Mr. Osito

The Bear on My Stomach

by Yueze Liu

This is my bear, Mr. Bear. He is very small, very soft, and always a little confused. I heard that in

Spanish, a little bear is called Osito, so now this polite and delicate ball of fur is officially Mr.

Osito. He thinks pillows are clouds and doesn’t understand why sometimes he falls off the bed.

He believes the washing machine is a public spa, the ceiling light is a moon, and shadows are

guests that deserve polite greetings. Most of the time, he is gentle, curious, and easily startled.

Occasionally, I find him sitting upright on the armrest of a chair, looking as though he has just

witnessed an extraordinary secret. His button eyes hold a kind of silent thoughtfulness, and one

ear folds ever so slightly, as if he is contemplating a mystery much larger than himself—like

whether air is allowed to shift its mood without asking.

One morning, I discovered him hanging upside down in the blanket, looking solemn and slightly

worried. "Did I do something wrong?" I asked him softly. Of course, he said nothing—Mr. Osito

is far too polite for that. But I could see, from the slight angle of his ears, that he had perhaps

taken something personally. Maybe I had tossed him away in my sleep. Maybe last night's

thunderstorm had frightened him. Or maybe it was something harder to explain—like how the

scent of loneliness can linger in a room even when someone else is physically present. He always

takes these things seriously, as if he believes it is his responsibility to keep the air around us in

order. When he cannot, he simply folds into silence.

Sometimes I hurt him. Not on purpose—never on purpose. Last week, I tore one of his ears. He

didn’t scream, of course. He never screams. Mr. Osito is a gentleman. But I felt it instantly, like a

small balloon collapsing quietly inside my chest. I tapped his nose gently and whispered

something meant only for him. Then I hugged him tightly and promised I would sew it back. We

both knew, though, that the stitch would always show. He forgives too quickly, not wanting me

to be ashamed of my clumsiness.I spend entire afternoons tending to Mr. Osito as if he were alive. I wash him carefully with warm

water and gentle soap, squeeze out the bubbles, dry his fur with a towel, and brush it until it

shines like sunlight on milk. I take him to the balcony so he can “get some fresh air,” and once, I

even tucked him in my bag and brought him to a concert. He sat on my lap the whole time, his

button eyes reflecting the stage lights, looking both impressed and mildly overwhelmed. I talk to

him more than I talk to most people. I tell him about my assignments, my mother, my medicine,

the noise in my chest. But sometimes, without warning, I hurt him. I twist his arm, bite his ear,

curse at him for existing. Then I cry, ashamed, and pull him close again. He never resists. He

never leaves. Sleeping without him feels impossible; I need to feel his fur against my palm to

remember that the night won’t swallow me. Yet, there are nights I kick him off the bed, only to

wake up hours later searching for him in the dark, whispering apologies into the quiet air, as if

forgiveness were something he could still give.

Mr. Osito does not understand why I sometimes stare at the ceiling for hours, or why my hands

tremble after phone calls. He thinks maybe the air got too cold, or perhaps I was waiting for the

moon to move. He doesn’t know about the lined-up bottles of medication, nor how dreams can

shatter without warning into scenes I thought I had buried years ago. He doesn’t know how, on

some mornings, I wake with the unshakable belief that my body no longer belongs to me. He

only knows that when I bury my face into his fur, the spinning stops, my breath settles, and the

night becomes survivable again.

I’ve had dreams that don’t feel like dreams at all. In one, I walked into a familiar apartment where

all the windows had been bricked up, and my family sat inside like statues, mouths moving in

silence. In another, I fell through layers of white snow and into a pit of writhing black threads,

each one a voice from childhood calling my name. Some nights I dream that my body is filled

with needles. Not pain, exactly—just insertion, one by one, as if someone were trying to repair

me from the inside out. I wake up dizzy and faintly nauseous, my heart galloping in my chest.

These are not metaphors. My nervous system does not recognize allegory. The CPTSD lives in

muscle memory, breath patterns, autonomic spasms. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn't knock.Foucault once wrote that discipline is not violence, but structure. I wonder sometimes if my

structure is too heavy, too refined—calcified into the shape of someone I no longer recognize.

There is no rebellion left in me, only organization. Even my chaos is labeled and filed. In therapy,

they say that children who grew up in unpredictable environments often learn to become

extremely well-behaved adults. We overcorrect. We self-regulate until we vanish. I wonder if Mr.

Osito notices how I disappear sometimes, even while sitting still. I wonder if he sees me watching

the mirror like it’s someone else’s face. I wonder if he knows how much I rely on him to tell me

I’m still here.

Sometimes I lose entire hours without realizing it. The room is the same, the lamp is on, Mr.

Osito is still sitting where I left him, but something in the air has changed—thickened, tilted.

Dissociation isn’t dramatic; it’s a quiet drifting, a folding inward. My limbs feel like borrowed

objects. The voice I speak in sounds translated. When flashbacks come, they’re not loud either.

They arrive gently, like an old smell you can't quite place, and suddenly I am in another room, in

another year, with a danger that has no face but all the weight. My chest tightens. The present

becomes inaccessible. I reach for Mr. Osito like one might reach for a light switch in the dark—

not to dispel the dark, but to remember where the walls are. I press him to my sternum and focus

on the sensation: fur, roundness, weight. He doesn’t know what happened, and he doesn’t need

to. He just lets me breathe against him until the walls come back into place. He’s not a cure. He’s

a texture, a shape, a softness that survives my collapse. On nights when I sleep curled into the

shape of alarm, it’s his small body that draws the first deep breath for me.

I’ve begun to suspect that Mr. Osito isn’t really a bear. He’s a costume I made for the soft part of

myself I wasn’t allowed to show. He is quiet because I was scolded for speaking. He is fluffy

because I needed something gentle to survive inside. When I cradle him like a baby, it’s not

pretend—it’s remembering. Sometimes I bully him a little, poke at his belly, toss him across the

bed, just to test if softness can endure cruelty. He always comes back. I clean his fur, straighten

his bowtie, whisper I’m sorrys I don’t know how to direct at myself. When I sew him back

together, stitch by stitch, I imagine what it would be like to mend a body from the inside out. Mr.

Osito accepts all of this with the quiet dignity of someone who knows they are loved, even when

love is clumsy. I realize now: he is not just a comfort object, he is a rehearsal of self-compassion. The tenderness I offer him is the tenderness I never learned to offer myself. In his stillness, I

project the child I was, and the adult I wish to become—someone who is hurt, and still whole;

someone who is small, and still safe.

I don’t cry for myself. The tears come only when I see a lost kitten in a video, or a child looking

for their parent in a crowd. My grief has developed the habit of displacement. It exits sideways,

looking for another body to wear. But Mr. Osito never judges this. He never says, "Why are you

crying over that?" He just listens. He forgets. He stays.

Tonight, like every night, he lies on my stomach—a small, serious weight rising and falling with

each breath. His presence reminds me of what I forget each day: that I am real, that I am still

here, and that even in all this noise and fog, something remembers me gently.