There's a monster under my bed. It's what all the kids say. They'll cry and weep until their parents check, to which they discover that there is, in fact, no such monster under their bed. Then they can sleep soundly.

I, on the other hand, never once believed in these monsters. Even as a small child, I knew that even if they were real, I'd be able to fight it off. Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, but I was a very feisty little six-year-old.

Whenever I imagined these monsters my friends spoke of and children's books described, I would always imagine a bulky, fluffy, thing that looked somewhat like the evil purple bear from Toy Story, except with a spine down its back, teeth jutting from its between its lips, and textured horns penetrating from behind its ears.

The image was never particularly frighting, but maybe my imagination just wasn't as scary as everyone else's.

In fact, in the first week of third grade, we had been instructed to draw the monster we imagined for ourselves. Whilst I'd drawn the fluffy purple bear with a spine and horns, other people had described much stranger, much scarier things.

There was one boy who'd simply coloured in his page black. This boy had been sitting in alone the corner of the room. He had ruffled blonde hair, and eyes of chalk. His skin was stretched so tightly over his bones you could see the movement of his muscles, and his face was so thin you could see the shape of his skull. He didn't speak much, but he was a sweet boy.

Then there where the people who didn't take the task seriously. A group of girls who were popular in third grade – they all owned cell phones, a milestone no one else in the class was yet to reach – spent the entire time giggling. They'd drawn bows and jewellery on theirs and coloured them in an array of colours. The drawings had looked almost like puppies, with floppy ears and thick fur.

My best friend Thomas – a boy with floppy brown hair, blue eyes, a bright smile, and who was someone who with fragile emotions - had drawn a long scaly thing with bright red eyes and long, sharp claws.

Tommy almost cried at just the sight – a result of his sensitive soul – so I'd grabbed his hand to comfort him.

"Mummy scares the monster away every night," is what he'd told me, his voice shaking slightly.

Even at my young age – nine whole years, at that point – I was very intellectual. I knew that Tommy's mother wouldn't be able to scare his monsters away for him. That's why they were hiding under his bed. They weren't for his mother to fight. Perhaps Tommy's mum had his own monsters, too.

All in all, I'd enjoyed the activity. Peacefully drawing and colouring with my best friend, trying to drown out the laughter from those popular girls across the room, watching the pale boy sitting alone and feeling a strange sinking in my stomach, and fighting the urge to tell Tommy that monsters weren't real.

When I'd gotten home, I proudly showed my parents my drawing, to which they responded by putting the drawing on the fridge. Every morning I would get up, admire my masterpiece, and get ready for school.

As I got older, Tommy and I met knew people and made friends, expanding our friendship circle. People came and left, but once I reached tenth grade I knew I'd found my forever people.

I'd even made friends with that skinny pale boy from my class in third grade. His name was Jackson, and as he learnt to trust Tommy and I, he would begin to tell us the sad truth. He was skinny and malnourished, and he wore jumpers to conceal the bruises and cuts his own father conflicted on his fragile skin. He'd gone as far as to tell us that some of his cuts weren't from his father at all but were blood drawn by his own hands.

My heart had sunk at this knowledge, and I felt scared. It was like an invisible weight had been set on my shoulders, and I knew I was going to have to support Jackson in a different way to Tommy.

Whilst all Tommy needed was a reassuring smile or brief physical contact like a hand hold or hug, I knew that Jackson needed more help. If anything, physical contact and reassuring smiles was not the way to go at it.

I'd done research, and I knew to keep my movements predictable and slow, as not to startle Jack. He jumped at every quick movement and shrunk into his shoulders, making himself as small as was physically possible. Sometimes, if it was a particularly bad day, he would shake and breath uncontrollably, caught in the wicked hands of a panic attack.

The first time this happened, I didn't know what was going on. I'd reached out to touch his shoulder, but he flinched and yelled at me to stop touching him. It was very scary, so I tried to smile and tell him that everything was okay.

That did the opposite of helpful, and after he'd managed to calm himself down he'd tell me that in times of struggles, he instinctively saw smiles as a malicious thing, especially the wide grins that showed lots of teeth. And so the next time Tommy hunched his shoulders and cowered away, I made sure to keep my lips tightly shut and simply tugged up the corner of my lips, so he knew I'd noticed.

At first fear would flicker through his eyes – at home, anyone noticing him in this vulnerable state would only encourage them to hurt him more – so I would make my breathing louder so he could follow my breaths. This tended to stop the panic attacks before they managed to grasp him, but in times where that wasn't enough, I was able to learn more ways to help him without making the situation worse.

There was only one other person in the group other than me, and that was a girl named Chloe. She'd transferred from her old school in grade eight due to severe bullying, and she always tended to think she was being weird or strange. Every time she laughed loudly – a rather beautiful sound that felt as if it came from her very soul – she would clasp a hand to her mouth and apologize, and she never seemed to eat much.

I didn't know if she was a just picky eater, or if it was something more serious, but she never talked about it, and I knew from my experiences with both Thomas and Jackson not to push when someone didn't want to talk.

I could tell when she would get into her head about being annoying, because she would fall silent and often hunched her shoulders the way Jack would. Comforting her was simpler, and I'd often lean my head on her shoulder to show my affection. It was difficult to convince her how much I loved her as my friend, due to constantly being nagged at and picked on at her old school, and I knew that like Tommy, physical contact always managed to drag her out of the harmful grasps of her own brain.

So in tenth grade, it was just the four of us. Thomas, Jackson, Chloe and myself. We'd stuck together even when the group was falling apart and comforted each person as we cried over lost friends and hurtful betrayals.

But in the end, we'd overcome the monsters and come out better on the other side.