Be Mine

Be Mine.

It’s a lovely phrase for a chalky candy heart or a note on a rose from a secret admirer. This phrase only had a bad connotation for me, though.

The day that it happened was sunny and warm, the complete opposite of how I felt.

He came over early in the day.

Two hours later I was making calls left and right, trying to make sense of what just happened. “He broke up with me,” I cried into the phone, collapsing onto my bed. I gripped my pillow close to my stomach and curled my body around it.

Every reaction was the same. “WHAT?! WHY!?” which only sparked more tears from my eyes.

“He told me�"” I gasped for breath, “He told me he would never love me.” I barely muttered the truth before letting out another loud, ugly sob. I held the phone far away from my face so they wouldn’t hear. Nobody should hear. It’s too embarrassing. Ten months after he told me he was falling in love with me, he told me he never would. Six months after I told him I loved him, he told me he never would. I felt cheated. Like a moron.

“That’s ridiculous!” They were always speechless, but so was I. I was completely blindsided.

Three hours later I heard a knock on my door, thinking it was him coming to apologize and tell me he made a mistake. It wasn’t.

I opened the door and received a hug before recognizing that it was my best friend who had driven two hours to be here. She led me over to the couch and I cried some more as I told her step by step what happened.

“I figured you needed something to cuddle with. I can’t stay tonight,” she said as she handed me a pink teddy bear. It looked beat up, maybe like it had been chewed, and embroidered on its stomach were the words Be Mine. “It’s from Christian from our sophomore year. I’m not really sure why I kept it, but now I want you to have it. You need it more than me.”

I managed a smile and laugh as I wiped the tears off of my face and sniffed. She handed me a tissue and I laughed again, realizing how awful I must have looked. I wondered if it was as ugly as how I felt.

“It’s better this way,” she said. “Believe me.”

I remember throwing that bear across the room weeks later after seeing him with some other girl. I kicked it and punched it into the ground until the seam on its arm ripped open.

I found the teddy bear under my bed three months later.

Be Mine. What an awful way to demand the possession of somebody’s heart. Maybe I was bitter that nobody wanted mine. He never gave me that bear. He would never give me that bear. Maybe I was jealous. It didn’t matter. That bear symbolized the wasted year and a half of my life that he stole from me. That bear was the worst thing in this room.

One last time I threw the bear hurtling through the air towards the trash can. I stepped in the trash can to squish all of the garbage before closing the bag and tying it tight. I dragged the bag out of the building towards the dumpster, but it was heavy.

“Do you need some help?” I heard a boy’s voice behind me.

I turned and smiled at the stranger. He was about my age and had a smile that shone across the snow covered sidewalk. In his arms was a bag of what looked like burnt photographs. “Sure.”