Rose Hart-Landsberg is a writer living in Los Angeles. She hopes to have a sentence or two to add to her bio in the near future.
I always put my pajamas on the second I get home. I wasn’t always like that, it sort of happened gradually. I realized one clothing item at a time that there was always a higher level of comfort to achieve. The end of the progression from fully dressed to full comfort is actually getting into bed. It’s like my body can only hold on for so long and as dynamic as I feel out in the world, the second I can, I must recharge my comfort. I don’t think that other people do this. I think they know how to sustain their levels in productive society but for some reason I need a soft nest, an empty head.
When I was in college I could barely detach myself from my bed. I was suffering, like in other eras of my life, from horrible anxiety. Every class I had, every meeting I made, I would skip, lying in bed watching the clock; watching the minutes tick away until it would be too late for me to go. During these times, I don’t think I enjoyed the comfort of my mattress, squeaky and cheap –the one the college provided. I was too busy avoiding my life.
Recently, fed up with my anxiety, fed up with doctors and parents helping me “manage” it instead of getting it the fuck out of my brain, I went to a hypnotherapist. It was as stupid as I thought it would be. I cried the whole time though my annoyance at the process muted some of my upset. The conclusion the therapist came to by the end was that my mother’s intense worry over a birth defect and surgery I had as a toddler was transferred to me, an impressionable baby, and to that day, was still shaping my emotions. I decided not to go back for the second session even though she assured me my anxiety would return after only one and two would be plenty for an extended if not permanent cure. I think my bed helps more.
Since moving to LA I’ve been extremely short on money and constantly worrying about what I would do if I had to move out of my apartment and couldn’t afford to hire movers. I would have to sell my things. All my furniture. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who don’t need possessions; who just live and let live but I’m not. I worry about not having a bed. Luckily my apartment managers usually offer me furniture that they don’t want anymore or that tenants leave on their way out. The most important thing they’ve given me was a massive futon mattress. I don’t need it. There’s no room for it. But I can fit it in my car whereas my mattress I cannot. I keep it, borrowed by roommates, flung into the corner of my room, or, as right now, folded up against the wall in the living room. I might need it. I might need a bed.
I love the feeling of not holding my own bones up, of not deciding the shape of my own body, of covering myself in comforter or in LA a thin sheet, and forgetting that I have a body. I like my bed to be my body. I guess it’s not a very healthy dependency. Maybe other people’s body’s feel as good to be in as my bed does to me. Maybe they feel comfortable. But I need my bed.
