This is hard for me, because we’ve known each other forever. I want you to know how special your relationship has been to me: going to London and Prague together, moving into our first apartment, nursing me through that awful sinus infection. There will always be a soft spot for you in my heart. But I’m moving in with my boyfriend at the end of the month and there isn’t room for you in my life anymore.
I’m sorry, Gregory, but I’ve been an adult woman for a while now and it’s time I stopped sleeping with a teddy bear.
Since my sister gave you to me on my 7th birthday, we have spent nearly every single night together. You were my main teddy bear—one of many stuffed animals, but the most special. I pretended you were my husband and we pushed my dolls around in a stroller. When I got a little older, you and I made a pretend mission to the moon together on my bicycle.
But you were there for me during the hard times, too. I used to cry into your fur and even chew on your nose when I was upset—it’s still a little gnawed off. I didn’t have much consistency or someone to talk to about the crazy things happening in my life when I was an adolescent, but you were a constant.
Some girls might have felt embarrassed about their teddy bear in middle school, but not me. I brought you to summer camp, then to college, then to Europe and then to all my apartments in New York City. My dad likes to joke that you’ve seen more of the world than most Americans.
I only stopped sleeping with you every night in the past year because you kept falling out of bed . But the less I slept with you, the less I needed to sleep with you, and thus, you’ve spent a lot of nights this year face-down in my hamper. (Especially when I had men over—hen I hid you where no one could see.) But we still slept together more than most teddy bears and 25-year-olds probably should.
The other night I pulled you out to sleep with once more. I had been tossing and turning and I felt like the only way I’d be able to fall asleep was if I laid my head on your stomach. And that’s when I realized I have no idea what we’re going to do when I move in with my boyfriend in two weeks.
He knows about you, of course. He thinks it’s cute that I’m so sentimental. But I can’t imagine he’d be OK with me bringing you into bed with us, or preferring to cuddle up to you instead of him. He hasn’t explicitly requested that I don’t bring you to bed, but it’s something I don’t want him to have to ask. In any case, I know I’d feel weird about he and I having sex with you just lying there watching. I’ve known you since I was seven—that would just feel wrong.
So it hurts me to have to say this to you—really, it does hurt—but I think we have to stop sleeping together, Gregory. I’ll make sure that wherever you end up (top shelf of the closet, maybe?) isn’t dank or full of spiders.
Love,
Jessica
Original by: Jessica Wakeman