The Wolf Under My Bed

The wolf lives under my bed. Not in the way wolves live in forests, or in the pages of old stories, but in the way certain fears live inside walls, inside silence, inside people.

I hear him most at night. When the house settles, when the clock drags its tired hands through another sleepless hour, when every shadow in the room starts looking like a warning.

He breathes beneath me. Slow. Heavy. Patient. Like he knows I will not sleep. Like he knows I will eventually let one foot touch the floor.

Sometimes he growls. Not loud enough for anyone else to hear, just enough for me. A low sound that says: something is wrong, something is coming, you forgot something, you should be afraid.

So I stay in bed. Still as stone. Eyes open to the dark. Heart kicking against my ribs like it wants out before the wolf gets it first.

I have memorized the ceiling above me. Every crack in the paint. Every stain. Every shadow cast by passing head lights. I know the shape of the darkness better than I know my own face.

Some nights I try to bargain with him. I tell myself if I do not think about work, if I do not replay old conversations, if I do not remember every mistake I ever made, maybe he will stay quiet.

But he is never quiet for long.

He scratches beneath the mattress with thoughts that sound like facts. Everyone is disappointed in you. You are failing. You are getting older. You are trapped. You should have been more.

And the worst part is not hearing him. The worst part is how often he sounds like me.

Morning comes eventually, but the wolf does not leave with the night. He follows me quietly. Under conversations. Behind smiles. Inside every crowded room and every empty one.

He waits beneath conference tables, in parking lots after work, in unopened text messages, in mirrors, in the silence after someone says “Are you okay?”

He rides with me in traffic. He sits beside me in waiting rooms. He follows me into grocery stores where the lights are too bright and everyone looks like they knowhow to be alive.

Sometimes I see people laughing without forcing it. Talking without rehearsing. Making plans for next month like they fully expect to survive it. And I wonder what it must be like to walk through life without hearing claws on the floor behind you.

After enough years, the wolf grows older with you. He learns your routines. He knows which songs will break you. Which memories still bleed. Which dates on the calendar feel heavier than others.

He knows that certain mornings begin with exhaustion before your feet even hit the floor. He knows that depression is not always sadness. Sometimes it is emptiness. Sometimes it is numbness. Sometimes it is staring at the wall because even breathing feels like work.

There are days when I do not fight him. Days when I let the curtains stay closed. Days when dishes pile in the sink and messages go unanswered and hours disappear without anything inside them.

On those days the wolf crawls out farther. He lays his head beside mine. Not angry. Not violent. Just certain.

As if he knows that eventually I will stop resisting. That eventually I will believe everything he says.

And after enough years, I stop asking if the wolf is real. Because real things leave marks.

And I have teeth marks everywhere. In the shape of ruined sleep. Missed calls. Forgotten dreams. The ache of being exhausted before the day even begins.

In the jobs I almost pursued. The people I stopped calling back. The hobbies that slowly died on shelves covered in dust. The way joy now feels like something I borrow instead of something I own.

Sometimes I think about feeding him. Giving him every fear, every failure, every memory that still wakes me up at three in the morning.

But wolves do not get smaller when you feed them. They only learn where you keep the meat.

So I keep lying awake. Listening.  Waiting. Knowing he is there.

Knowing that tonight, like every night before it, he will be under the bed breathing in the dark and waiting for me to touch the floor.