Little did I realize, I started a new tradition…
Tomorrow, between 11-1, I am getting a new mattress delivered. Honestly, it was out of need, but there is actually a really long emotional string that will be cut when it is removed from my bedroom tomorrow. Truth be told, I have a sleep number bed, which I really enjoyed. Pump it up, let the air out… pump it up… let the air out. I spent lots of money on this bed as soon as my first husband moved out. I thought it only right to start fresh. I would buy a new bed, and this time, It would be full of love unlike last time.
The last mattress was a really lonely mattress. A king size bed, that got most of its use on the left side, from one person, me, or from little people who would jump in in the middle of the night, leaving Husband number 1, to act like number 2, and stomp out to the couch to find peace.
It was a lonely mattress.
Unfortunately, in spite of its lack of activity, it developed a rather nasty cavern on the unoccupied side. I lived with it for a while, making many jokes about the hole, the abyss, the cavern. The place where husbands go to die… I thought of everything I could to make myself laugh. I filled in the hole with mattress pads, so that my daughter could sleep with me. She just about refused to return to her room after husband #2 was asked to leave.
The cherry on the cake, the straw in the camel’s back, the icing on the cake… any cliché you can think of came when the small dog that I own, who should have been named Stitch, decided to relieve herself on my side of the bed. Long story short, I ordered a new bed. Not a fancy one… no remote this time to control the air pressure. Just a bed without a cavern, and without the perfume of my furry friend.
As I lay on my stomach on the floor tonight, dusting under the bed, so as not to be ashamed when the delivery men come, I came to the realization that this was my tradition. Out with the old, in with the new. For each shattered marriage, a new mattress entered my life… filled with hope for the future.
This mattress, I declare will be filled with love. Maybe not the love that I was hoping for when I was a little girl, but maybe this time, with this new beginning, I can truly learn to love myself and that can truly be the best beginning of all.
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