To Buy a Bed

I want to buy a bed.

Three days ago, I zealously sought out the wheels to a bed Bridger purchased [that never arrived with the order in Houston] at the Mattress Warehouse at his reluctant request. I was happy to do it. Whilst waiting for the wheels that were never prepared that the manager of the store so quietly disappeared into the backroom to retrieve, I idly strolled through the aisles of the store, touching and feeling each of the mattresses, depressing their surfaces to gauge their sufficiency. They were so pristine. And soft. And new. And even and springy. The more I touched and felt and sat on, the more I felt the undeniable desire to purchase one. To spend obnoxious amounts of money on. To sit on and read books I’ve never read. To sit back on a mountain of pillows and sip wine and look through old pictures of friends I may never see again. To lazily watch television programs that used to sit comfortably in the background of the bustle of life. To put into an apartment I pick out and furnish in which I live with my own problems and my own accomplishments and my own colors, and shield myself from the rest of the world both foreign and familiar outside the walls that were my own only. I want a bed on which I can idly lay, just as idly as choosing one out when I knew I had no money, and to stare up into a pale red ceiling imagining a world where one can feel what they feel and know what they know about themselves and their problems without having to think about how the world feels about it. How would it feel to be angry, to be sad or jealous or endure heartache or be enamored or even in love? Or not feeling the necessity of obligation. Or to keep a secret you never want them to know. Or to long without being longed for. Or to find solace in being surrounded and overwhelmed. And not needing the world to make such things epic. And all the while not letting them consume you.

A bed in an apartment far far away from here. In a place where starting over is easy and cutting out the painful and unbearable parts of life comes with the carpeting and walls and the light fixtures and internet. A place where I can look out the window and know I’ll be somewhere I’ve never been before today. Someplace where I can sit and close my eyes and without sleeping, feel that I’m not wasting my time doing so, not plagued by the thousands of things I can or should be doing at that moment instead of this. A place where I can be with that someone who matters and no one else does, and they are honest to me and I them. A place with a view out the window of other places that other people live in, worlds curled up in the pale glow of the evening news or intertwined in the sweet aroma of family dinners or the sounds of children's laughter. A place with a bed and a bedpost on which I can lazily hang a shirt, and a papazan chair that I can curl up in and enjoy the quiet darkness that the harsh bright world so easily forgets and so readily takes for granted.

A safe place, where I feel what I feel. A bed on which I can close my eyes and slip into an unconscious subconsciousness that recognizes my deepest desires and greatest fears and my hopes and my dreams that the reality of being awake can never achieve with as much ease. A bed that is in all ways…comfortable.

He came out with the wheels, and I was happy that Bridger now had them for his new bed. That must be nice. And I walked out of the store, not needing to look back at the beds, understanding that out there may be the one I’ve been looking for, the one that will make things better and more comfortable.

I will buy that bed someday. And no one will care but me. Because I won’t need them to.