Dear nycartist:

“Thank you for this epiphany that you helped me arrive to!”- you are very welcome.

“my family life was so unstable… I remember my childhood best friend moving away…  that abandonment hit me very hard at 7 years old. Another friend in middle school hurt me when she became ‘too cool’ and left me for the cool crowd… I remember I became depressed even as a child when these things happened“-  if you had a stable family life to come home to, it would have stabilized the disturbances that occurred at school/ outside the home. But with an unstable family life, stress was added on top of stress, culminating in depression.

“My mother gave me some wise advice, which was to try to have many friends, ‘This way when one leaves, you have others as a backup’. I have lived with those words in my mind regarding friends….always afraid someone would leave, always trying to make sure I have enough ‘back ups’. This led to some pretty poor quality of friends, as they say quantity does not always mean quality“- what you needed was one stable mother, not a backup plan of many friends. It was not really wise advice because it led to you becoming overly concerned about having enough backup and compromising what qualifies as a friendship.

“With regard to The Lack… monster… the way to defeat is is not to eliminate it, but to contain it, and keep it in the basement… I can now acknowledge The Lack, but not let it take hold of me, or consume me. I can choose not to let it darken the good and positive things in my life. This has begun to feel very empowering!“- very well said. I want to develop the monster imagery better, so I looked up the movie script (the script lab. com/ he Babadook pdf):

“.. Samuel (S): It’s in my room! Amelia (A): What? Samuel: The Babadook!… A: Sam… No Babadook. No nothing, alright?… S: Don’t let it in! Don’t let it in! Don’t let it in! (He starts to hyperventilate. Amelia carries him to the bed and covers him with her body, trying to calm him… Samuel lies in a fetal position and sucks his thumb as Amelia pats his back, singing him a lullaby. Her voice trembles as she sings it. Samuel stares into space)… A: There is no BABADOOK!.. IT’S ALL MADE UP IN YOUR HEAD!… It isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t real…

A: Samuel! Let-me-in! (No response) I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll BLOW YOUR F****** DOOR IN!!.. You little pig. 6 years old and you’re still wetting yourself…  You don’t know how many times I’ve wished it was you not him that died… S: (Low) You’re not my mother…

S: “If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.”… A: YOU’RE NOTHING! (The hideous shadow grows larger, rising up to the ceiling, terrorizing her. The floors and walls shake)… You are trespassing in MY HOUSE! (Its growls turn to a deafening roar as the shadow touches the ceiling, a huge mass of black terror. Amelia fights a sickening, gut wrenching fear as she finally faces up to this thing. (Not turning away) If you touch my son again, I’ll f***** KILL YOU… Bits of the ceiling fall to the floor. The walls crack. Sam’s body is flipped up and pulled violently towards the shadows. He yells. Amelia grabs him by the hands and yanks him to her, there’s no way she’s letting go this time… Amelia jumps up on the bed end, her son in her arms, and lets out a scream so strong, so piercing, it smashes every window in the room. She looks utterly fierce. A mother enraged, protecting her son. Her scream dies away, but her eyes are full of life.

She searches the darkness. The huge shadow shrinks down from the ceiling, its growls reduce to a hideous moan. The shadow is slowly and completely lost to the darkness. The noise of the Babadook stops altogether.. An unbearable silence…. The ‘figure’ suddenly drops to the ground like a sack. Amelia starts. It collapses into a shapeless mound of hat and coat with nothing underneath…

By the time Amelia makes it downstairs, the Babadook has disappeared into the basement, door slamming. She runs over to it, locks the door, takes the key… Samuel: How was the Babadook? Amelia:  Pretty quiet today…. Amelia: Happy birthday sweetheart. (Sam breaks into a smile. He closes his eyes and leans into his mother, his face beaming) THE END”.

-In fiction such as this, the child has a very predictably patient and loving mother and the monster is a non-human that invades the lovely home and proceeds to attack and terrorize the child. Next, mother fights the monster and protects her child, and lovely home life resumes. In real-life, the monster is most often the child’s mother (or father), attacking and terrorizing the child from time to time, and.. no one to protect the child. And so, no lovely home life for child. Instead, there is the Lack we’ve been discussing.

In fiction, the mother scares the monster away. In real-life, it happens that the mother allows a monster (a boyfriend, a new husband) into the home and keeps him there.

In fiction, when the mother huffs and puffs and insults the child, the child immediately knows that it is not his mother, that it is a monster that took over his mother (“You’re not my mother”, Samuel). In real-life, the child is not this fortunate.

In the story, when Amelia denied the monster, it grew bigger and stronger. When she acknowledged it, facing it- not timidly- but utterly fierce with “eyes full of life”, it shrank and weakened. When she searched the darkness, the darkness shrank. How do we, in real life, face the darkness/ the Lack?

Back to your words: “I am learning now that when a friendship ends, it does not always have to be devastating. When a friendship is poor quality, I do not have to continue to hold on to it“- let go of poor quality friendships, and let go of the friends-backup-plan. Instead, stand on your own, utterly fierce with eyes full of life!

anita