The first time I ever met Teddy, it was like the sun had come into the room. He was the most jovial, outgoing, affectionate person I had ever met. He was able to reach out to people like me and bring them out of their shells. Right from the start, there was no being shy with him, he fit in the room like a comfortable pair of jeans.
So being the unsure person with low self-esteem that I was at the time, I put him on a pedestal. "Here," I said to myself, "is someone who is everything I am not." He would never, I told myself, want to be around someone as boring as me. After all, I had grown up in a place where I had been constantly reminded that no one wanted me around or was interested in anything I had to say. I spent my adolescent years analyzing my behaviour, trying to figure out what my problem was. Did I talk too much? I worked on talking less. I tried to stop joking and to not attract attention. Did I laugh too much? Did it bother them? I made myself laugh less and more quietly. As long as they didn't notice me there, they seemed to be less annoyed by my presence.
When I broke my finger, they laughed at me. When it was my birthday, they begged me to take a break for once and leave them alone to play. When I was nine, they laughed at the idea that anyone would ever want to marry me and by the time I hit high school I didn't dare let on if I thought a boy was cute. It was impossible to befriend a guy, because none of them wanted to be associated with me. To be linked to me would have made them the laughingstock of everyone, so even friendship was out of the question. Girls were not quite as hard to befriend, but even so, friends were rare. I had not been out of that world for a year yet, when I first met Teddy.
Later, I had the opportunity to get to know Teddy better. We both participated in a project with a group of people. We saw each other all day, every day. By then, I had gained some self-worth, and Teddy got off his pedestal and seemed a little more human. But he was still so much the superior person in my eyes. He was the one who was generous and kind, and paid attention to people. He went out of his way to welcome newcomers. He was the life of the party. I was the satellite. The one who sat back and watched instead of participating openly. But what did I have to say that could interest people? It had all been said, and I felt I had nothing new to add of any worth.
A year and a half passed. I was in a difficult situation, and Teddy invited me to share his apartment with me to cut expenses. For the first few months it seemed we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. It felt like we were a couple that had grown old together. (Without any of the perks) We did almost everything together. We talked, we shared, we started to know things instinctively about each other without being told. Everything was so simple.
Then the misunderstandings came. He thought I was hanging on to the recent past, and was losing grip on reality because I didn't even recognize people on TV. The fact is, it wasn't so much me losing grip on reality, as me just not having had access to a TV for the past year and never having been much interested in TV before that, and not having lived long enough in this relatively new place to even be all that familiar with all the regional artists.
I started to second-guess my worth. He was too nice. He was too generous. He was too concerned about my well-being. I thought, maybe he's just being nice. Maybe I don't mean as much to him as he does to me. Maybe I'm just another project to him. A girl he's helping out for a bit. Because that's what he does. He selflessly helps people out without getting anything in return. I asked him once, when we were going somewhere, did he ask me to go along just because he wanted me to go or did he want to keep an eye out for me? He said he wanted to keep an out for me. I took it to mean it didn't bother him one way or the other if I was there or not. To me, it confirmed the fact that to him I was just another project. I could never really be his friend, because I would never be at the same level he was. I was so far below, it was useless to try.
I think I hurt him, refusing his help later on. It's not that I didn't want his help. I did. I liked him helping me. I just didn't want him to feel he had to.
I moved into my own apartment, and followed a series of cultural misunderstandings. Where I grew up, things were done one way. In this place, things were done differently, and it looked like I did not appreciate the help I was getting to move and fix up the place. I realize this now, but did not know it at the time. Even though the apartment was close to his, we saw less and less of each other, and usually it was because I had made the effort. When we did see each other, he sometimes made comments that first surprised me, then had me seething for days. I never said a word when he got mad at me for things he thought I should do differently because I was always so shocked that he was mad. When I thought of something to say, it was usually too late.
I tried writing once. Basically, the answer I got back was that the problem was that "With you, it's never finished."
That would have been because he had his say, then forgot about it, but I never had my say. Because I hate confrontation. Because I had only ever fought or disagreed with the people who couldn't easily turn their backs on me and never want to see me again; my family. My brothers and sisters were stuck with me, they couldn't not see me again. Everyone else could drop out of my life if they wanted to.
I stopped making much of an effort to keep up a good friendship with Teddy. I decided I would just let him go if he wanted to go. We still saw each other. We had mutual friends. I called from time to time, we were both involved in a couple of the same groups. But it was never the same again.
I got married. I moved away. I called once to let him and another friend know I'd been to the hospital recently and had my baby. There was another misunderstanding. I got mad. The next day I wrote him an e-mail, told him to have a good life, deleted him as a contact and tried to forget about him. That was almost 12 years ago. Every once in a few years I would meet him again because we still had mutual friends.
I think we forgave each other long ago because there was that one time I was able to put my arms around my Teddy Bear once again in a big bear hug that lasted not long enough. But we never talked. The silence between us speaks louder than death. I have never been alone with him in all those years, there has always been a crowd of people around. It has been easy to ignore him and talk to others instead. We have gone separate ways in 12 years. There are many things I am sure we would not agree on. There are too many things left unsaid, too many misunderstandings.
I have lost my Teddy Bear and I do not know how to get him back or even if I can get him back. I get a sense that he is not so happy all the time. I think he was happier then, or at least life was much simpler for him back then. I no longer think Teddy is superior to me any way. We are just made differently. I have a few very dear friends, such as Gypsy Queen and Mr. Tumnus, who I think are amazing people. But they are mostly similar to me. We are a cold lot. We seek warmth.
Teddy was the first person I thought absolutely amazing because he was so different. I am not a touchy-feely person. Put two cold people like me in a room together and we will never touch. There will be no slapping of shoulders, no quick, random hugs. There will be no pulling, tugging, or pushing. We are the calm, cool-headed people.
Put me in a room with a happy, energetic person, who seems to thrive just off of greeting people and I will instantly be attracted to that person. I have met this type of person a few times and every time I feel a natural pull.
I don't think I have ever been so attracted by someone's personality as I was to Teddy's. In the early days, before I came to live with him, he used to sing "You're as cold as ice" to me. He was right. Later, when I'd moved into my own apartment, and trying to reconcile some things, I wrote to him saying we both had passion, only his was hot and burned quickly where mine was cold, slow to start, but burned steadily once started. He started things, got them going and then moved on. It took longer for me to get started and longer for me to move on.
There was a time when I could have been physically attracted to him as well. In spite of the fact that he was overweight, he wore it well. He was taller and larger than me. A huge Teddy Bear. That made me, a tall, large woman, feel small and petite and feminine like no one else has been able to since. But that has all changed. He has changed. The last times I saw him, it didn't feel the same. Like he'd undergone some change in his chemical balance. I'd always felt his masculinity before, and now he was just... neutral.
Still, I wish I could have that Teddy back. The one I met long ago. The one that lit up a room when he walked in. The one that got his energy from being around people. I miss him. Perhaps he's moved on. I don't seem quite able to. I wish I could. But mostly, I wish I didn't have to.
