Today I stood next to my mom and gripped the bones of her shoulder in my palm; I felt tiny shards of ivory thinly draped by soft, loose skin. The chill of a body too tired to maintain heat even on a warm day in October. I hug my mother less frequently as time passes, as I become increasingly wary of her ability to smell the teenage dissidence emanating from my skin like the grey fog rising from the grass outside my bedroom window. Everytime we touch, the lids of my eyes retreat completely and my pupils bloat with fear. Where is the mom who carried me effortlessly from her mattress to mine? It all happened so quickly, her aging. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my mortality. I recently turned eighteen – I’ve been contemplating a midlife crisis.
I didn’t realize that years pass so quickly even during periods of tired, routine sameness. Over the course of my childhood I have rearranged my bedroom countless times, but my bed itself has always stayed more or less the same. I always hoped that by varying the orchestration of my space, I would vary my life and somehow feel reawakened. I always thought that my concentration would realign or that this time I would keep these few square feet cleaner. But eventually, just days or weeks after I recompose the room, the person I was when my bed was over there finds my body, sitting on my bed over here, and I haven’t escaped the silent attack of time (or myself) at all. More or less, I stay the same.
Until I was in third or fourth grade I refused to sleep in my room alone. I was self-diagnosed with a rare and apparently debilitating syndrome called Fear-of-the-Dark. In the earlier years, kindergarten and first grade, I nestled into my mother’s bed while she watched television I didn’t understand. She keeps her room very cold, but I used to burrow under her duvet and become swallowed by warmth. What seemed to be late at night, maybe around nine, my father came home from work and scooped me up, as if he had done so throughout my infancy - as if he were familiar with the action – and glided me to my bed. Barely aware, I looked back at my mother waiting for her to catch up and carry me, or at least follow me, protect my right to stay, even just acknowledge my sadness upon leaving. But her eyes were glued to the television; I nestled into the comforting smell of cigarettes that pervaded the button down shirt and loosened tie. As he set me on my mattress a twinge of fear electrified my body and in the moments before I fell asleep, a sad betrayal – the thoughts of my seemingly negligent parents - tucked me into bed, blanketed me in slumber. What a poor child, so frightened and alone.
I stay the same – I always stay the same. The dispersed chunks of cotton balls encased by the soft, familiar slip. It’s how the old me, from over there, finds the new me, sitting over here. There are three other pillows on my bed, all less fragmented than the one directly under me. The internal gut fritters under the weight of my head, the intestines disperse in the same way every night. It’s like sitting on the beach, when you feel the sand disband beneath you but you don’t bother moving because you expected the separation and it’s comfortably stable on the ocean floor anyway. My head sinks through the pillow to the mattress, which is old, stiff and inconsistent - terrible for the back. But we know each other – it’s seen my body grow and I know it isn’t what it used to be, but we’ve been degenerating and developing together. The sheets and the mattress corroborate. It’s like the first cold day in November when I pull my sweatshirt sleeves just beyond my fingertips and I’m dwarfed by the cotton – it’s a sort of maternal warmth.
When I was younger I often woke in the night, plagued by excruciating pain. I tossed and turned, whining just loud enough to secrete bits of agony but quiet enough not to be heard. Clamps would clench my calves and stretch them relentlessly while knives cut into my miniscule muscles and the ghosts flowed out from the crevice of my closet door. Those nights I traversed the creaky corridor floors to wake her. Her room irradiated a blue light, but the hall was only blackened as my pupils quivered and the ghost trailing behind me cast its shadow above my head. I remember how she would climb into my bed, which squealed at the weight of another body. The frigid room, far too big for a child, briefly became warmer. I barely heard her waning voice over my whimpers. I barely felt her tired hands over the pain. Sometimes she dozed off, but usually she returned to her bedroom before the throbbing wore away - soon after she left the cold draft rolled back in. I knew not to wake her; if I chose to disturb her again she would reassure me of what I already knew – there was nothing she could do. With all the strength in my arms, I clutched my pillow just under my chin and clasped my lips shut; I waited until the exhaustion overcame the routine pangs. My eyelids relaxed as the sun rose.
Some nights my face melts into the cotton pillowcase; we’re fused together by the tears that saturate us both. The fibers absorb the water weight I cannot carry around behind my glass panes anymore, but by the time I wake up it has dried itself with the warmth that streamed from my head while I slept. Then there are days when the dust twinkles before us, the sun radiates through the cracked, clear, crystal. We absorb the heat together. We watch romantic comedies together. We comfort each other and no time passes at all until finally the sun has gone down and my hair has shed into the layers of linen and the fibroids of the bed are woven into the vertebrae of my spine.
As I’ve grown older, my soul has flooded the crevices once inhabited by wicked goblins and ghouls. Body odor and perfume cling to the floral rug, which is made thick by dog hair, shed by the untrained Labradors who lived and died in the kitchen below my refuge. Papers dating back to middle school fly purposelessly across the wooden floors when the air conditioning sets on. Dirty clothes wait to be purified. Remnants of green illegalities and the food crumbs that complement the youthful pastime coat every surface like algae. Its soft lighting has not changed since I moved here over thirteen years ago. I have the same three lamps. Countless posters and photographs, collected over the years, litter the walls as a futile attempt to mask the pink and yellow floral wallpaper I hated so fervently when I was younger. My baby hats sit on top of my Peter Rabbit bureau. Still occupying its spot on my bedside table is the Madeline jewelry box, which the ghosts used to wind up, making me shiver under my comforter as the dancing figure sang. The spills on the carpet that never came out, the scratches in the wood floors, the holograms of past slumber parties that in time turned into high school mischievousness. This bed has healed my growing pains, my breakdowns, and my phobias. It has always welcomed me; never has it rejected my smell of teenage dissonance or reverted to its factory condition, erasing the nooks that are fitted to my body. It has been good to me and in return I have been faithful - I move it around every so often so it doesn’t collect too much dust. But what happens when a child leaves a childhood bed?
The most likely scenario: the child comes home and the bed is a bed upon which the child sleeps. When I return I won’t personify or analyze the old thing – no rational adult would. People grow up. Men buy sports cars. Women get breast implants. The insecure wife has an affair because she’s disappointed in the husband, who leaves his corner office to sell lumber and spray paint at the local hardware store. That’s all there is to it – people grow up.
But we’ve been together for so long, my bed and me. We’ve absorbed a lot for each other. We’re comfortable together. I can’t come home and pretend it’s just a bed. I can’t just leave.