Shadow Boxing

At an early age, K. J. Aiello began to feel like a monster. They questioned their level of rage and the intensity of their reactions, believing a darkness lurked at the periphery of their life, waiting to take control. “When I felt threatened, something in me would break and all reason would evaporate,” they write. After a particularly violent interaction with a playground bully, the adults in Aiello’s life contributed to this narrative: that they were not like other children and needed to be fixed. “This new something inside me is evil and corrupt,” they remember feeling. “It’s shadowy, and I can’t quite see it. But I feel it there, curling around me, pressing against my mind. And I know I’m different and shameful and all wrong.”

Aiello became fascinated with magic and monsters. They retreated into tales of other outcasts, revelling in the misunderstood and often reviled figures of myth, science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Unpacking the complexity of fictional characters offered refuge from a world that so often derides and discards what it fears and cannot understand. “I was just a little kid who never got the help she needed,” Aiello writes of the loneliness and isolation of that early time. “And knowing that makes me both angry and sad because, even after all these years, I sometimes revert to those old beliefs and still feel like a monster.”

Blending memoir with cultural criticism, The Monster and the Mirror questions how we talk about mental illness — particularly how we judge, condemn, and vilify it before we attempt to understand it. The Toronto writer’s personal struggles structure the book; they take us on a journey from a difficult adolescence, through the challenges and hard work of young adulthood, and into a period of increased stability and self-understanding. Along the way, they offer a thoughtful analysis of a variety of cultural touchstones, from books like Frankenstein and The Lord of the Rings to the television adaptations of The Haunting of Hill House and Game of Thrones and games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Dungeons & Dragons.

Through these familiar artifacts, Aiello questions the limiting and pervasive dichotomies that are common in the media — strong versus weak, sick versus well. While fiction has offered the author (and many others) an essential form of escape and validation, Aiello critiques the harmful stereotypes it can also perpetuate. “To assume that a shitty childhood riddled with trauma means that a person will grow up to be a dangerous adult is doing a disservice both to the child and the adult they will grow up to be,” they explain. “It’s actually the complete opposite of the truth, where folks with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate it themselves.”

Aiello is at their most compelling when describing how difficult it has been to obtain an education, sustain relationships, and find employment. “I try to keep up with my studies and work,” they write. “I try to keep up with the breakneck speed at which I have to run.” Scenes from their hardest moments are deeply moving and at times devastating. As a teenager, Aiello sought healing and companionship in the household cat only to have their parents decide it was an inconvenience and have it put down. In an attempt to gain independence in their twenties, they rented an apartment but soon learned that maintaining it financially was impossible. An abusive romance with a doctor diminished their waning confidence. “Each day, my sense of self chips away,” they write, remembering the past relationship. “I want to think of myself as strong, but every time he comes over I am reminded I’m not. I hardly wonder if he might not be good for me or that I might deserve better.”

The Monster and the Mirror excels in articulating the looping helplessness that comes with mental illness: the idea that it feels impossible to get out from under, that it is a kind of relentless, otherworldly power one must fight against every day. In showing us this private struggle with anxiety, agoraphobia, and bipolar disorder, Aiello extends an invitation to look beyond the “monstrous” toward a powerful, nuanced definition of wellness. “My own story consists of lists of medications, diagnoses, hospitalizations, missed appointments, and a subtext of frustration and, for my part, hopelessness,” they write. “If medical treatments don’t work, if we’re ‘treatment resistant,’ what happens to us then?”

There is a complex universe of interconnected narratives that can make up who we are: the ones we are told, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we seek out and find solace in, and the ones that are ultimately possible. “Here’s the difference between stories of agency and stories authored by other people: real things don’t follow a prescriptive path,” Aiello explains. “Having the ability — the agency — to write your own story shouldn’t be a privilege only for the able-minded.”

Who has the right to define who they are and what they need? Who deserves empathy and care, and who gets left behind via some faulty definition of normalcy? By challenging our perceptions of what it means to be “strong,” “well,” and “good,” Aiello condemns silence, pulls what is scary out from the shadows, and offers exciting new possibilities for dialogue. “What if we told our own stories?” they ask us. The Monster and the Mirror goes a long way to answering that vital question.