Once upon a time, there were two bears: Papa Bear and Mama Bear. Papa Bear and Mama Bear had three bear cubs: Big Brother, Little Brother, and Baby Bear.
Big Brother was very successful in everything he tried to do, and everyone loved him.
Little Brother was also very successful, but not many people loved him, because he was mean and jealous.
Baby Bear was also very successful in what he tried to do, but very few people ever noticed it. They were all too busy being proud of Big Brother and Little Brother to notice. Baby Bear didn't understand why he could do the same things as his brothers and get such a different reaction from people. People would often ignore Baby Bear, and when they did give him attention, it was often to tell him how different he was from the other bears his age.
Baby Bear didn't like to play with the other bears his age. He much preferred to stay indoors and read, instead of playing in the grass and getting dirty. The other bears would also make fun of him for not understanding the rules to the games they would play, which made Baby Bear want to stay indoors all the more.
As Baby Bear grew older, it became harder and harder for him to get along with the bears his age. He was much smarter than any of them, but because he didn't understand their social rules, the other bears would call him names and push him down. This would often make Baby Bear come home in tears, which made Little Brother terribly jealous, because it meant that Mama Bear would stop paying attention to him and gave her attention to Baby Bear. Little Brother became mean, and would call Baby Bear mean names, telling him that the other bears picked on him because he was broken, and broken bears didn't deserve to have friends. According to Little Brother, the only thing a broken bear was good for was working in chip shops cleaning litter from the sides of the roads, because it was the only thing they could understand well enough to do.
Eventually, all the bears grew up and went their separate ways. Big Brother found a lady bear to marry, and though they did not have children, they loved one another very much. Little Brother moved to the city and got a job in the government where he was able to bully everyone around. It was something he was very good at and enjoyed doing. Meanwhile, Baby Bear went to university and met a lady bear of his own. The lady bear was very smart and drove Baby Bear mad. They would always fight with one another, but not the way Baby Bear would fight when he was younger. They fought with their minds, always working to outsmart the other. After time, their relationship changed, and while they still annoyed one another, they would spend a lot of time together. Eventually, the lady bear introduced Baby Bear to her friends. Her friends had new and interesting ways to have fun, and they shared this with Baby Bear. Baby Bear liked their ways of having fun, and wanted to do it more often, but for some reason, this made the lady bear very upset. Baby Bear didn't understand why it upset her when he had fun, because she would sometimes do it with them. This caused Baby Bear and the lady bear to fight, this time with words, and Baby Bear became so angry that he ran away with the lady bear's friends.
Eventually, Baby Bear's new friends stopped being so friendly with him, though. What was fun had turned painful, and soon the other bears started making him pay them so he could keep having fun and stop hurting. But they charged a lot of money, and Baby Bear couldn't afford their prices.
Soon after that, Big Brother found Baby Bear and took him home. Baby Bear was very sick, because he wasn't allowed to have fun anymore, but Big Brother said that it was for the best. Little Brother would come round sometimes and say that it was pointless to do anything about Baby Bear, because he wasn't going to amount to anything anyway. After a while, Baby Bear began to think that Little Brother might be right after all. Baby Bear had no friends, he hadn't finished university, and he couldn't get a job because of it. He realised that Little Brother was right, and that there was no point in trying to get better.
So Baby Bear left again. He made new friends who would also have fun with him, but the same thing happened, and soon it would hurt whenever Baby Bear wasn't having fun, and his friends stopped being friends when Baby Bear couldn't afford to have fun with them.
Again, Big Brother found Baby Bear, and again Little Brother told him that he was wasting his time. And again, Baby Bear believed Little Brother. He was embarrassed for wasting Big Brother's time again, and as soon as he was able, he left to find new friends.
Then, one New Year's Eve, Big Brother's wife was driving home when her car was struck by another car. The bear driving the other car was so drunk he could barely see, but he was driving anyway. He didn't see the sign telling him to stop and look for other cars. Big Brother was very sad, and he called his brothers to tell them what had happened. Little Brother was sad too. Baby Bear was too busy hurting to hear what he was told, and was not sad. He was mean to Big Brother when he shouldn't have been, and that made Big Brother even more sad. They had a very bad fight and Big Brother cried a lot.
