The Act Of Throwing Precious Childhood Stuffed Animals In The Trash At 10 To “Become A Man.”

Broken Childhood.
Neglected.
Alone.
Dark bedrooms.
Always playing pretend –
To escape my dark reality:
Toys, action figures, stuffies, or painted miniatures,
Positioned across bamboo floor mats,
For my imaginary wars.
Alone.
Always.
Was 10,
Or 11,
Indoctrinated by “Man Of The House,”
Diatribes.
Eldest Child Syndrome;
Pounded into me ad nauseam.
Toxic Masculinity instilled deep inside me.
So I killed my own childhood.
Executed My Own Inner Child.
On purpose.
With False Resolve.
Proceeded.
Threw away my precious, soft, childhood animals –
Into our garbage,
One by one by one.
“Bun Bun.”
Stuffed rabbit my Gram sewed me as a toddler.
As now she languishes in a care home;
Stroke, Alzheimer’s, & Dementia,
Having erased that woman I once knew.
“Mr. Bear.”
My Cherished Little Brown Confidant.
Gone.
Every softer comfort.
Gone.
All of them.
Now lost forever to rot & decay.
Gone.
Like some dark Hallmark version of “Toy Story.”
Memory still fills me with immense sorrow,
To the point my heart hurts,
Tears come.
Lost memories.
Lost emotions.
Lost youth.
The very act,
Even in that moment,
It felt wrong.
So I held each stuffed animal tight in my arms for a final time.
Saying goodbye forever,
To each beloved companion or comfort,
One by one.
Trying to make peace with each pair of button eyes.
Then dropping them,
After each tearful goodbye,
One by one,
Into the trash bin.
I’ve many regrets.
Snuffing out my entire childhood,
In one fell swoop,
Is just one of thousands.
Thought I was tougher,
Stronger,
For it.
A MAN.
NOT BOY.
Now,
Non Binary:
Aware of Such Toxic Masculinities.
The Loss & Grief?
Was for nothing,
After all.
Gaslit myself into self-destruction,
Before I even knew what self-destruction really was.
Throwing my precious, sentimental, stuffed friends away,
As if some sharp black & white line –
I’d drawn myself – between Child & Adult.
Discarded lines & histories that could never be redrawn.
Only scarred my heart worse.
Deprived myself of comfort,
Or simple types of love.
Bun Bun?
Mr. Bear?
The others?
They’re still gone.
Forever.
Fragments of my innocence;
Now lost completely to time.
Decades later,
Still miss them.
Really do.