Dr. Sarah Marusek

Once upon a time, a foetus was conceived without her mother’s knowledge.

One day, the mother had a tummy ache and so she went to see a doctor, not knowing that he was evil. Using his high voltage X-ray machine, the doctor secretly planted a horrible monster in the foetus’s stomach that feeds on human pain and is invisible to the outside world.

The foetus, by then a girl, tried to resist the monster by refusing to be born at nine months. She was so stubborn and determined to live that this had the potential to work, and could have even been the end of this story. But the monster was too terrifying and the foetus was alone and scared, so after four weeks she decided to make a run for it, getting away from the monster as fast as she could, coming out face first and bruising her delicate nerves.

The monster thus entered the world unseen.

The girl’s mother was completely ignorant that she had just birthed a monster as well as a child. After all, her newborn baby girl looked and acted perfectly in her eyes. But there was a monster occupying her baby’s nervous system, altering her body, mind and soul. As a result, her baby never felt safe in her own body and had an existential dependence on those caring for her.

As she grew, this made the girl feel more and more desperate, alone and unworthy of love, because nobody could ever really know her true self. Why could nobody see that she had a painful monster inside of her? Why did everybody always blame her for its actions?

In response, the girl had to work really hard to learn how to hide the monster’s presence by becoming the best version of herself that she could be. She learned how to excel at school, sports and art to such an extent that she started winning accolades and others began to admire her. She particularly liked gymnastics, athletics, writing and drawing.

However, all of this human success only made the monster jealous. It wanted the girl all to itself and hated other humans paying her attention.

“Why do you pretend to know anything about strength, you graceless piece of shit?” the monster would snarl at her, causing her to fuck up at competitions.

“You are only good at jumping away from yourself, because you are unlovable” it would sneer, even after she broke a school record in hurdling.

Especially when she was quiet and alone, losing herself in her art, the monster would snarl: “You are fucking terrible at drawing,” making her ruin the piece.

And if she even tried to write anything personal, it would taunt: “Nobody wants to read anything by you, you stupid loser. Nobody wants you.”

After hearing this over and over, time and again, the girl lost faith in herself and slowly started losing her abilities. She began to hate herself while still only a child.

Meanwhile, those who had once admired her were becoming increasingly perplexed by her failures, some even suggesting that she had a bad attitude.

As a result, she started struggling with feeling suicidal whenever things got difficult. And with an invisible monster inside of you, life can be very challenging indeed. The girl was losing her way.

Broken, she crossed the ocean to start again, thinking that fame and talent could slay her monster. She worked with amazing photographers, designers and even a Hollywood actor. But they could not see the monster either, which she was slowly learning only made it stronger and crueller.

Amidst this chaos, the girl still tried to find love, but the monster would always nastily intervene. “You are ugly, why would they ever find you attractive?” the monster would hiss. “You do not deserve their love and you are a fucking idiot for even trying.”  

Wrestling with the monster like this, her existential quest to find somebody to care for her spiralled to the point where she was incapable of being around individuals she found attractive. The monster would not allow others to know how to care for her, making her live a life of social isolation. She lost friends because she was always way too defensive to really get near anybody.

She started thinking that the only thing which could ever save her would be to find “true love,” whatever that even meant. And although bisexual, she was convinced that particularly a man needed to rescue her – by then the monster was in control of the entire right side of her body.

But the only way she knew how to pursue anything she wanted was in daydreams. Confused, she resorted to drunken sex instead, which not only did not save her, but also made her feel more like the horrible monster that was inside of her. So, after a while, she stopped looking to save herself entirely and instead set her sights on helping others.

The girl pursued a PhD and researched marginalise communities resisting occupation to learn how to love in a completely different way, inspired by the brave people she met. This gave her new insights to combat her monster. Unfortunately, the monster would allow her to defend her research and so when she lost her academic career the monster grew even stronger.

“You are a loser. You have nothing to offer the world. Nothing!”

Alone and afraid, the girl did not know what to do. Doctors were especially blind to the impact of the monster, so every visit only made its wrath even stronger.

