Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey into Life after Marriage Read Free Page A

living
room in grateful tears.
    Beginning to imagine a future in which I could breathe.
    The total awesomeness of my very own bed.   I had my nest, but I also needed to be
realistic.   Lots of the old stuff
was moving with me to the new house, including the guy who had just blown up my
world.   We’d be sleeping separately,
but our use of the rest of the house was going to overlap.
    Which meant that the one space that was entirely,
completely, totally mine was my bedroom.   Four lovely textured plaster walls and a window.   Which is about all I had for a bedroom
at that point, because after one very miserable, nauseous night spent in the
bed of my imploded marriage, I’d been sleeping on a couch ever since.
    So I got to start totally fresh.   I splurged on a really amazing mattress
and beautiful sheets.   Nobody in the
whole wide world has a bed as deliciously comfortable as mine, or at least
that’s what I believe every night when I slide into it.   It is pure, selfish luxury, and I
totally adore it.
    The rest, I did on a budget.   A cheap bed frame and small dresser in
simple white.   A
plant stand for a touch of whimsy.   White shower curtains to cover my window when I want to cocoon.
    And my very favorite part, the bit that makes me happy every
time I walk in, wake up, or look up from my laptop.   The results of a single can of screaming
teal paint.
    I’ve painted a lot of bedrooms in my lifetime.   I love paint and the new, clean, personal
vibe it can give a room.   Even when
I was a student on a really tight budget, I found the dollars for a can or two
and a way to get it on my walls.   But never, in my whole entire life, have I had a color on my walls that
is this perfectly me .   It’s daring and comforting and bold and
cozy and so entirely right.
    I remember very clearly the night that I finally finished
building the bed frame and crawled into my luxurious nest of a bed.   I was tired, and a little cranky from
trying to figure out what to do with eighteen kinds of screws, and still
treading gingerly with my very bruised heart.   I sat there a moment, ensconced in
silk-soft sheets and a pile of pillows, surrounded by my deliriously teal
walls—and felt my soul exhale.
    I’d just come home.
    To a small part of the world that was,
even as unfinished as it still was, clearly meant to be my oasis.   The place where I get,
all the time, to be absolutely me.
    I think, even then, the seeds of sleeping solo had taken
root.
    It’s been one of my secret joys in the past eight months to
continue to decorate this room.   I’ve bought very little, other than a small painting called Moonflower that I fell hopelessly in
love with at first sight.   Mostly
it’s been a process of finding treasures.   Things I had tucked away in boxes, bits and pieces that I made over the
years.   Pebbles collected from the
beach and trinkets from friends.   No
clutter—this room is a place of meaning, a place of self-expression.   The very first time in a long time that
I got to create something that was purely, simply, deeply about me.
    It’s not done yet.   There are still bare spaces on a couple of my walls, and a sense that a
few things that are meant to be here haven’t quite arrived yet.
    But when I walk into this room, my heart sings.  
    I know all that now.   Back then, I just knew I finally had my
bulwark—my place to stand while the world stormed around me.  
    My place to heal.
    Because, silly me, I assumed that’s what the next many
months were going to be all about.
    The sneaking of the light.   The three weeks of frozen were very
scary for me.   I’ve never felt my
body do that before.   I stopped
eating—stopped being able to eat all but a very few things without
feeling nauseous.   I’d already been
teetering on the edge of anemia and adrenal fatigue and several other
consequences of long-term exhaustion.   But I’d always managed to pull it out.   To keep feeling okay.
    This was