I wonder if I will wake to find myself missing the feeling of not having anywhere to go,
not having anywhere to leave. 

Dear Childhood Bed,

I woke up this morning and thought about keeping myself in small spaces.

We sold our house, the house we’ve lived in the past ten years, the longest we’ve ever stayed in one place. It marks the fourth time I’ll have moved in my life, and the second time to a new city, excluding college. It is strange, because I am away at school, and by the time summer comes my family will have packed up my things and brought them to the new place, and I’ll never set foot in that ten year memory again.

It is also strange, because until now, you have followed me with each move. While other girls were becoming teenagers and trading their twin sized beds for doubles and queens and taking the small, forgotten step towards growing up, I have been here, in my twin sized bed, limbs curled up tightly into myself.

I don’t know why I never got a bigger bed. My rooms had enough space, and it sure would’ve helped all the nights I fell asleep watching a movie and accidentally sent my laptop crashing over the cliff’s edge to the floor. My cat also would have appreciated it, with all the nights she’s fallen asleep by my ankles before I’ve started tossing. She’s never there when I wake up. But still my twin bed remained, smothered by pillows and stuffed animals, and I’d given up the campaign for an upgrade.

Until now, when my parents have informed me that in the move I’ll be getting my brother’s bed, massive and hulking and miles of mattress, and I suddenly find myself a little overwhelmed.

When I think of twin beds, I think of the Darlings’ nursery. I think of Madeline. I think of Matilda. The twin bed is the most recognizable signifier of childhood. For twenty-one years– twenty-two by the time I get home– I have slept in small spaces, buried under blankets and soft things, not allowed to sprawl unless I want the monsters to grab my ankles and drag me to their lairs under my bed. Twenty-one years of a single mattress, a narrow frame, room for just me.

Part of being the youngest in a family of five is there isn’t always space for you in a hotel room. Unless you’re lucky enough to score one with a pull-out couch, my parents would get one queen bed, my brothers the other, and I was left to find increasingly clever spaces to make tiny forts in. I’ve slept on folded up blankets under hotel desks more times than I can count. I know the exact way to lie on an armchair and ottoman so that I don’t move an inch while I’m asleep.

But now I will have space. Space to reach my arms out to both sides and just skim the cliff’s edges. Now it will feel strange to return to a dorm’s Twin XL. Now when I move to my very first solo apartment, whenever that may be, and make that dreaded official step towards being a grown-up, it won’t feel strange to crawl into a giant bed at night, hoping Peter won’t forget about me like he forgets about all children once they leave their nurseries, all fairies once they die.

I wonder if it will be less comfortable. I wonder if I have grown used to sleeping so compact that I will wake to find myself on the very edge, holding myself like a coil, missing the feeling of not having anywhere to go, missing the feeling of not having anywhere to leave.

I thank you for the decades you have spent teaching me to fit into small spaces, to not make myself quite so loud or grand or noticeable as other kids who grew up in large spaces, because there is a valuable lesson in knowing how to fit somewhere, or knowing when you don’t. I thank you for the decades of dreams and sleep-talking and the half-dozen times I’ve tumbled over your edges to the carpet. I am still a child, in my heart, but it is still strange to leave you, because less people will believe me when I tell them that I am.

Carry the next kid to Neverland, please.

All my heart,

xx,
Meg.