I used to be a monster
Until I learned I wasn't
One of my favorite authors, Cheryl Strayed once wrote, “Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.”
I used to believe I was a monster.
If not in body, then maybe in spirit. Maybe something about the unconscious way I look at people gives the impression that I’m secretly hateful toward them.
I’ve regularly been told that I’m…intimidating. Or that my tone can sound rude or pedantic.
“I thought you were a bitch when we first met.”
It was an observation that I never understood. I smile at people, wish them ‘Happy Holidays’, wave at little kids when they wave at me. But since I can remember, people have taken a little while to warm up to me.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I began to truly believe that what people thought about me was actually true enough to transform me.
Inside and out.
My second husband (we’ll call him Oz) was/is an artist and in his spare time, would sometimes draw me as these hideous, ugly, monsters, thinking I would find it funny. Apparently, I didn’t get the joke. For all intents and purposes I believed he was attracted to me and enjoyed my company. So, when he showed me a Jabba the Hut looking character and after realizing it was me, I would react as any other partner would.
Confused as fuck.
“Why would you draw me like that?!”
“It’s a joke, babe, calm down.”
This was a common fight in our house. And if it wasn’t the drawings, it was the ugly, mean characters in a movie or TV show.
“Haha, that’s you babe!”
His son would even join in. “That’s you! Hawhaw! That’s you!!”
I would laugh and join in because, come on, it was a joke. How in the hell did I have the right to be a buzzkill? Mean ol’ Jojo ruining the fun because I was the sensitive one!
As if it were a compliment, he would say things like, “You’re the most sensitive person I’ve ever met.”
Not only could I not say anything about my feelings about the very obvious, mean-spirited joke, but being so sensitive about it was almost a burden. An inconvenience.
The transformation into the monster was slowly taking hold every time I stopped myself from speaking up. I grew immune to the taste of blood in my mouth as I bit my tongue.
For a couple years, Oz and I both worked for my parents; a grave mistake on my part, believe me. One afternoon, I was away from my desk for a long period of time for some reason or another and when I came back, there was a little doodle on my keyboard. I wish I still had the drawing so you could see, but it was basically a grotesque, blob version of me with hair and eyeballs.
I teared up, staring down at it in abject pain, wondering, “Is this really how he sees me?”
The sad part? I kept it. I laughed it off. It was just a moment of silliness right? I wasn’t going to cause another fight by me being “too sensitive” or “not getting the joke”. So I put it in the drawer and went about my day. But every time I opened my desk drawer, I was reminded of how he saw me.
Eventually, the only thing I began to see in the mirror every time I passed by and no matter how small my waist got or how beautiful I was, all I could see was the monster. Deep down, somewhere, I knew that he cared about me. Or maybe he just tolerated me to the point of caring about me? Tolerating is definitely the right word for that relationship.
Were there compliments? Sure, yes. I won’t be unfair and say that he was so unkind as to always say horrible things about me. But it was really hard to trust that he was genuine when he gave them or that they weren’t backhanded somehow.
If I have to play detective to decipher my partner’s delivery and tone when he says he likes my outfit, that’s a no for me dawg.
Unfortunately, this was a lesson I didn’t learn until after I built up the monster persona. She did keep me safe in that relationship, I will say that. She helped me fake a laugh while I raged and screamed on the inside, trying to break out of my chains in the dungeon that I put myself in.
I became my creator and the monster at the same time. But at the time, it was the only way that made sense to keep the relationship going, to keep everyone happy and keep the status quo going strong. If survival in a shitty relationship taught me anything, it was keeping up appearances to get by.
I was a damn expert at it.
Side note: he did eventually draw a decent picture of me. But only after I finally screamed at him that he drew me only as monsters.
I couldn’t possibly tell you what happened to that picture either, but did you know that sketch paper makes for good fire kindling?
Speaking of fire, that relationship went up in smoke and I left to rebuild my life all over again. Instead of doing a renaissance of self, however, the monster was nurtured and fed, the shadow was danced with instead of understood and integrated into a life of self love. I mixed long nights of drunken self loathing with men that didn’t care about my soul and hung over mornings of dread at a job that I hated going to.
The monster persona was now the main character until I was completely unrecognizable. The mirror was showing me someone I didn’t recognize. Someone I didn’t want to recognize because how could she help me? How could that ugly, horrible, monster ever be good enough for love?
Fast forward 3 years later to the summer of 2025 and I’m cuddling with my boyfriend in bed, scrolling on my phone. Danny is also an artist and a damn good one, but when I see him glancing at me, then looking back at his pad of paper, I can’t help the familiar, sickly feeling of fear grip my stomach.
He’s drawing me.
To make things even more awkward, I’m pretty sure I was naked. I have pretty intense body dysphoria, so not knowing how someone else views me, a person who views herself as this ugly, doughy, gelatinous, gross (coming up with adjectives is fun okay) THING, made the fear crawl from my stomach up into my throat.
What if he shows me the drawing and it’s awful? What if what I see in the drawing matches the mirror?
When he was done, he turned his pad around and it was….
…beautiful.
He’d quickly sketched a curvaceous goddess with my face and hair and I couldn’t help but ask, “That’s me?”
“Yes, baby, that’s you?
“That’s how you see me?!”
“Of course! I think you’re gorgeous, babe!”
It made my heart soar.
The monster mask slipped and the hard exterior softened. I realized, I wasn’t actually a monster. Not entirely anyway. Like everyone, I still have my shadow side, my dark parts that I keep to myself in the chaos of my own mind. But however Oz saw me, it was through a lens of his own making, distorted by years of his own trauma, unhappiness, past baggage and fucked up ideas influenced by society and his upbringing about respect for women and beauty standards. It actually had nothing to do with me whatsoever.
He saw me as a monster because he saw himself as a monster.
Danny, on the other hand, shows me every day what true beauty is, but especially within myself. He spends quite a bit of time telling me how beautiful I am, drawing various portraits of me to remind me of that, like the one below:
He shows me a love I’ve never experienced, but above all a respect that I didn’t even know was possible from another human being.
If someone can see me like that, then maybe they can love the monster within me too.
And if someone else can love the monster within me, I guess it’s possible that I can love her too.
Whenever someone makes "jokes" like that, my thought is always that jokes are supposed to be funny, and that's clearly not. And I find that people who accuse others of being too sensitive are themselves too INsensitive. What a turd. I'm so glad you're starting to see yourself more for the smokeshow you are! Love you, my friend 💕