Tales of My Cubawan, IV: Microdosing Affection to a Trauma Victim
Hi there! For those who don’t know, this is the continuing story of how I met and lost my adoptive son a few years ago.
Some of these stories involve discussion of drug use and addiction, depression and mental health issues caused by abuse, and death by overdose.
Consider thyselves warned and thanks for hearing his story 💞🐻
Coming in late? Here are the previous installments of the story:
Part I - Part II - Part III
Welcome back to the continuing tales of me and my adoptive son! So, part I was about meeting Otso and part II was about me and why it seemed like a profound cosmic coincidence that I met him when I did, and part III is about our early time together and some of the weird sides to him that he shared with me. I have many more tales of our first times hanging out, so I suppose I’ll continue there.
That video was meant to be for part of a crowd-made music video, but I didn’t end up using it after he told me his mixed feelings
I’ve touched on this in previous parts, but one of the hardest things for me was being someone who has a very physical way of expressing love, and then loving someone who could be extremely touch-averse. For example, I used to give him the rare occasional affectionate kisses on the cheeks or foreheads sometimes, but after a few months, he admitted to me that he had very mixed feelings about being kissed, because he had the sort of parents who’d beat him and then kiss him goodnight.
I was appalled that he hadn’t said anything earlier (he was scared that I’d get upset), but I was much more upset that he didn’t speak up and let me make him uncomfortable, and we immediately pivoted to softly headbutting one another when we wanted to express affection physically. This eventually led to us developing a system of hand gestures and touch signals for when words were too hard. I loved our private language. To this day, I remember fondly one of my last times seeing him before our estrangement: he got into the car, grabbed my arm, and bashed his grinning head all over it in a gesture of unbridled affection.
… Damnit, I miss him so much.
Anyways, I said before that I basically had to microdose affection into him, and so I went to work. Never have I ever had to exercise so much patience and I honestly wish that a doctor had been monitoring me and my everything levels, because I felt like I was hit with… well, I have no basis of comparison, but if I was going through something similar to someone who’s given birth, it wouldn’t surprise me. Hormones were coming out my eyeballs. I was dialed up to high fuck and if anyone so much as breathed at him in the wrong way, I would have murdered them in cold blood without a second thought. He had been hurt enough, and there is a reason someone gave me the name Bear when I was 16.
The first time I got a little cuddle from him is a bit of a cute story. He and his roommate had come over to help me in the garage—our house is in good shape but the garage is more or less falling apart and it was full of old shelves and things that I couldn’t take apart on my own without crushing myself. So I had the big boys come over to help me out and we ended the night watching Tenacious D & The Pick of Destiny, because that’s obviously the movie we would watch.
The three of us took over the couch and eventually Otso just sort of slumped over onto me and started snoozing. Knowing that he didn’t sleep well, I didn’t want to move or adjust him at all in case he woke up, so I scratched his back while he slept, feeling like I was getting a bit of the mom experience of watching a movie with a kid who had dozed off. Later, he told me he didn’t remember that happening (he was just passed out), but he very warmly said that if I had gotten something fulfilling out of it, he was very pleased about it.
Getting touch-familiar with him was a slow process, but it also progressed more rapidly than I would have expected. We had regular movie nights and they often started with him on the opposite end of the couch, but every time—even though I made it clear that he was welcome in my arms always—he’d scoot closer and closer, like that beaten puppy who was trying out affection to see if he’d like it.
I started gently by offering to give him back scritchies and eventually figured out that he was a human knot and he let me start massaging out some of the tense spots in his chest and shoulders—he had tightness in places I didn’t know were possible.
After a little while, and him coming to trust that I wouldn’t hurt him intentionally even if my life depended on it, he began to fully cuddle up to me when we were watching movies. My favorite moments ever were when I had him and my partner together in a big cuddle puddle. I was just smushed between all the people I loved most in the world and I couldn’t have been happier.
Even though I only actively had him for 9 months, it really felt like I got to experience every age with him, from infancy to his actual age. As someone with untreated ADHD, I don’t feel a great deal of metal peace in general (especially back then—this has improved significantly now that my depression is under control), because there’s always something on my mind stressing me out.