By this point, the girl could no longer work or make a living. The shame of living with an invisible monster inside of her was more overwhelming than ever.

Then the girl discovered the power of ice and contrast therapy, which the monster absolutely hated. So did the girl, as being cold was miserable, but she was strong and froze every day. It took a while for this to start working, and after a few years the monster physically started to weaken.

By now the girl was spending all her time in ice baths. But although disfigured, the monster still would not die. In fact, it only seemed to get stronger as the battle carried on.

The girl was exhausted and losing faith. She thought she could kill the monster with ice, but she was wrong, and so she had to try to find help one more time.

And she found it indeed in the most beautiful alternative doctor, a healer who was kind and caring. Even though he could not see the monster, as no human could, he had a particular kind of talent and vision, and so he was still able to give her the weapons that she needed to challenge the monster in new ways. He was a lovely man, very generous, not only going out of his way to help the girl but also in wanting to help others.

For a while things were going wonderfully and she fell madly in love with this healer – she had found the man who was actually going to save her. Nothing had ever excited her this much.

The monster sensed danger. Because she was excited to heal in a new way, it felt even more threatened. Suddenly, the monster spread its wings and channelled all of the girl’s pain that she had ever experienced. Feeding on her lifetime of misery, it was the strongest it had ever been in her life.

The monster’s newfound strength made the girl suddenly get really defensive, which also made the healer unknowingly strengthen the monster. He did not realise what he was doing, but he ended up feeding the monster until it burst. It happened so quickly, the monster’s power spiralling over the girl until it had completely taken over and she was crazy out of control.

“Who the fuck do you think you are caring for this young man?” the monster screamed. “He is way too good for you and you are pathetic for even having these feelings. Nobody wants you, especially not now. You will never heal!”

She feared for her life now. In this stage of battling the monster, she had never felt so out of touch with herself and her abilities. She had never, ever been in this much agonising pain.

In this predicament, she needed to immediately get far away from the healer, but she also loved him and did not want to stop seeing him. She was too broken to let go. So, the monster took the girl in its wings and convinced her to blame him for everything, all the pain and suffering she had ever experienced, taking out all of her rage with the world on him.

She wrote the healer an angry and negative public review.

The girl then found another alternative doctor, this time a shaman, to give her even more weapons to defeat the monster. The shaman had experienced so much trauma in his life that even though he could not see the monster, he could still sense its presence and thus was uniquely qualified to help the girl learn how to weaken it. It was again the most difficult and painful experience of her life, but the monster was once again physically weakening.

Nevertheless, the girl never stopped loving the healer and something inside of her felt very wrong.

The girl continued to weaken the monster with the shaman, but eventually she had to even stop seeing him, because his inability to see the monster was subtly giving it the power to stay alive.

The girl finally realised that only she could defeat the monster, in fact only entirely on her own. Thus, she decided to socially isolate, stopping as much access to humans as possible to cut off the monster’s strength.

Although the monster continued to weaken under these conditions, the girl was still wrestling with its power over her, as deep down she still thought that she needed to be saved. Even after all of this, she was still existentially dependent on finding somebody to help her kill the monster. That was what she had always thought, from as long as she could remember. And for that reason, she could not stop thinking about the healer.

Then one day she learned that the healer had lost his job because of her.

That was when something inside of her body finally shifted, as if the battle lines had been completely redrawn. Instead of fighting, it was almost like she was taking the monster into her arms and embracing it. The longing to be saved by another had also been strengthening the monster all of this time. What her body really needed was to feel safe in itself.

Only then did she fully realise what she had actually done to the healer. In trying to save herself, she did the worst thing she had ever done to anybody. Not only that, but she did it to the only person whom she had really cared about in years, somebody who simply was trying to help her. Somebody who did not deserve the monster’s wrath at all.

After crying for almost a week, the girl became even more determined – motivated in a new way – to kill the monster so that she could try to make up for the wrong that she caused to the healer. Here was a gifted healer capable of helping so many others, and yet she had unfairly curtailed his career. This story is her first step in trying to make that right.