This poem was written one evening back in 1995.
On the evening in question, I was feeling happy and content as I got ready for bed, and rather rueful that although there was nobody “special” in my life at the time. I seemed to have reached a plateau. A point where the full time company of another person didn’t seem to matter quite as much as it had before. In fact you could say quite the reverse …
I sat up in bed, craddling my precious cup of fruit tea, and looked around the room .. suddenly aware that the order and calm felt quite precious. I’d got my own home, work was going well, there was money in the bank, and I began to realise that the thing I’d mourned for so long (the lack of somebody special to focus on) was now potentially the most disruptive thing I could let into my nicely-ordered life.
A lover in my life would be nice company, and somebody to care about … and to care for me. Yet they would also take away the peace and calm I’d taken so long to establish. Their things would be strewn on the floor .. vying for space. Their needs would inevitably conflict with mine. I might want to listen to music and stare wistfully into space just when they wanted to do something entirely different. I’d get used to it, of course, but would the cost be worth it ?
From a purely selfish point of view, of course, there’s no doubting that it’s nice to go to sleep with someone’s chest pressing against your back, and an arm around you .. and to wake in the realisation that your head is rested on that same lover’s chest, listening to their sleeping heart beat. To *smell* that special aroma of someone you’re in love with.
There’s no getting away from the fact that there are advantages as well as disadvantages to living as a couple.
Yet as I thought about it, I realised that I’d even evolved a sort of replacement for that physicality too. Beside me I had a big cuddly lion that my parents had bought me .. and lately I’d realised that I slept a lot better if I lodged this behind my back as I lay down to rest. So I *did* now have a sort of surrogate partner. A partner who provided the thing that I missed .. and yet demanded nothing in return.
The more I thought, the more I could see that the stuffed toy was quite an important palliative, for the moment. It allowed me to enjoy the time I needed for regrouping, by putting off the simple physical desire for closeness.
And how many people, I wonder, look desperately for a relationship .. any relationship .. just so they won’t have to feel alone in those moments between the distractions of the day and letting-go of consciousness ?
Maybe adults need their teddies more than children, in fact ? Could a good teddy save a desperately lonely person from charging blindly and hungrily from the carcass of one realtionship to another, without pausing to think, in-between, what they really want ?
So, come with me now, as we explore why there really is nothing to equal a teddy …