One evening was a particularly precious memory for me: we were writing song lyrics to one of his demos together. He had recorded some vocals for me earlier in the day and then we swapped to working on his music together. We often holed up in the guest room because he was allergic to cats, and after an hour or so of listening to the song and discussing the tempo and what he wanted to express, he started to dose off (as per usual).
Yes, I have a staggering number of very ridiculous selfies that I took with him when he was passed out, because he passed out so often. I have a whole folder dedicated just to them
Anyhoo, I’m not sure exactly what happened, but eventually, I was laying on his bed and he curled up next to me, so I put the laptop aside and he smushed up under my arm and fell asleep with his head on my chest. I had finally done it. I’d gotten him to fall asleep in a mamabear cuddle. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close while he snored and my brain went completely silent, for the first and, honestly, only time ever. There was nowhere else in the world I needed to be. Nothing else I needed to do. My cub was safe and asleep in my arms and nothing on earth could be more important or better. I can imagine that’s how moms who’ve recently given birth might feel in those moments of blissful peace holding their newborns. Size and age didn’t matter, he was equally precious to me.
He wasn’t always okay with being touched though, even after we broke the cuddle barrier. I remember one bad day when he asked me if it was okay if we didn’t hug when we met (it had become tradition at that point, for me to get out of the car and give him a big squeeze). I was devastated (internally), but of course consented to his boundary. I was surprised, however, when I picked him up, that he asked for a hug. When I asked why he changed his mind, he said that he had been talking to his therapist, who told him not to reject affection because “every hug counts.”
There was another time when we were at the pharmacy and he was in a really tangled internal knot. I wanted to comfort him by just rubbing his shoulder, and he took my hand and pressed his thumb into my palm—a sign we had agreed meant “I love you but I can’t handle touch right now.” It’s very hard for me to not comfort someone physically when they’re hurting, but I had to listen, and he appreciated it deeply. It wasn’t about what I needed, after all.
For all his pain though, he was extremely playful when he was happy. Sometimes, it seemed like he was trying to relive his childhood with me and every time he made a new music demo, he’d excitedly let me know. Obviously I showered him with praise because he was amazing at what he did, but I noticed this feeling of him being like, “Mama look! Look! Look at me!” every so often and it warmed me to my core that he got to experience those little moments he never had in his actual childhood.
Sometimes, I was also teaching him things that I felt like should have been taught to him at an obscenely young age. I don’t really have any specific memories on that front, but I just remember feeling like he had a lot of “gaps.”
So even though he was 23 years old when we met, I felt like I got to teach him things that people teach young kids still. Little things, usually, like how to stack wood or how not to freak out when bees came near him because he was allergic to them. It was a joy to me to feel like I got to experience all ages of him in such a short time.
There were even teenager moments as well. Even though he displayed a generally wonderful healthy masculinity, he did still use some phrasing that I took issue with, like using “homo” as an insult or judging overweight women for how they dressed. Teenager bullshit, you know. But what was heartwarming about him was that he listened when I told him some things weren’t cool. Genuinely. And he really, deeply cared what I thought of him, so whenever I gave him feedback, he took it to heart. He really wanted to be a good person and looked to me for guidance.
A lot of the time, he just wasn’t very self-aware. His entire life had been spent in survival mode, never able to think ahead for more than a few hours at a time, with no stability. Once I gave that to him, he was able to take things in and see more clearly. For example, while he was quite proficient with the ladies, his roommate was not, and I told him that perhaps boasting about his sexcapades in front of him might not be the kindest move. He was a bit shocked to hear that but also was grateful I had told him, because he hadn’t realized he’d been accidentally being unkind.
And, once again, that’s really why I love him so much. He was someone who believed in me and listened to me and trusted me. I don’t have a ton of people in my life who do, and fewer on that level. It’s such a big part of why he was and still is so precious to me—our love was always mutual.
Thanks again for hearing his story. There’s lots more to come.
Stay balanced, my friends 💞🐻
READ MORE: I also wrote a fair bit of fiction inspired by my cub. The Bear Forge was written about our meeting, its sequel, The Broken Anvil, is about our estrangement, and the finale, Everstrong, is a poshumous letter written from him to his mamabear.
Note: the latter two are only available to paid Substack subscribers.
I See You was inspired by a F(r)iction prompt, “unseen.” Elegy for a Lost Soul was written after he doubled-down on the path of destruction for the final time.
