It just dawned on me . . .

. . . that when I am down to the wire, and ready to move I'm going to get everything loaded up, packed away in the jumper, tied down, and then spend one last night here so that I get a fresh and early start on the drive the next morning.  My trusty air mattress, which I spent so much time sleeping on when I first moved here will be where I sleep that last night in a big, empty, apartment.  Much like the first night or so that I was here.

It will be symbolic on so many levels, and it will be the closing of this chapter, in this part of my life.  The real closing chapter will be when I get home.  Then I'll be able to fully, finally, start putting Earl behind me.  Not so much in a deliberate "doing" kind of way, but the more spiritual, soul enriching NOT DOING.

Being here has been all about rebuilding after the damage.  Nary a step I take, or a day goes by that I'm not reminded in one way or another what this has cost me.  How much I've lost, since I said yes when he asked me to take some vacation time to fly out and meet him all those years ago.  Getting back home, getting back to a place that hasn't really been tainted by Earl, and the swath of destruction he cut through my heart, mind, body and soul, will be a great goodness.

So yeah, last night here when that comes, will be on the air mattress.  First night in the new place, will be on the air mattress for the symbolism of it.  And then I'll set up my bed, in my new home, and not look back so much.  Speaking of beds.  When the end came, I gave the brand new king side bed from the master bedroom to my sister.  She was thrilled, overjoyed on the one hand to get so much of the furniture she'd been ogling at our house, every time she was there, sad on the other what it meant for me.  The brand new king size mattress was just the top of the list in ways.

Me, I'd been sleeping for years in the guest room, and had finally, after being tired of the pull out sofa bed bought a tempurpedic mattress and slept on the on the floor for the last year of our marriage.  Of course my plan had been to get it out of storage when I moved, and sleep on that.  Problem of course was with the storage locker being 1000 miles away you see.  In the three years I've been here, I've not been back there to get stuff, let alone the bed, out of the locker.  So there it sits.

After sleeping on the tempurpedic at Laura's house in the beginning of the year, and having her lecture me, mercilessly about being "stuck" and otherwise finding all sorts of fault with my existence in general because I wasn't her, and not capable of being her, I decided to do something about the bed.  I really was tired, past tired, of spending three years on an inflatable camping mattress.

My new bedroom set. Squee!

So I set about finding a new tempuredic mattress I could afford and that would help me sleep better.  I'd already long since bought a frame that the air mattress had been on top of now for a while, so it was ready for a real mattress.  In May I squeezed the money out of my meager income and savings to get the mattress, this month I finally found and purchased a comforter, really one of those whole bed in a bag things, including curtains and so forth that I liked.  The colors and pattern was all rich, earthy and inviting, and it color coordinated well with the other sheet and pillow case sets I'd previous bought, giving me a range of options, and meaning I didn't have to wash the same set of sheets every week just to have a clean bed to sleep in.  Now, between the bed in the bag, and the stuff I already had, I only have to wash the bed clothes once a month.  Makes me a happy girl.  Though truth to tell, having three sets already meant I wasn't washing them every week as it was.  But now, now I have something I've not had in years and years, a complete homey feel to the bedroom, something warm, inviting and earthy.  Since my bedroom is my sanctuary, and I not only sleep there, but meditate and read as well, I want it to look nice, to be welcoming.  This fit the bill quite well in my opinion.

It's a long, long, long way from an inflatable mattress on the floor isn't it?  And the comforter is reversible, the other side is the green with dried grass colored lines running through it like the throw pillows, bed skirt, and valence.  And it's all mine.  So it just dawned on me I've come some distance from where I was three years ago, and my place is losing that homeless chic feeling to it more and more.  Instead of those two square pictures hanging over my bed I have a native american dream catcher, which adds to the warm homey feeling for me, and so fits me personally.  So progress is once again, not a dirty word.