I used to sleep with a nightlight, as a toddler. I used to not understand the fear of night. Monsters under your bed and shadows in the dark. Just an irrational fright little children experience.
But I was protected. My nightlight and my stuffed animal. The Bear in Comforting Fur. Guarding over the princess. Slaying the creatures hiding behind my closet door.
I grew up.
The night light forsaken. My bear donated to some younger relative.
The night used to be a mark of peaceful slumber. Dreaming of my first boyfriend or whatever else my heart flutter with excitement.
I'm older now. Less naive.
The night used to be just another label we stick on time. The night used to be when the moon came out, and fireworks of stars followed. The night used to be when I was supposed to brush my teeth and say I love you to my parents.
Now I avoid the night any way possible. Write poetry at Two AM, watch more movies than I need to, imagine the day I finally have a girlfriend. Even that gets ruined eventually. My writing turns into gibberish, the movies reveal a hidden message too dark for sleep to follow, the prospect of a future girlfriend tarnished by insecurities.
The monsters under the bed are all too real now. Plaguing my head and twisting everything I am. No longer a princess with a handsome prince vying after me. I'm a wreck of a human. Someone so despicable I deserve to be locked up in that castle tower, starved and deprived of everything I once had. The mirror is a weapon, the knife a handy tool.
Evil wins, hope is foolish, no one deserves a happy ending. The world is morphed into a nasty place at night.
Shadows kill innocent souls, screaming a list of seemingly valid reasons to take their lives. Night is a prison, a jail I wish I never stumbled upon.
I wish I had my nightlight now.