(Forgot to post the one last night. Two today)
When I was young, I carried a stuffed animal with me everywhere. It was a small, ragged, stuffed rabbit, which I had taken to calling "Bunny Bun." It wasn't much bigger than my hands. It's fur had, over, the course of several years become worn and faded, and in spots bare, so that it seemed a cancerous little animal. Only I was capable of loving it, I knew, and so it became my responsibility, loving this rabbit. Which is not to insinuate that I didn't truly love it, only that I understood the importance of that love.
I also had a friend with an incorrigible penchant for cruelty, who, though he mocked me and did his best to hurt me, was nevertheless a good friend. I understood from very early on, and I do not, to this day, know how, that his cruelty was a reflection of his own insecurities. His father was absent and his mother was an addict. Perhaps it was in the cold gleam of his eyes as he said his terrible things to me; they betrayed a calculating and purposeful barbarity, a desired outcome. Regardless, this friend was unmercifully wicked to me, at times.
One of these was when he discovered my love for the stuffed animal, which I had to a point, kept hidden from him. But he did discover it, and from that point forward, he was unrelenting. Like a dog with meat he came at me, again and again: "Grow up, would you?" "You're such a baby!" "Only a little, poopy-pants baby would still have a stuffed animal!" He exposed me to my peers, taking the toy out of my backpack one day in school and initiating a game of keep away that left me, eventually, sniffling and on the verge of tears.
This went on for months, and I bore it dutifully, knowing that beneath everything my torment was penance for some unnamed sin he had committed. It grew worse though, and he became violent. Shoving, punching, spitting. All of these things fell upon me from him over the animal--this was made apparent, that it was because of the toy these things happened. Never once did I sway in my conviction to bear this for him.
It culminated one night with the destruction of the animal, by fire, in my own backyard. I had invited him over to stay the evening and camp out. We made our fire, lay out our bedrolls, and cooked hotdogs and s'mores. As I lay down to sleep, the embers of the fire still glowing, I took Bunny Bun from beneath my blanket and held him, both the animal and I looking up at the stars. My friend, in a sudden fit of immense rage, grabbed the toy without a word and threw it into the fire, where it began to smolder.
I cried out impotently and began scrambling to retrieve it, seeing already the blackening cloth, and knowing there would be permanent damage. He leapt on me and began holding me back, whispering in my ear all the while that "that stupid toy has to go. You're too old for it now and daddy's got to take it away." I sobbed and scratched at him, resisting with all that I could muster. He was too strong though, and within moments the rabbit had burst into flames. Soon thereafter, nothing identifiable was left.
I could not move.
He slowly let me free, and looked in my eyes.
"Doesn't that feel better now? Doesn't it feel freer?"
I could not respond.
"Oh, come on, you'll be happier for it someday. What's the big deal with it anyway?"
For a long while I sat, staring at the embers from which my charge had departed, and then I turned my head up to face him.
"Have you ever had a stuffed animal?"
He was stunned, and began to stammer.
"W-well... I mean... Who..."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
We stared at each other.
"But when I was a baby. I grew out of it."
"And what happened to it?"
"I don't know, I guess I--"
"You lost it. You were young, and you cared for it more than anything in the world, but you lost it. It disappeared one day, and you looked for days on end for it. You sobbed in the darkness of your bed, and you came to your mother. And she held you and told you it would be okay, that you would find it. So you looked, for days, and eventually it hurt less. Every now and again you would think of some new hidden spot where it must be, and the search began, but after a few months, you no longer searched for it. It did not hurt as bad. The pain receded and you could deal with it.
And your stuffed animal was forgotten."
He watched me now, rapt, and I could see the pain in his eyes as he relived it. But I could not relent now; I could not free him from this.
"Where did the toy come from?"
He did not answer.
"From your mother. She gave this creature to you, for you to love it and care for it. Because only you could, and this need became a part of you."
He turned his head down.
"That toy was one my mother had given to me. And it was a part of me. I loved it and cared for it, without boundary."
I could see the soft glimmer of tears in his eyes, reflecting the glow of the embers.
"One night she came into my room, in the deepest darkness. She took it from me, hid it. For weeks I searched, knowing that she had taken it. When I found it, I swore to myself I could never love her again. I knew that the toy had become a part of me, a central part. The most important part. It was what I am."
I was silent for a moment.
"That toy was that for me, it was the damnation of my mother and the single part of me that meant anything. It was my lone love in the world. It was everything, and it represented to me a part of me, a deeper love than anything I had ever known."
I sat across from him, the fire at dying, and I gazed at him. He could not bring his eyes to meet mine.
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