I’m not a big movie buff. When I say this, I mean that I don’t watch them in my regular life. However, I go through episodes of movie marathons when I am feeling low. And often can’t hold back from reflecting on them. That’s what overthinking does to you. So, I have opinions.
After The Shining, if there is one stand-out movie for me, it’s Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. I first watched The Babadook on a quiet night in Oslo when the weight of my own thoughts felt heavier than usual. I had heard about the movie from queer circuits when I was working with Oslo Pride. But I wasn’t prepared for how much it would reflect my own life. I wasn’t ready for the mirror it would hold up to my soul.
The Babadook wasn’t just a creature on the screen; it was something far more personal.
It’s grief—unresolved and unrelenting. It’s the weight you carry when someone you love is gone, especially when your relationship with them is complicated. Watching it was watching my own struggles play out. The mother in the movie, Amelia, was me, and the Babadook was my grief for my mother. Grief that I hadn’t faced. Grief that had grown stronger the more I tried to push it away. Grief that had transformed from guilt to self-hatred.
My relationship with my mother was complicated. I was an angry child, frustrated and confused, maybe because I didn’t know how to handle my emotions. I lashed out at her often, sometimes with words that were sharper than I realized. And she was patient. I would test her to her limits until I was locked in a room. She tried to love me through my anger, but I didn’t understand. The sacrifices or struggles were invisible. I didn’t see the countless ways she showed her love. I thought she was just my mother—someone who didn’t like me, someone who would always be there, someone whose presence I didn’t need to think about too much.
I was 10 when she was diagnosed with mitral valve stenosis and spent over a month in the hospital. During that long stay, she kept longing for me, but I didn’t visit her. I was scared. I was scared of seeing her weak, scared of admitting to myself that she might not survive. But she was strong, and she did. She returned with a huge stitched scar in the middle of her chest that was the evidence that her body was ripped open, her heart was cut to replace that valve, all while I stayed home, oblivious, out of sight. I’d often sit next to her as she rested and heard the flapping plastic valve that would confirm she was well and alive.
But what about the guilt of not visiting her? That remained buried inside me. I never dared to acknowledge or apologize. Even then, she trusted me and believed in me when I thought of myself otherwise.
Friday, 8 pm. November 21, 2008.
My mother walks through the door and says, “Let’s go [for a walk].” Our relationship had improved a lot over time. We would walk on our tiny balcony every evening, holding hands and talking about random life stuff. So, there was nowhere to go. I didn’t even need slippers. This was a ritual. This would be followed by her wanting to sleep in my lap, which I didn’t like, and this would break into an argument. Dad would come home, laugh at this, and we would have dinner. Life was simple.
“Oh wait, let me use the toilet, and we’ll leave in 5 minutes,” she said as she left the room. And I got busy on the computer again, the final leg of preparation for my undergrad exam the next day. I waited. And waited. And waited.
A few hours later, like all other nights, she sleeps in my lap but won’t move this time. One moment, she was there, and the next, she was gone.
Did I ever apologize? Did I say how much I loved her? Did I express how much I cared? No. I was scared. As she passed on to the realm beyond, everything remained buried inside. All of that fear turned into guilt. Guilt that I couldn’t shake. Guilt that I tried to bury, but that kept coming back.
Like the Babadook, my guilt started showing up everywhere. It didn’t matter how much I tried to distract myself. I couldn’t escape the memories of the times I had hurt her. The times I had taken her love for granted. The times I had been too selfish to see her pain. And her last words to me—”I trust you the most”—played on repeat in my head. She trusted me, and I let her down. She believed in me, and despite being there, I wasn’t there when she needed me the most.
Watching The Babadook was like stepping into my own mind. Amelia’s grief over her husband’s death consumed her, just like my guilt had consumed me. She tried to deny it, to lock it away, but the more she denied it, the stronger it became. That’s what I had been doing for years. I tried to pretend I was fine, that her death didn’t affect me as much as it did. But grief doesn’t go away when you ignore it. It lingers in the shadows, growing stronger, waiting for the moment you’re too weak to keep it at bay. The guilt becomes relentless and unbearable when talking about death is taboo, and social structure offers no space to process the grief.
There’s a scene in the movie where Amelia stops running. She turns and faces the Babadook. She doesn’t defeat it because you can’t defeat grief or guilt. Instead, she learns to live with it. She feeds it, gives it space, but she doesn’t let it control her anymore. That moment broke me. I realized I had been running from my own Babadook all my life. My guilt wasn’t something I could kill or ignore. It was something I had to face, something I had to understand and make peace with. But I never had the courage.
There’s a metaphor in the movie that feels especially true to me. The Babadook isn’t just a monster; it’s the weight you carry. It’s the baggage that follows you everywhere you go, like dragging that heavy suitcase through snow. Some days, it’s uphill. Some days, it’s downhill. But it’s always there. I’ve spent so much of my life in survival mode, moving from one challenge to the next, using the noise and chaos of life to drown out the weight of that suitcase. But the suitcase doesn’t go away. Even when I’m home, it’s there, sitting in the corner, a constant reminder of everything I haven’t faced.
Running has been my way of escaping that suitcase. When I’m running, there’s movement, there’s purpose, there’s noise. But there have been moments, like during my hike to Stonehenge, when I’ve faced the silence. Without music or podcasts to fill the void, I’ve had to confront my thoughts. Those moments are rare, but they’re revealing. They show me just how much I’ve been running from myself.
The Babadook doesn’t go away. It stays in the house, just like my guilt stays in my mind. I still think about my mother every day. Some days, the guilt feels like it’s too much to bear. I think about all the things I should have done differently. I think about the times I hurt her, the times I took her love for granted. But other days, I remember her voice, her laugh, her love. And on those days, the guilt feels lighter. It doesn’t disappear, but it doesn’t crush me. It’s a part of me, just like my memories of her are a part of me.
My mother’s memory is not just a source of guilt. It’s also a source of strength. She believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. She trusted me, even when I didn’t deserve it. And even though I wasn’t enough for her in the end.
The Babadook will always be a part of me, just like my grief and guilt will always be a part of me. But I think I don’t have to fear it. I don’t have to run from it. I can face it, live with it, and maybe even find strength in it. Because in the end, the Babadook isn’t just a monster. It’s a reminder that the things we fear the most are often the things we need to face the most. And when we do, we find that we are stronger than we ever imagined.
It is my grief, my guilt, and the pain I have been carrying for years. It is the shadow of my mother’s memory, one I had been running from ever since she passed away.
But that doesn’t mean it has to control me. It’s okay to live with the shadows, to give them space without letting them take over. It’s okay to feel pain, to feel grief, to feel guilt. Those emotions don’t make me weak. They make me human.
David Whyte, in “The Well of Grief”, writes:
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.
