ma tomo Win

This is going to be a big post, so buckle up, y’all. Tomorrow (or today, since I’m writing this after midnight), I go back to the US (semi-)permanently. My gap year is, finally, over. The thing begins and it’s already ending.

You’ve heard that I lost Baby Bear and Label, but I wrote that post while I was still looking for them: not all hope was lost yet. But despair set in when I told my mother about it on Thursday, and she asked what day it had happened; when I said “Tuesday,” she was certain that they weren’t coming back. Maybe they will. It’s not impossible that they will. It’s possible that they won’t. They probably won’t. But I fished a new bear out of the Danube canal in Vienna.

I saw the something floating by in the canal as I sat on its bank with the toki pona speakers I met up with in Vienna. By color and size, it could have been Baby Bear, so my interest was peaked, but as it came closer and went by, I could tell that it was my missing bear, so I let it pass. But as it drifted away, I was suddenly struck by the sense that I ought, nay, I must chase after this floating thing: that it might be Baby Bear after all, and even if it weren’t him, that I should rescue it anyhow.

So there I was, chasing a bear down the Danube canal as the sun was beginning to set but hadn’t yet gone behind the tall glass buildings that were turning to fire in the departing light. In the first stair case I stepped down to grab the bear, who I had in the meantime confirmed visually was not Baby Bear, I took my shoes off and stepped down onto the concrete rim of the canal; but the bear floated past, out of reach. I realized, in this moment, that swimming in the canal to fetch the bear was a step too far; even had it been Baby Bear mine, I don’t know that I would have swum for it; but who knows what reserves of strength or daring might appear in the event I see my lost comfort object.

The first night I slept without Baby Bear and Label, I felt an aching emptiness in my chest: I am so used, from twenty four years of habit, to holding them against my chest while I sleep. It was very uncomfortable to sleep without something holding me up, so the next nights I crumpled up a few shirts and snuggled with them. Baby Bear and Label are, of course, prostheses. They are prosthetic, which to say that they are artificial yet part of my body (artificial is a fascinating word that means exactly what it says: arte + factum, which is to say, “made using (or by means of) skill”), so in their absence I feel as though part of me were missing. Part of me is missing. But cuddling the crumpled shirts made up for their lack, incompletely. The smell was different, the feeling was different, the bulk and shape and size were different. And it was much, much better than nothing: it, in fact, held my chest up while I slept, so that I could sleep comfortably on my side (the details of my sleeping position aren’t really important, and anyhow, it’s more my falling-asleep position that I’m talking about here) and so was an effective prosthesis for the prosthesis. A prosthetic prosthesis. Something that is used the same as something else but isn’t the same as something else. What is the difference, anyway?

I got a new bear out of the river. There’s, in fact, two bears: a bigger bear has around their neck a ribbon from which hangs by a keychain a smaller bear and a stuffed heart. The big bear is called Donaubär, since it is a bear from the Danube. The smaller bear doesn’t have a name yet. I wonder whether someone lost it. I wonder someone is looking for it even now, or whether someone has totally despaired of finding their lost precious thing. I hope that Baby Bear and Label (or whatever their new names are) are in a good home and not afraid. I hope that they aren’t forgotten; I hope that they aren’t lost; I hope that they aren’t alone. I hope that someone else finds them and takes care of them and loves them. They’re a good bear and a good blanket who deserve a good home. I stuffed them in bags, peed on them, puked on them, slept on them, spilled on them, for twenty four (almost twenty five!) years of my life. They did their duty honorably and well. Were that we were all so lucky.

I don’t want to forget them. I don’t want them to be gone. As long as they were here, I knew I was the same person I always was. They were a prosthetic identity, beyond just being a sleep-aiding prosthetic. In them, I knew myself. Object permanence is a hell of a drug. They’re gone from me, but they still exist. They existed for me, and now, I hope, they’ll exist for someone else. If they exist for themselves only, I hope that they still exist. I hope that they aren’t seperated. I hope that they aren’t destroyed. I hope that they aren’t forgotten. I can’t forget them anymore than I could forget myself.

And I did forget myself, for a very long time. Most of my adolescence was a reaction against myself, against the image I had of myself, against who I thought I was. In short, I was myself, then I was someone else, then I was myself again. But now, myself again, I know what it’s like to be somebody else. And that makes all the difference.