Making the bed.

It's been awhile, hasn't it.

I make my bed every day. Every single day.

This probably means nothing to you. I mean, I bet you also make your bed every day. I bet you even have decorative pillows and neatly tucked in edges. I bet you do it without even thinking.

And that’s the difference between us, I think. I can’t do it without thinking of why I do. I don’t casually shake out the duvet and plump up the pillows without acknowledging the shame that propels the action.

Calm or easy wouldn’t be how I would describe my upbringing. I don’t blame anyone for that fact. Not anymore, anyway. People do the best they can with what they’ve got at the time. Calm indicates healthy, calm comes with stability. Easy is for those whose path was paved as such. There wasn’t a whole lot of either where I grew up.

But I did get to escape sometimes to the wondrous homes of “other people.” And man, other people had it good. This envy entered my world around the age of eight and took hold. I studied their habits relentlessly, watching as their moms cleaned the kitchen counters and stocked the fridge. Took notes as they cleaned their cars and smiled at the neighbours.

This is where I learned to make the bed. One of my best friends had the bed of childhood girls dreams. Laura Ashley bedspread and the matching floral bolster pillows. And it was always made perfectly. We’d sit on the floor drinking Pepsis and talking about music and boys and I’d carefully commit the scene to my mind. Someday I want to make the bed just like this, I thought. I would think about her room for years only to discover many decades later that I felt safe there. No smell of cigarettes or impending doom. No one was going to leave. There people had the space, the health, the stability to tuck the edges in with love and oh so carefully.

And so I played the part. Acted like that calm freshly made bed family. Until the role became part of me. Until I bended the cycle enough to place a small crack in it. Enough to squeeze through. Enough to forge enough space to pave a new path.

And now I have that blueprint. I roll it out every morning. Instructions on how to make sure everything doesn’t fall apart. From my experience, it can. You have to be prepared.

Step one: make the bed…

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash