away but this wasn’t until my 30’s when I had kids. I am getting off-topic, I need to explain how I ended up here.
When I was a teenager I began to notice my friends succumbing to its call and eventually even I had lost the strength to push it away. It was easier to just accept it because it made everyone accept me.
The feeling I had when the monster was around could not be put into words, it was indescribable. My body and head felt light it was as if all the worries I had in life just began to disappear, I was euphoric. I chastised myself for not listening to its call sooner and for much of my life it only brought me great joy. Then my late 20’s mid 30’s began and I realised my mistake. It was no longer about making me feel good it was about making me feel not bad. It had given me so much happiness that I could no longer figure out how to find it without the monster.
My kids also began to play a large role in my feelings about the monster. I knew they could see it around me and it made my stomach churn every night after I put them to sleep and the only way I could fix it was by visiting the monster again.
The schedule of my life eventually revolved around the monster and looked like this.
4:00 AM: TIRED, GROGGY, SAD, DULL, SLEEP.
6:00 AM: SCREAMING, BANGING, PAIN, DULL, DRIVE TO WORK
9:00 AM: IRRITATED, EXHAUSTED, ANXIOUS, DULL, BACK TO WORK
12:00 AM: HUNGRY, DULL, LOST APPETITE, WORK
3:00 PM: GRAB KIDS, TAKE HOME, GUILT, DULL,
6:OOPM DECIDES TO MAKE DINNER, NO ENERGY, TAKE OUT, EAT ALONE, SADNESS, DULL
10:OOPM DULL, DULL, DULL, DULL, SLEEP
After depending on the monster for so long I had begun to use it as a tool to keep sane, dulling my emotions as much as I could considering I no longer had the willpower to do it on my own.
The worst part was hearing my kids talk about how the monster had corrupted me, They always made it sound so easy to get rid of it but they never had to deal with one and I prayed every night they wouldn’t.
The funeral of my father at just barely 60 sent a shock of reality down my neck like needles being injected into my nervous system. This creature had hidden itself as a disease to make it seem
like it did no wrong but everyone knew why he had died, the monster had come back. He had gotten rid of the monster 15 years before but no matter how long he was away he said he would still dream of it and wake up feeling the need to get rid of it again. It never truly vanishes, it holds on like a vice grip onto your soul and feels like a burning furnace deep in your body.
I just couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried, and no matter what people told me it just never helped. I still can’t imagine how my life would be without the monster constantly around me.
With the shame, only someone who’s actively causing their death could feel I continued to meet with the monster. I tried meeting fewer times, finding different monsters to distract me from mine,
and I even looked towards hypnosis and medicine to cure me but nothing worked and eventually, I began to feel my body deteriorate just like my father’s.
Two nights ago I had a coughing fit and began to spit up blood
in the middle of the night. While looking at myself in the mirror I nearly threw up. This was not what someone in their mid-30s should look like, I was rail thin, with hair looking greyish and dead, skin with disgusting flakes alongside discoloring, and eyes that looked just as wispy as the monster itself. I threw up directly into the sink and called an ambulance immediately and passed out waiting for someone to come.
Sitting there in the uncomfortably soft chair trying not to drown out the doctors voice with the robotic hum of the machine attached to me through tubes and needles throughout my nose and mouth.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you. Lung cancer, you have been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. “
The words felt fake, like a sick joke someone had played on me in a universe designed only to make me suffer. The same disease that I had taken my father has already crept into me and started its destruction
I don’t have the heart to tell my kids, I don’t need them seeing what’s become of me. The worst part of all of this for me is as I lay here in the hospital waiting to take my last ragged breath all I can think is.
“God I was I had the monster with me right now, I’m so scared and tired”