A few days after they fought, Baby Bear realised that he had been wrong when he fought with Big Brother, and went to his house to ask him for help so he could stop hurting. He was very sick, an Big Brother was still very sad, but he agreed to help Baby Bear because that's what brothers do. But it was hard because this time, Baby Bear was worse than any of the times Big Brother had tried to help him before. He wouldn't eat and everything hurt so badly that it made him scream.
And Little Brother laughed again, and said that it was just another trick of Baby Bear's. He said that Baby Bear didn't want to get better, and that he just wanted money. This made Baby Bear very angry, and he fought with Little Brother and made him bleed. After that, Big Brother realised that he couldn't take care of Baby Bear and himself at the same time, so he did something that he knew Baby Bear would hate, even though it was for Baby Bear's own good. Big Brother phoned a hospital and had Baby Bear put in it. Baby Bear hated this because the people there were unfamiliar, but acted like they knew him. It confused and scared Baby Bear, and all he wanted to do was go back home.
But he didn't have a home anymore. He only had Big Brother, and he had upset Big Brother badly this time. He was very sorry for this, and eventually, Big Brother believed him and took him back to his home, where he helped Baby Bear get better. Baby Bear learned how to replace one sort of fun with another, and started drawing on any surface he could find to stop thinking about having the sort of fun that made him hurt so badly.
This time, despite what Little Brother said would happen, Baby Bear stayed with Big Brother until he got better. Baby Bear didn't blame Big Brother for putting him in that hospital, even though it made him scared and confused, because once he was better and able to think clearly for the first time in years, he understood that Big Brother was just trying to help him in the only way he knew how.
Baby Bear stayed with Big Brother for a long time, and when he thought he was able to take care of himself. But it had been a mistake, and Baby Bear wasn't strong enough, and he still made mistakes. This time, instead of hiding from them and running away from his own poor judement, Baby Bear went back to Big Brother's house and asked to be allowed to try again. Big Brother agreed, and he let Baby Bear stay with him again. This time, there was no screaming or fighting, and Little Brother was made to stay away because both Big Brother and Baby Bear were tired of listening to him talk. And this time, when Baby Bear moved back to the city to live on his own, he stayed away from all his old friends, and even tried to make new friends who didn't have the sort of fun his old friends had. But no-one wanted to be friends with Baby Bear, because of the friends he used to keep and the things he used to do, even though he didn't do those things anymore. Baby Bear didn't understand why no-one wanted to be his friend, and it made him hurt and upset. He tried drawing pictures and putting them on his journal, hoping that it might make the other bears like him. But the other bears just called him names and said other mean things to him.
Soon, Baby Bear learned that the only way to get the other bears to talk to him at all was to be mean back to them. Even though they didn't like him, they would still talk to him. It was hard for Baby Bear to know when someone was being nice to him and when they were being sarcastic, because while it was difficult to tell these things in person, it was impossible to know over the internet. So he just started being mean to everyone under the assumption that everyone was being mean to him.
And then Baby Bear met another bear. This bear was kind to him and liked to talk to him. At first, it confused Baby Bear. He didn't know if the other bear was being sarcastic as well, but it didn't seem like it. Baby Bear grew to trust the other bear, and though it took a while, even agreed to meet him in person. And he found that he liked the other bear a lot; more than he'd liked anyone in a long time. In fact, he hadn't liked anyone as much as he liked this other bear since the lady bear he knew in university. This other bear was not only kind to him, but patient and would explain things that Baby Bear didn't understand, and knew how to do so in a way that didn't make Baby Bear feel stupid for not understanding it in the first place. He introduced Baby Bear to his friends, and while they were all afraid of him at first, they came to like him as well, even when Baby Bear was mean to them.
Baby Bear even tried to be kind to the bears that were mean to him, but they all thought it was a trick, and they just got more angry with him. So he stopped drawing them pictures, and then they got angry for that. Eventually, he and the other bear stopped talking to all the other bears entirely, because nothing they could do would make them be nice, and it was easier to ignore them than to try any more. And even this seemed to make them angry, maybe because they had no-one left to be angry at. But it didn't bother Baby Bear anymore, because he had new friends who didn't want to hurt him, and he didn't need all the angry bears anymore.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
