The Gollum

Your childhood bogeyman has a message for you

We all have our childhood bogeyman.

When I was 4 years old, that was E.T, the Spielberg movie alien. Don’t come for me, he was freaky and wrinkly and the way his head extended out of his neck was just unnatural.

I used to have nightmares about him in the dark of my bedroom touching me with his “E.T. phone home” finger. *shudders*

Have I since watched the movie to show myself that he basically looks like a fuzzy puppet? No. And if you try scare me in the middle of the night dressed in an E.T. costume, we are no longer friends and you’re paying my therapy bills.

I do love the soundtrack though. Bless John Williams. (If youre reading this as an email, click to read this on Substack and give this a listen!)

What Lies in the Dark

From the age of 7, however, I had a new bogeyman. Gollum. Lord of the Rings, “my Precious” Gollum.

My dad is a huge movie buff and so he took it upon himself to fully educate me and my brother with the best movies growing up, from Star Wars to Dead Poets Society to, of course, The Lord of the Rings. In some cases, age restrictions be damned…

As much as I treasured the world of Middle Earth and it’s characters, Gollum became the new creature I saw in my nightmares.

My brother developed a very good imitation of the creature that over the years he used to scare me while jumping out of a dark corner. In the words of a teenage boy, I shat bricks.

Since the first time, I have never rewatched the opening of The Return of the King which shows how Gollum came to be from his beginnings as a hobbit. I fast forward it with my hand covering my eyes.

I can hear the people who watch horror films laughing at me, but I don’t care!

Gollum is a brilliant, complex character, but he is also terrifying.

Archetypes and the Creature Within

Since the beginning of time, characters in stories have represented archetypes, symbols and deeper meaning - including the dark, scary, and horrific in our world.

So you can imagine my shock a few weeks ago as I thought about how little of my writing I’ve published in the last few months. And the word GOLLUM, clear as if someone had spoken it, entered my mind.

I grimaced thinking of the creature, but I’ve also done enough work on myself to never ignore these internal messages.

Because I hate to admit it, I really hate it, but my childhood bogeyman and I have something in common.

Because as confident and open I am in so many aspects of my life (hard earned but true), I am a Gollum when it comes to my writing and poetry.

I am a hoarder of my precious creative work, holing up in my cave, talking to myself and never wanting to share.

I consider the idea that it is my dream and wish to share my work and stir important things in my readers - but then the compulsion to hide it, work on it, dote on it, perfect it, takes over and I’m back to being a Gollum.

Embracing the Messages from our Bogeymen

In the Lord of the Rings, Gollum is taken control of by the One Ring, his mind and body warped by it’s power.

But in the case of our creative work, I think we are the ones who tend to warp the art. The writing, the art, wants to join the world, it wants to breathe fresh air. Our art comes to us from a divine source for a purpose and it’s almost never just for us.

Instead of letting the art have a life of it’s own, we let our fears take over. We fear rejection, criticism, being seen and noticed. We don’t feel safe and so we become the very creature we never thought we could be.

It’s confronting as hell.

Yet, if we never see these things about ourselves, never embrace our inner bogeymen and what they mean about us, we’ll always live scared and small.

That is not my destiny and it’s not yours.

Because my writer self, you might say “my Sméagol”, is a hobbit who is joyful, curious, and brave. She writes about everything and anything that comes to her and feels unencumbered by the few grumpy hobbits who think she is “disturbing the peace” and stepping out of what’s expected.

Even what’s expected of writers these days to have a “writer brand” and a rigid set of topics to write about in order to fit into modern business and capitalism - an idea that strangles and constricts my writing self into her Gollum state.

No more of any of it. For you and me.

Tell me, who was your childhood bogeyman? Who’s your adult, creative bogeyman? What message do they have for you?

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you'll be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins

Love,

Anthea

P.S. I look forward to sharing my writing abundantly in the coming weeks and months!