In this water I'll tread

I woke up this morning feeling a bit like I was falling apart. 

I ran out of coffee. I brewed some tea instead, and it turns out a pretty significant part of the morning ritual is just sitting dumbly with a warm drink for a bit. Still, upon arrival at the bottom of my cup, I was still a little dazed as I made my way into the world.

I've been tense for a while, for reasons I can't quite define. I feel compressed, caught between an ever-rotating series of obligations and ways I am supposed to be a better person. Ways everyone else seems to manage, and I can't quite grasp how or why I can't. Take care of my body, go to work every day, keep my home clean, be a good partner, maintain a hobby, keep up with friends... I don't understand how anyone gets anything done ever. 

On the bright side, when I came home, I found I had a package at my door, with some little magnetic puck lights I ordered to put in my bookshelf. I find it deeply peaceful to keep my office dark. Instead of proper lights, I have some curtain lights over the blackout curtain that keeps the world out, and a few spots of glowing RGB nonsense to supplement the glow from my computer monitors, and that's enough mostly. Two compartments of my boxy, standard IKEA bookshelf are dedicated to little trinkets I'm fairly fond of, however, and in the darkness I couldn't see them at all. Now I have gently rotating RGB glow stuck to the top, and I can glance over from my desk and see my little collection of doodads, and it is pleasing. Just one more step in the correct direction to make this space the most mine thing that has ever been mine. 

Then I ate a really good orange. 

This thing with my office is really remarkable to me. I knew it was something I wanted. Time by myself is really important to me, and really hard to get in an apartment with a husband who is the kind of guy who likes to have background noise. I also have a super hard time focusing if literally anything else is going on around me. So, when we found ourselves in a place with an extra bedroom, I claimed it as my own. 

When I was a kid, I didn't really get to decorate my bedroom to my taste. The rooms were always already full of someone else's things. Things that had to stay there. Things we couldn't afford to replace with anything more suitable. My mom chose pretty much everything in my teenage bedroom, to include the art on the walls. The only thing that was mine with the computer. When I moved out at 18, I moved in with a boyfriend who loved to buy things. This man had so much stuff, there was hardly even room for me, let alone things or thoughts of my own. I didn't find out what color the carpet in his room was for the first few weeks we were together. A red flag in hindsight, but that's all said and done now. My life with him was dominated by his things. The spaces were his. At a certain point, my grandfather passed away and left my mother his house, and my mother offered to let me rent it from her. That house, however, was full of my late grandfather's things, which we could not get rid of. The whole house was his choices, and a few of my mother's. None of mine. The boyfriend became an ex, and I cleaned. I cleaned so much and it felt like a revolution. My ex had of course come with so many things, and he was such a disaster about it. Just endless things and outright garbage mixed in to Mother's things and Pawpaw's things... I was alone in the house and I still couldn't make any choices, but it was clean. Everything that was left still belonged to my mother. Then a new boyfriend showed up. A new phase, a new move, and we ended up in a place that was our's, but the move left us broke, so we could only hold on to donations from family. We bought a couch. It was a great couch. Still have it. Still love it. But I still wasn't visible in my own home. 

Now I have this little space. This tiny little cave in a greater apartment that is also technically mine, but in a shared way. The apartment is our's, and must provide comfort and peace to both of us, however those details may be made to overlap. This room is mine. And maybe I sound selfish, but I have basically no control over anything day to day in my life except the contents of this room. Everything in it belongs to me, and is where it is because I will it. I picked out a couple pieces of furniture. A chest of draws with shelves. A little 2-seater couch. A big, L-shaped desk. The shelves and walls hold an array of little treasures that stand as monuments to precious memories of adventures and places and people I have been and known and seen. Small reminders that I exist. Have existed. I am more than a blank slate for other's to project their expectations upon. It smells the way I want it to smell, of incense and herbal tea and aging books. It's warmer than the rest of the house. I can put something down and reasonably expect it to be exactly where I left it when I return. I can watch videos and listen to music without dictating the audio profile of the entire apartment. I must make no compromises. I must conform to no one else's choices or taste or history or memory or inability to let go. I do not have to wait my turn or ask permission. I do not have to shrink. I have done so much shrinking. 

I have a big blank wall I have yet to decide what to do with. The possibility excites me, and I am torn between planning and seeking a solution, and letting it stay blank until something perfect falls across my path. I think I'd like a big piece of art, or a length of interesting fabric or tapestry. Maybe I should have some photographs printed, or try to make some art of my own. 

The problem now is that it is difficult to get myself to come out of it. It's addictive, in a way, this peaceful feeling. Even when there are things I must go out to do, things I want to do, I find myself stalling. Checking one more website. Watching my little lights shift for just a moment longer. Assessing what, if anything, should be adjusted or moved or re-thought. Thinking about the wall.

 Writing to no one.