There was a bear that my mother had last year. I don't know how my mom ended up with it other than that it was just some thing she had acquired, or what happened to it since.
I was up visiting my parents for a couple weeks and that was right when I had a major breakdown. At one point, my long-buried trans feelings had bubbled up to the surface. I felt hopeless, and lost, because here was this beautiful thing I could hold. Just hold. It was so soft. It had long, thick fur and just perfectly understuffed. I was overcome by the urge to touch it.
I remember thinking that stuffed animals were the greatest thing ever created because they were so simple. I remember thinking how ridiculous it would seem to anyone else that all I wanted to do was hold that bear. But I was alone, so I picked it up and held it in my arms. It was such a beautiful, honest moment: all I wanted was to hold it, and feel how soft it was, and I was doing it. So I cried.
I wished so much that I could have had that moment of holding that bear without shame, or fear of being seen with it, or the need to justify having it. I wanted to be someone who didn't have to wait they were an adult home on vacation, at a moment when no one was in the house, to clutch a teddy bear and cry. I wanted to have had a childhood filled with them without being looked at strangely, or teased.
Thoughts of transition and all that never entered my mind; that was something I still looked on so disdainfully due to society's images that I couldn't even imagine it. Instead, all I could do was cry about that life I didn't have. The life I couldn't have.
Oddly enough, I cherished that moment. In a life that was so numb, moments like that made me feel alive. They made me feel like a real person because I had actual feelings; silly, uncontrollable, beautiful feelings.
This was far more difficult to write than I anticipated, but something about this thread made me need to say it.
I really want that bear back now.
