Flipping the Switch

In my new teeny tiny 900 square foot house (of which I can only use two-thirds -- different story altogether), my king-sized bed takes up the majority of the bedroom. When I walk through the door to my bedroom, two steps gets to the bed, two steps to the left gets to the bathroom, and two steps forward... and that's it! That's all the room I have to move around!

With no space (obviously) for a nightstand, my cute set of bedside lamps found new homes in boxes in a storage building, and I accepted a clip-on desk lamp attached to my headboard. The problem is that the only plug is in the far corner where the bed is against two walls. So every night as I prepare for bed, I crawl across the king-sized bed to twist the knob on the end of the lamp and turn on the light, which I have flipped upside down so it won't blind me.

Then, I crawl back off the bed to turn off the overhead light.

It's a demeaning crawl.

I remind myself that this is only my temporary home, and that my living arrangements are better than those of so many people in the world!! I feel guilty for feeling down on myself when I have a roof over my head, indoor plumbing, and working appliances.

To be honest, I'm embarrassed. At this point in my life, I did not picture myself here, and it hurts to look around me and see boxes of my life that have absolutely no where to go. Actually, if you had told 21-year-old me that this would be my life, I would have literally laughed out loud. Really. I smile right now so as not to cry as I stare at these boxes I have to step over every time I walk across my living room.

Every night, I look forward to turning off the lights; and every morning, I lie in the dark trying to figure out where I am because this does not feel like home. I want to click my heels, but that doesn't work.

I miss my house, but it's somebody else's house now. I miss my walk-in closet, the half-drawn mural on my guest bedroom wall, the turquoise office where I wrote most of my novel, the dining set I picked up at a yard sale for $20, the kitchen island where I served Easter lunch and decorated countless birthday cakes and cupcakes, the dining room windowsills where I started the seeds for my garden, the front porch overlooking my huge front yard, the flowerbeds full of daylilies, roses, daisies, hydrangeas... it hurts to think of how I've gone from all of that to this.

But I have learned to be content in all circumstances. And when looking at my new surroundings just hurts too much, I simply flip the switch so I don't have to look anymore.