Loving Monsters.

We’re so obsessed with being good, so afraid to be found out that deep inside, perhaps we’re really not. So afraid to acknowledge the evil that lies within the crevices of our hearts, and so afraid to be exposed. But we forget, that besides God, everything in the world is both good and evil. Perhaps it is not the presence of evil that makes us loathe ourselves, but our loathing of that evil, our rejection and our denial of it.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the most beautiful of people are not those without an ounce of evil within them, not those who hate the evil within them, but those who accept, acknowledge, love and win the evil critter within them over, to be taught, tamed and transformed.

Perhaps, just perhaps, true beauty comes from embracing, and not rejecting ugliness and evil.

Today in Miss B’s* room, the quest to find the missing piece continued. It was so hard. The little girl with sunshine and rainbows in her hair cracked. There was a foul, foul odour, so foul that they both had incredulous looks on their faces. She was scared. It was absolutely horrifying.

There was a foul, foul odour, so foul it clung onto skin like a huge, messy cobweb you couldn’t get rid off. And oh, how it stank. She didn’t expect it would be like this, but when they opened her up to see where it was in her emotional system that had gone wrong, they got more than they bargained for.

Miss B had told her at the last session- “We’re going to take away everything you or any human being ever put worth in, and look at what’s left. It’s going to be very, very scary. “

It was. It really was. Suddenly, the girl with sunshine and rainbows no longer existed, and a huge, ugly, green-eyed monster morphed into horrifying reality. It was a hideous, heinous ogre, with multiple tentacles, writhing and heaving and seething in anger, stretching across the floor and reaching the ceiling, consuming all light, sucking away anything that even hinted of love. It was selfish and greedy and astounding Ugly. There was no girl with sunshine and rainbows. It was a monster, a full-bodied, writhing, life-sucking Ugly monster.

“I find it so hard to reconcile… Where did this come from? I don’t recognize this Wai Jia.” Miss B said.

She was so scared she couldn’t stop crying. Where did this come from- this evil, bloodthirsty, life-draining, power-hungry, self-seeking creature? This creature that bears her same name. This creature that is the cause of all her Insecurity.

So this was what it was, what clogged the system. It wasn’t a screw, or a missing piece. It was a Monster. A foul, Ugly Monster, hiding for years underneath a veneer of achievement and good deeds, sucking her up and draining her dry. Now that all the sunshine and rainbows had been stripped away, it finally resurrected itself in honesty, and put to shame everything that was ever lovely, or beautiful.

She crumbled at once. Oh, the weight of it all. The stark reality, and the stinging, smarting shame.

“Look at me. Look at me,” Miss B said over and over, more than ten times. And she couldn’t. There was panic and tears and fear and shame. This was so hard. This was so very hard- to strip away everything you ever thought you were to look at the inside bits, to find not a timid, confused little child waiting to be saved, but a nostril-flaring, fire-breathing, life-consuming monster that was unthinkably Ugly.

Her greatest fear uncovered. She was found out.

It was too much to bear.

Everything throbbed around her and the tears wouldn’t stop. There was fear and panic and tears and shock. Now that the monster had been exposed, she had been found out. It was the most horrifying question of all-What if deep down inside, there was no girl with pretty rainbows or kites or flowers in her hair, nobody who wants to become a missionary to help the poor and needy, no loving, giving, serving person who wants to love till it hurts, love God till eternity. That deep down inside, what if- all there was, was really just an evil Ugly monster just waiting, waiting, waiting to be found out and come alive and devour the little girl who really isn’t real at all.

To come to that place of complete honesty, to uncover a beast you never imagined existed, to even consider that beast might be… you and not what you thought yourself to be- can be a scary, scary thing.

“Look at me. Look at me,” Miss B said over and over, more than ten times. And I couldn’t. It was so hard. You think the world of yourself in so many ways, hold on to your strengths and qualities and finally have them challenged, put down, extinguished by a monster so real it even bears your same name.

Finally she said, ” This crying, this crying person here… This is the girl I know. And this is courage- to accept what you have just discovered. Breathe, just breathe.”

Perhaps this is the greatest lesson of all- that to come to the place of true acceptance, one has to embrace both the good and evil within oneself. For so long she hated herself because of the monster within her. It was so large and so real but she never could look at it in the eye. Little Anna is so small, so pure. She couldn’t stand up to it.

Perhaps that is why, in our deepest darkest moments, we loathe, hate and despise our very selves. We’re afraid of being found out, afraid of the monster inside, the monster that exists within each and every one of us.

And perhaps all we need to do is to embrace it. No, it is not to say we condone evil, and not to give up on the epic battle between darkness and light. But it is to come down, face-to-face, to acknowledge the monster within, to see it in all its full-bodied Ugly glory and to still… accept it. Accept it because it is a part of who we are, because it takes courage and humility to do so, and to forgive ourselves because the monster bears our same name.

It is not to say we have lost the epic battle. In fact, we win it. When we choose to accept the evil monster inside, we choose no longer to deny it, but to love, embrace and teach it. Evil monsters cannot look you in the eye because that is being polite, they cannot hug, cannot love. So when we choose to look at it in the eye, and embrace, love it, accept it, the ironic thing is, Evil does not win- it diminishes in size.

Evil monsters cannot survive in the presence of love.

It was so scary, made scarier by the fact that the monster grew so big because someone messed with the insides of her head. She didn’t mean to let it grow. She wanted to kill it. But she is all right now. She is learning to love the Evil, Ugly monster inside. Love it so much and so hard with the love of God that it will no longer be able to survive.

Perhaps sometimes, in order to hate evil, we really have to love it as much as we can, love it so much we can even forgive it, let it go.

She is learning what it means to love herself all over again. Not just the rainbows and kites and pretty bits, but to love, even the ten-foot tall, ugly, pimply, one-eyed ogre with bad breath and sticky tentacles, this Ugly ogre that is the cause of all her Insecurity, what drives her so crazy. Love it so much she can look at it in the eye and forgive what she sees, love it so much she can accept it and teach it patiently, love it so much that in time, it has no choice, no other choice but to become smaller, to diminish in size.

There is a long road ahead. The Monster will not go down without a fight. This makes her very tired, and she has had to cancel appointments except church because this process is so very tiring. She is still fighting it, still losing sleep searching for a spear big enough to bring it down when no one’s looking. She can hardly be in the same room with it, much less hug, love, forgive it. Knowing it lives right under her skin drives her absolutely crazy.

Perhaps this is what true courage really is. Loving, and not fighting our Monsters inside. Loving our Monsters and putting our weapons down, forgiving them because even God forgives them. He really does, He even loves us in spite of them.

Because perhaps, just perhaps, it is when we are able to accept, forgive and embrace the Ugly bits within ourselves, that we no longer loathe ourselves and become Beautiful. Perhaps it is when we are able to love the parts that we hate, that we are able to love and forgive others along the same cracks and same faults. Perhaps, just perhaps, all we need is to let go, stop fighting, wind down and see just how much even God loves us, in spite of our monsters.

And perhaps when we finally do, there will not be fear or tears or shame or shock anymore. There will not be the fear that the Monsters might be our true selves, not be the shame that we allowed them to grow, not be the shock at the terrifying realization.

Because when we finally do accept, forgive and embrace them, perhaps that’s when we’ll find the little girl with kites and rainbows and flowers-

– right there where she started. Beautiful and Secure again.

All posts under the link Therapy chronicle her journey to recovery from Anorexia and depression with professional help from the team at the Singapore General Hospital.

* Miss B is the principal psychologist who works with people suffering from eating disorders at the Singapore General Hospital.